Now I see that I will never find the light
Unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel,
Consuming myself.

I was constantly trying to find myself in the world around me

You must remind me, little one. When I... when I lose myself - when I lose her - you must remind me that I am still searching, still waiting... that I have never forgotten her, never turned from all she taught me. I sit in this place... I sit... because a king has to sit, you see... but in my mind, in my poor mind, I am always away with her....

I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me.

Within me burns a flame which has been passed from generations uncounted and its heat is a constant irritation to my spirit to become better than I am, and I will.

I'm drawn to failure. I feel that I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.

you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame;
how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?

Sometimes you have to lose all you have to find out who you truly are.

For as long as I could remember, I had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. Now I was in my own way; I myself was a dark object I could not ignore. I couldn't remember how to forget myself. I didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as I might, I couldn't avoid it. I was a boulder blocking my own path. I was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn't hush.

So this was adolescence. Is this how the people around me had died on their feet - inevitably, helplessly? Perhaps their own selves eclipsed the sun for so many years the world shriveled around them, and when at least their inescapable orbits had passed through these dark egoistic years it was too late, they had adjusted.

Must I then lose the world forever, that I had so loved? Was it all, the whole bright and various planet, where I had been so ardent about finding myself alive, only a passion peculiar to children, that I would outgrow even against my will?

I am burning myself up and will always do so.

Each one of us has a fire in our heart for something. It's our goal in life to find it and keep it lit.

Dear friend, I have searched all night
through each burnt paper,
but I fear I will never find
the formula to let you die

Is it any wonder, since, when near the fire,
I was melted and burned, if now that it's extinguished
outside me, it besets and consumes me inside,
and bit by bit reduces me to ashes?

I went in search of myself.