(a group of anonymous people who came to a website were asked to type the answer to the question "who are you?" after typing they went to a page with everyone else's answers, I can no longer find the site, but I copied and pasted some of the responses in an email a few years back....)

I work for 8 hours sometimes more really hard everyday and my wife and kids are at home waiting for me to come home so I can go to sleep 

i am a middle class worker who slaves all day for little to nothing 

i am a spoiled brat that found his way here somehow 

a confused writer searching for herself 

Don't jump out of the fish bowl! 

conscience of you consciousness reveal... belonging to a distant need for something within nothing. don't belong without allowing a sense of belonging... never distress... always digest... 

the flakes falling from my skin 

A pretense of self we hide behind when we don't want to be afraid or in love. 

• i am confusion shaped like a man 

identity is a fleeting illusion. a jumbled mess of things that have happened and things that happen to you.a random series of electrical bursts resaponse to stimuli and a flawed matter of perception 

idiot #1971265298251971918249724915429454722452728467218245182 

I don't know who I am...I remember who I was before it all happened...now that I don't know myself anymore...I feel as if I am losing everything more and more everyday...my job...relationships..everything is suffering because of it. I hate him..and I hate his ways..and I'd do anything I possibly could to hurt him and get the old Jessica back to myself. The one I loved so much... 

Scratching around for something that is nothing. Aimless like leaves blowing in the wind. Why?. 

Remember and forgive the pain and the tears lost to what i know i need hope we fail die 

Dan, 14 years old and hating life 

Desktop publishing- Functions Using Publisher 98 Forgeting japanese chicks with huge eye's as the sun is bleeding still from yesterday. 

jennifer age 27 born 7 years to soon hair brown eyes green hight 5'9 

a superficial collection of thoughts, actions, images, emotions of what we approve of that are characteristic of others thoughts, actions, images, and emotions that they have gathered from interactions with others identity. 


I am me, a collection of images, sounds, smells, and feelings that both I and others can associate with me... I am a mask that I put on from time to time to hide from the real me, and the real you. I am myself, and nobody can take that away from me, not even you 

drunk&ashamed. lonely. caged. creative. writing. creating. photographing. not fucking. smoking too much. inventing a new self. werking too much. 

when you realise life is short and there is no point in wasting your time pondering who you are or where your going 

the part of you that people passing on the street don't really see. 

an evolved synapse 

clarity while tripping.

Who I am and what I cannot help being It is my youth and my old age It is my past and my future It is my parents and my children It is my reaction and my response 

It´s taking me some time to find out, who I really am. Don´t know if I´m ever going to get there. Do I want to? 

Me ... on a perfect evening outside..children crying, shouting .. a dog barks ... Tears well in my eyes but I am happy. Tears well for my father, dead 15 years ... I can never share my thoughts with him. I was to young, not yet a man ... so the day turns into night. 

I'm cold and tired. Siting here wondering about school and friends or my supposed to be friends. R they real? Is any of this real. Why are we here. I can't make sense of anything. I'm tired of everyone and everything 

playing with my brother's matchbox cars in the front yard, running them along the slim dirt seam where the grass met the black tar of the curb. 

hearing the radio from the kitchen as i awoke in the morning at my grandmother's house. 

i cannot understand why i can't remember the last few years of my life and i didn't drink take drugs i just did what the doctor said and it;s left me with nothing it all seems so worthless now 

Does anyone hate the television more than I do? Constantly on, parading it's inane programs, it's mindless sitcoms, it's pathetic dramas - so far removed from those of real life. And yet, has anyone ever been more grateful for it? for the never-ending banalities; the only object, the only conversations, the only company that numbs him into a sullenly watchful disinterest. 

Images that wonders around. A past which you lived and have not forgotten, but you seem to think some how or so way that it wasn't you life that you remember, but it was some one elses life. You then come to think , "Is that my memory, my life, my past. Or is it just information you were given to fill your life." Or possiblly is it just memories? That's what I want to know. 

My memories are hazy and frayed, bright, colorful, fragmented, some gone. A picture of my Dad, thoughts of racing with the wind through the tall grass. A teenager that was neither accepted or denied entrance. A netherland of indecision and doubt. Grama's chocolate cake, the first date, a long happy life that is at the midpoint. God has dulled some and made others incredibly bright. I look for new memories to be made every day. 

what have you been