Solitude is a relative experience; one is never alone. Each of us is at minimum a family; we are each of us bi-sexual and bi-generational. There is the masculine me, the feminine me, the childish me and the parental me. In my solitude I constitute my own little family, a family that exists "inside" me, and not in the world "outside" me. I find myself in two worlds.

The difference between my experience of my internal family and my experience of my external family is that what is separated in the external family is unified in the internal family. I am a member of an external family and I am an internal family; I am that which I am a member of. Identity depends upon membership and to lose your membership is to lose your identity. That is at the heart of the fear. For me a question remains. Can I exist without an identity?