I have survived for years unaware that I was important to no one. I’ve been the joker, the fool, the shoulder and the comforting push of hair from your face. I appear when needed but never taken whole-heartedly or loved unconditionally. I have been teased by lust and pricked by love and poisoned by heartache, the same as all my peers. I have taken the time to observe others losses and I have grown bitter. I now understand that loss defines us in a dark and necessary way, and yet I still feel guilty using the word “I”. I have lost. I have seen the ground from beneath the grass. I have looked up and felt nothing but a void thumping in my chest. I have been alone, and I am alone. I am the joker who dies with all her thoughts and sorrows packed neatly in a trunk at the foot of her bed.