Who am I?

I wish this was a question that was easier to answer, but it's not. I've been yearning my whole life to formulate a correct self-image, an approximation of what it means to be me, to no avail.

Ever since the the earliest moments of my childhood - at least, the one's that I can still remember - I've felt "different" than other people. Not the sort of difference that is something to rejoice about; when I looked into the mirror, at my puffy-cheeked face surrounded my masses of curly hair, I felt foreign from everything else, to the point of being excluded by definition. I was a mixture. An other. Something I didn't know how to face.

Now, this something wasn't simply a product of my ancestry, or the clothes I wore, it was an individual quirk of my shadow, that peculiar way my jaw jutted out from its proper place, the way that I smelled after running around the block, gasping for air.

This something was my essence, that which by design differentiated, and I wasn't sure if I liked it all that much. To make it easier for me now, I'll simply refer to this kernel of self as "NAF", the shortest version of my name that's still recognizible, the mark I often left on videogame screens at Lucky Lanes or Albany Bowl. NAF is something I can examine, a fragment that I can touch, and NAF is the section you're now reading, and the segments that are sure to follow in its stead.

NAF is me. Allow me to introduce myself.