I was never one to be found in crowds, always reaching for someone else, crouching small and unnoticed by the gazes and the rise in voices of friends calling out to one another. I always had someone to find and someone to know. The first time I went through the echoing shouts and held hands without someone to find; to leave alone in the first cold night, it was the first instance that I pushed myself through the hoard.  
 
"Did you hear about that venue that just reopened?" a voice said from the murmurs walking past me one early afternoon. 
 
"I did actually! Hasn't it been around ten years since the last show? Tonight I think..." a second voice said before their voices dissipated into the growing distance.  
 
Hearing this in passing, never one to engage. However, it was one of the only times that I knew what they were talking about. I was interested in these band shows under the floorboards of an empty storefront every weekend for months. Something had then shifted inside of me to finally consider going. It seemed like I could don on who I wanted to be there.  
 
Fall had just started to break through promising to ease the heat and frustrations of the summer casting a four o'clock beacon of golden light, hitting the side of my face. When I left, I had just started to push on the glass. Clips, pins, and various metal trinkets on my ears and jacket bounced and jingled together to accompany my hollow footsteps. Arriving early, I stood in the now cool blue shade, leaning, crossing my ankles and staring at my reflection across the tireless and traffic ridden avenue. My reflection became increasingly distorted with each passing car, and I wanted to leave. Wanting to follow weeded pavements accompanied by the streetlamps with the shadows walking, in front, with, and behind me. Before my doubles faded completely with the setting sun, the chipped-panel door swung open to a tilted, narrow stairway. As if I was behind myself, I saw the back of my head descending into that burnt orange cellar of angular shadows. 
 
Do you remember when you first felt that way, like an autonomous body outside yourself? With no fear of who you will be after or if you will exist beyond this point. As I am moving towards the front, the rattling speaker and indistinct voices make the air voluminous and alive that could have kept me standing if my heart had stopped. The air surrounding me seemed to numb the senses. Swarms of sounds, lights, and bodies passed and collided in front of me. I had created a microcolumn that contained only my soul, where my taking up room and fear of disappointment in others was absent. I had felt like a real person not defined by the eyes that did or did not know me or even thought to. In the slow vagueness of the night where I knew where I was for the first time, my eyes welled to the sound of the bands I have long forgotten. Faces surrounding me are now blank in my memory along with the sound they made or the fee I paid.  
 
This feeling I had, however, has carried me still, as it carried me out of that basement hours later. I had no responsibility to find or know anyone in that crowd, and it was the first time someone had found me. I had seen myself; I became aware of the responsibility I had for myself, and I was no longer scared of the confident power I had almost forgotten. I climbed up the stairs and walked out into the early fall breeze of a late September night. Gazing around the dark sidewalk and empty storefronts, I found no glistening reflections or elongated shadows. I had always wondered if those doubles were more physical than myself, if they contained my true being or the best parts. But I was the only one left, finding the last one absently wondering about, crunching the ground under my feet as I walked home.