"Honey? Please be careful out there."

Those were been my mother's last words to me before I took off for the airport to begin my journey. That had been almost four years ago, I remember the day had been overcast and gloomy. Today, I'm standing in the very middle of a vast frozen lake in the South Pole, the weather bright but cold. The traditionalists in Tanzania and the monks in Tibet had seen in visions the box that contained my identity and they'd both described a lake of ice, "at the very south of the Earth", so here I was. I walk carefully on the surface, looking for a mark on the ice I'd been told to look out for, an X. I squint because the sun is being reflected off the the white ice, and I regret losing my glasses during a hike in the Alps last year. I'd been lost for four whole years, aimlessly wandering the Earth until I finally got something, first from the monks, and then, on my way to Antarctica, I'd come across a performing traditionalist at the airport in Dar Es Salaam, who encouraged me without giving him prior knowledge to go south in order to "find myself".

I see it. Yes, there's a clear X in the ice to my right. I rush forwards and kneel, heart thumping like a hammer against my chest. I bring out a pickaxe and start digging away, it was going to take quite a while.

In school I suffered from teen angst and depression. Everyone seemed to have a purpose, to know what they wanted, to know who they were and where they were going. I remember cutting myself and shouting at my parents over trivial things and drinking til I felt like a bottle of alcohol afterwards. I refused to see a theeapist, I knee they couldn't help. There'd been a boy, Simon, who seemed to have an interest in me and who I didn't appreciate at the time. He would sit with me at linch break and talk to me like I was normal. Eventually he asked me out but it was all too much for me, I didn't know what to do with myself let alone what to do with a relationship and so I one night after school shouted at him that he wanted to get in my pants and that he didn't really care. He left and never spoke to me at school again.

On my birthday my parents told me the truth. That all these years I'd been suffering from an identity crisis. They'd kept this from me and I thought I was going to shout and curse at them and throw things around the house but I'd felt relieved. Three days later, I left to look for what had been kept from me, going first to Thailand, and then randomly Zambia next. All the while, as I walked through strange plains and sailed through strange waters, I couldn't help but shake that I was being watched, that someone was following me. It sounds a bit silly, but I'd look behind me, and I swear I'd the hem of a garment whipping out of sight by a building's corner

I've made a deep hole in the ice. I can see the water, swaying with bits of ice chunks in it. I look around and then take all my clothes off. It's freezing, the cold is biting my skin like tiny insects. I take a deep breath and dive in. The cold, oh the cold. It's like fire more than anything. I open my eyes, and there's something gleaming to my right, fifty metres away. I get some more air, brave myself and submerge myself once more.

I'd tried calling Simon two years ago on his cellphone number, which I'd memorised and never forgotten. I wanted to say I was sorry and that I'd always loved him. He wasn't answering, so I called the telephone at his parents house. He answered and expressed deep surprise at my calling. He said he'd changed numbers and gave me the new one. As the conversation went on, how's life, where are you for university, I could tell he was getting more and more distant, possibly remembering that terrible night. All the same, he encouraged me to call him again that night, when he wasn't busy with work. When I hung, I felt embarrassed and all clammy like I'd been immersed in water. I didn't call him that night.

The water is going to freeze my brain I'm sure of it. The gleaming box gets nearer and nearer. I'm feeling the pressure in my lungs. I grab the box and something happens, something warm and significant, as if I've sunk into a hot bath, and I forget where I am for a moment. I know, now. I know... everything. My name is Sara and this is who I am.

I called Simon again last year with the new number. Someone else answered, a woman.

I open the box but its empty. I discard it but then that great feeling of being warm and safe disappeared suddenly and I was now completely out of breath. Immediately I inhale what seem like a bucketful of water and it's so cold, so terribly invasive, that I sort of stiffen up, I'm unable to move.

It was Simon's mother who'd answered. She sounded as if she'd had all the power removed from her.

"Didn't you hear? It happened a month ago."

"What happened a month ago," I said gripping my cellphone that I felt the feeling come out of my hand. When she just sighs, Insay in a panic, "Please, what happened a month ago?!"

I'm sinking, cold, blue world around me. The water is filling up my lungs, my vision is darkening at the corners. That was life for you. You finally find yourself and then next second you have icy water in your throat. The accident, she said. He... he didn't make it. Falling to the floor, screaming with rage, with grief, with regret. Vague faces of people in the street staring, some shaking their heads with pity. All I could see was his smile, and the kindness in his eyes. The world is darkening, I am dying. I think my last thoughts.

Bright sunlight and freezing breeze. I'm coughing violently. Am I dead? I doubt it, otherwise I wouldn't be shivering so much. There's someone there, I can't see them properly. Someone is holding my hand. They'd pulled me out of the water. I wanted to get a better look but before I could so, I was plunged again in temporary darkness.