Who am I — the foundational question

Before you can answer anything else, this question waits — patient, insistent, returning every time the noise settles. Sor Juana spent a lifetime inside an institution that had already answered it for her, and found that the most radical act was to keep asking anyway. The question is not a wound to be closed but a door to be walked through, again and again, as you grow large enough to need a bigger room.