All your life you have been shrinking, if not outside than in.

You cling to a purpose, desperately—your nails break and your fingers begin to bleed from your tight grasp.

“Why am I like this?” you ask, not for the first time. Your own desperate voice resounds in the chamber, sinks down into an endless void.
You’ll never receive an answer.

You’ve been trapped here your whole life.
This flesh suit you call a prison, others call a body, a home. Something that is supposed to be so innately yours, something you were born into, expected to grow, take care of. Something you loathe.

This home is something suffocating, something you are all too aware of.
You’re drowning.
You are drowning in it, suffocating on this thing you cannot even name.
You cannot escape.
You run from this thing that you are becoming, this thing that you are trapped in.

“Please, God, let me out,” you beg.
Just one breath of air, you plead, and you can return to your cage.