Picture a cage. A glass cage. An unbreakable glass cage. It is filled with people to the brim, all wearing black, but you only see me. They have faces, but they don’t. They are screaming at me and I stick out like a red ball in a box of white, unbelonging but, in a way, perfectly matched. They are screaming at me, demanding chaos, creating chaos, wanting to be let out- NO- they want me out. We are all screaming, but no one can hear us, all you see is my mouth wide open, eyes filled with anguish and terror, meaninglessly hitting empty space. There are so many of us, but you only see me. I want out, and I’m banging my fists on the glass wall for what seems like forever, but is actually only a couple of days. They are all laughing at me, cackling like the witches that are the antagonists of children’s fairy tales. Finally there are a few cracks in the glass, and I can breathe, just a little. But then, my blood slides down my knuckles, and coats the cracks, and the cracks close, like a wound that magically heals, and I am suffocating, suddenly in the middle of a crowded room, that I’m positive is the glass cage. But, I am too far gone and can’t be sure, because I am surrounded from every side possible, so that all I can see is faceless people, as far as my eyes can see. But they do have faces, ones I don’t recognize and they look so nice, but they scare me to the core, with the sinister smiles on their faces. They congratulate me for bleeding out. They tell me that my blood is poison, and every second of relief I felt, every time I got to breathe peacefully, I hurt someone, and my blood infected someone, coursing through their veins, slowly making their way up their heart. They tell me that if enough of it infected them, their heart would blacken and die. So, even if I kill myself, I will hurt someone. So, I lie there, emotionless, on the cold, white-tiled floor, looking at my bloodied knuckles and feeling the goosebumps climbing up my feet to the top head, awaiting my escape, playing a cruel game, with myself, of hope-and-hopelessness.
