I don’t feel as if my life is all over the place; I more so feel like everyone else is all over the place, and I am stuck in one place, never moving forward. I’m stuck in a box, banging on the doors to get out, but no one is listening. I claw at the wood until my nails are all broken and bleeding; I bite at the lock until my teeth are worn down so much I question if they’re still in my mouth. I try to break the hinges on the door with the heels of my boots, but even they break eventually.
I start screaming. High pitched shrieks that I pray are loud enough to be heard by someone who would be so kind as to help me. This is where you come along. You come, yelling out to me so I would know you were there, just outside of my prison. I beg for you to let me out, that I would do anything if you just opened the door.
For some time, I truly believed you would let me out. I could really see the light shining through the cracks in my holding cell, feel the warm sun on my face. How wonderful would it be to dress my wounds and begin the healing process, with some professional help guiding me every step of the way. I would forever have you to thank, and I would make sure to show you just how appreciative I was. How could I not be forever in debt to my savior? You would go the rest of your life with the satisfaction of knowing that you had indeed saved a life.
But there was something else you were after. Something else that blinded you from the noble act you could so easily do. Control. Oh yes, control is far superior than a weak and broken girl, hopelessly offering herself in return of providing an escape from my confinement. By leaving me in my box, it is now you who has the control. Leave me in to rot, or let me out? As long as you do nothing, and just keep me inside, you have the control. Once you open the lock, you know, I could escape to a place far away from here, and you. You will have gained nothing, while I will have gained everything. Why should you make even the slightest effort if there is no guaranteed reward? Although I am screaming for help now, and promising anything and everything for just a little work, there is nothing to say that I will not go back on my word once I am free. And so, you choose to leave me, where I can do nothing, escape no one.
I hear footsteps that can belong to no one else but you, getting softer and softer as they tread farther and farther from where I am forever stuck. I try to follow you, but my box keeps me in one place. With a shot of rage pulsing though my veins after I realize you have left me, I start punching at the door. My hands are covered in blood now. When I can’t through another punch, I start kicking.
I am too angry and upset to feel pain. I want nothing more than for you to just come back and save me. I can see you in my head, but the vision of you is getting smaller as you take yourself farther from me. I find myself reaching out to find and pull you back, but all my fingertips touch is scratched up wood from my exhausting attempted escape.
I’m done. I can’t find any way out of my cell, and I begin to realize that I cannot do it along. I need someone, anyone, to come help me, to come break the lock. But I am all alone. If you left me, I reason, the one person I counted on when I had no one else, than I have no reason to expect to be saved. I have no reason to hope.
I break down. What else can I do? Allowing myself to fall into a sitting position at the bottom of my cell, I lose the last bit of the control I might have had. I am crying now, hot salty tears mixing with the blood. Only then do I begin to feel the pain. I look at my hands, view my broken nails and scraped skin. My feet look very much the same. It hurts now, throbbing sensations that seethe with every second I am sitting in my prison.
By the time help comes along, I am no longer there to save. My body still remains in my box, battered and broken. The bones in my fingers are shattered, and I can no longer move them without immense pain. My skin has roughened so much that I now have cracks that turn from the backs of my palms to my wrists, and then crawling up my forearms. My feet are calloused, for my boots have worn so much that they no longer over protection. All of my clothes are worn in this way now. I am exposed.
The people here to save me are far too late. Although my heart is still bearing, pumping blood through my sliced veins, and one can still hear my shallow breaths, I am no longer alive. I am dead, and I have been for a long time. I died on the day you left me. And I don’t think you even noticed, for even in death, I am still under your control, because that is how I was when I died.