My insides hurt, not a physical pain but a pain of indecision and guilt, guilt that sits so heavy it presses the air out of my lungs and my cage wants to crack from the pressure.

I am depressed, my world is splintering, slowly the veneer peeling strip by slow strip exposing truth, the honest truth, the truth I want to hide, run from. The life is sucked out of me, the hamster wheel turning, the light gone, the cage well nested but a cage nonetheless.
I am trapped, again, in someone else's dream, someone else's Pleasantville that I tried so hard to create, mold, perfect, sealed myself into the pinata with the pretty candies and toys I never wanted.

Everything is so heavy, breath is heavy, movement laborious, walking within a dream, not touching or feeling, life circling me in slow motion. I want it all gone, I don't want the toys, the sweets, the life, I want my independence back, my right to choose, to do what I want, to run, to play, to hide with thought to no one but myself.

Shackled.

I tasted freedom, brief and sweet, and one tiny drop turned into a ripple, to a swell, to a wave, an insurmountable wave that will wash clean my path and drown anything in its way. I can't stop it, I don't know if I want to, I should, I cannot. The guilt eats me.