Hands to my head, nails tangled in my temple and stray baby hairs that I use to hide my widow’s peak, I sigh. No, it’s more than that.

It’s the shedding of it all—of everything I used to cherish.

With each new click and scroll and added apostrophe, I scream at the screen, but I can’t let it out. She’s muffled inside, and angry, and oh so very tired; her depravity and ravenous rages tear about the core of what I held dear.

Inside, outside, inside, outside—all fall apart with nothing more than a shadow I envy. A shadow that is meant to be voiceless, content with that very purpose of its life.

Yet how can I, a person with a voice and feelings and advice, be told to hide like that shadow? A life of following, solitude, empty agreement, and stifled opinion was not made for me, yet they are telling me it was; they are showing me that all of me was not worthy for a life outside of the shadows where she and I hide to rot.

When I just am here as a robot—a commodity used by those who refuse to hear my own croaking voice—how can I convince myself that I am not what they demand from me?

I hit my head until the lights blur and dog stirs, until I can focus on the physical pain rather than tormenting myself with the agony this predicament has brought.

The shedding has not brought rebirth but rather scars that represent my sudden emptiness that are so, so fickle yet tantalizingly full. They feed upon the demands that fall so harshly and stand as a wall: impenetrable, unscalable, and deaf to the cries from the other side because the bricks harbor no sympathy, a trait from their maker.

Inside, she hurls herself against the decay of a core I call mine as if she feels the rhythm of my hands against my head. She is hurting—hurting me, my world in purples and greens, too—but she is hurting herself even more.

Her melancholy falls in cascades of soulful sobs to no audience but the abyss she lays in as if the world is too busy even to come by and mock her ruination. They themselves turn their eye to her, to me, to the bag they keep on beating—to the horse they’ve swung at one too many times.

While she wades through the pool of her catharsis, I wade through the days of demands and litter on my carpet floor because…

Because I know this cannot change, as much as it breaks the remains of her inside me, not soon enough to act as a ladder to my core or a sparkle in my eyes once more.