You come home. You sit in a chair. You do not turn on music. You stare at the wall, because the wall asks nothing of you. You have spent the whole day performing a self that is not yours, and now there is no self left for the evening. You are not empty. You are over-full—full of other people's wants, other people's voices, other people's quiet tyrannies.
Your boss speaks. You nod. When they are wrong, you calculate the cost of truth versus the cost of silence. Silence always seems cheaper in the moment. You laugh at jokes that aren't funny. You say "sorry" for existing in doorways. A colleague takes credit for your idea, and you feel a strange relief— at least the idea is being used . Your value has always been in your utility. To be stolen from is, perversely, to be needed. life with a slave feeling
You go to sleep. Tomorrow, you will wake and do it again. Not because someone is forcing you. Because the feeling has become the shape of your bones. Because the slave is dead, but the slave's posture lives on in every apologetic smile, every deferred dream, every time you shrink to let someone else grow. You come home
And in the quiet moments, you watch free people. They stretch. They yawn loudly. They take up room on benches. They ask for things without preambles. They leave a mess and do not apologize. You do not envy them exactly. You observe them the way a caged bird observes the sky: with a distant, theoretical longing that has long since forgotten how to beat its wings. You stare at the wall, because the wall asks nothing of you