Boxed

I am participating in the Literary Lion blogging event. It is a weekly affair with short prompts to inspire a short, 400 words or less, story.This week’s prompt was Escape.

She tries to keep the tears out of her eyes as she drives home, if she can just make it home. When she pulls up in her driveway she jumps out of her car, not even checking to see if it is locked, and sprints to her room where she locks the door and slides down it to the floor, legs stretched out in front of her. She closes her eyes tightly and presses her head back into the door, picturing a scene in her mind’s eye. She is desperate. Banging on the walls frantically, turning this way and that, looking for any signs of weakness. They look like they’re closing in from each side, making a small space smaller. She begins to hyperventilate, not able to catch her breath and quickly getting lightheaded.

Want to know the ironic thing about her situation? It’s not a real box, the walls aren’t closing in on her, she can breathe, her imagination is just making it seem like these things are happening to her. Her subconscious has created this scenario because she’s drowning under the pressure of society’s labels, expectations, and constructs. There’s no way for her to be herself, to be fearless and confident and incredibly successful. Why not, you ask? Society has told her that because she is big, plus-size, fat-however you want to label it- she won’t be able to be as successful or more successful than those who are thin. She chokes on this information that was shoved down her throat by her competitor in the student government race.

How can she escape this horrific vision, how can she win a race that was never set up for her to have a chance? She bites her lip to keep from making any sounds, one satisfaction she won’t give the world is to hear how much this has broken her spirit already. When she feels calmer, slipping into a wallowing depression, she opens her eyes and looks around her room. Something that reflects who she is inside, and she realizes that won’t ever matter, her personality, her charisma, her passion, nothing will help. She’s a failure by default and there is no way around or over that fact. There is no way to escape this fate so she might is well resign herself to this fate now, that’s what the guy told her. And now she actually believes.