Prison to Prism: A Survival Guide for When Life Put You Somewhere You Didn't Choose
How to stay alive in a cage that fits everyone else better than it fits you
You’re living in someone else’s perfect life and it’s slowly killing you. You look around at the walls of your existence and think “who ordered this?” while the people around you seem genuinely happy with the furniture. Your kid is thriving. Your partner is comfortable. Your family thinks you’re “finally settled.” And you’re standing in the middle of this carefully constructed okay-ness wanting to claw your own skin off because every cell in your body knows THIS IS NOT YOUR HABITAT and yet here you are, paying rent on a life that fits you like shoes three sizes too small.
You didn’t order the concrete jungle with a side of existential dread. You asked for the ocean view and the universe sent you a ground-floor apartment where you can’t open your curtains without becoming a zoo exhibit for passing pedestrians. You’ve started watching “Orange Is the New Black” not for entertainment but for SURVIVAL TIPS.
Your blood remembers a different rhythm. Your bones ache for a landscape they haven’t seen in years but dream about nightly. Your cells carry the coordinates of somewhere else, someone else, some other version of this life where your lungs actually fill all the way.
Plot twist: You’re not ungrateful. You’re not crazy. You’re not “never satisfied” or “always wanting more” or any of the other bullshit people say to make you feel guilty for suffocating in a room where everyone else breathes just fine. You’re a sea creature in a parking garage. A forest thing in a fluorescent office. A woman built for horizon lines living in a box where you can’t even see the sky without someone else’s building blocking the view.
