I feel a fear crawling through my body. It reaches, reaches up, up to my mind; It claws at my thoughts until it holds them in its grasp and whispers, “Mine.” Each time I start to feel control, it’s there again, tracing its finger around my brain, that light touch reminding me I am not my own. I belong to it. It owns me. It drowns me. It takes hope and dangles it in front of my face and then eats it, right in front of me, savoring every bite. It taunts me with its words and its promises, making me think I can become something else, something separate. But then it whispers in my ears. It tells me, “Free, free, you’ll never be free,” and, “Mine, mine, you’re all mine.” And so I do the only thing I know to block it out: I don’t feel. When the options are to feel fear or nothing at all, I choose the easier one to live with. Because each time I try to use my own claws, every time I try to climb, it holds me with its fragile hands, cradles me, shushes me, tells me, “Don’t you like it here? It’s safe here. What will happen if you change? What will happen if you know more? I have the answers. Trust me with your questions. I know the answers.” So I do. I do, I do, I do. I forget that I have questions, forge that I am in search of answers, if only for a little bit. I trust the fear, the not feeling. I let it cradle me in its long, spiny fingers, let them snake around me, claiming me as its own. I allow its possessive fingers to hold my own. I let it shush me, quiet me, until I am only softly crying into its chest instead of weeping, instead of wailing, instead of crying out, “You monster!” Instead of learning to be free of it, I learn to live with it; and that is not living at all.