When an individual’s unique essence or experience has no valid outlet within existing social, institutional, or ideological structures, the rigidity of those external frameworks can make that person feel as though the walls of a sealed room are closing in around them, with no way out.
She learns which conversations expand thought, and which merely consume it. Which people can hold nuance, and which ones force it into something smaller because that is all they know how to do.
Repeated proximity to certain people and environments was conditioning my nervous system into familiar survival states. Eventually, the cost of maintaining that reality became impossible to ignore.
