The Animal Inside

The house was colder than the weather could explain. Even mid-summer felt muted inside its walls. The blinds were always drawn. The windows, dust-crusted and tired, seemed built to keep sunlight out on purpose. The air smelt of aged medication, microwaved leftovers, and forgotten clothes. A quiet kind of poverty, the kind that goes unseen. Days blurred into each other.

Weeks evaporated. Months vanished without ceremony.

Isabella had not manicured her nails in nearly a year. Her hair hung limp, oily. She did not brush it. Did not style it. Did not care. She used to wear perfume, sweet florals, skin musk. Now she smelt like carpet. Like decay. Like something that had not been visited in a long, long time.

She was young. But she felt as old as time.

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. A diagnosis that sounded like a riddle but hollowed her like a curse. Her body chewed at its own nerves, swelled where it shouldn’t, screamed louder than anyone could hear.

The paperwork read “complex.” But the consequences were violent and simple.

Doctors did not treat her. They managed her.

Lyrica stole her focus. Xanax dimmed her moods. Morphine crept beneath her skin like betrayal. Palexia numbed what little fire remained. Codeine slowed her breath. Tramadol made her forget what she meant to say. Clonidine. Diazepam. Neurontin. Buprenorphine. Alprazolam. All a blurry haze.

The list slurred at the edges. Names became dosages. Relief became ritual.

She did not count the pills anymore. Just tilted her palm and swallowed.

They did not make her better. They made her quieter.

The handfuls she took each morning sounded like something ending, each tablet clinking in the tray like another piece of her chipped away.

Her thoughts flattened into static. Her body slumped into something resembling rest, but closer to hibernation. Her eyes fluttered in and out, not from exhaustion, but from chemical persuasion.

She was a shell with a dosage schedule.

A slow erasure painted as care.

She played God with what little control she had left.

She could not control the pain, the side effects, the way people looked at her like a cautionary tale. But she could control when they left.

So she preemptively deleted numbers before they could block her. Walked away from support before it walked away first. Burned bridges before they crumbled.

It was not logical.

It was not noble.

It was grief disguised as strategy. Panic dressed up as autonomy. Broken emotional logic, take the reins over what’s left before someone reminds you it was never yours to keep.

She pushed people out with sharp words and sharpened silences. Dared them to leave. Dared them to stay. And when they finally left, she told herself she’d expected it.

But the ache said otherwise.

No one fought for her.

So she stopped fighting, too.

Another typical day spilled in like wet ink, smeared and directionless. Isabella reached for her pill tray without thinking. Muscle memory. The routine was the only rhythm left.

Neurontin. Buprenorphine. Palexia. Codeine. Diazepam. Clonidine. Alprazolam. Lyrica. Tramadol.

Curses disguised as medicine.

A pharmacy’s worth of pills slipped down her throat. Not for healing. For sedation. For quiet.

They did not just block pain. They blocked clarity, hunger, memory, emotion, dignity. The cost of relief was her own humanity.

As her brain dulled and her consciousness dipped, the television buzzed in the background. Just another noise. Just another distraction she could not process.

Until the sound changed.

Until the camera found its subject.

A documentary.

A wild animal, large, powerful, beautiful, chained inside a concrete cage. It flinched when someone neared. Not wild. Not dangerous. Just... gone. Its eyes were hollow. Its posture defeated.

The narrator described its training, its captivity. How it had been broken, beaten, starved, conditioned, for human entertainment. Forced to perform tricks beneath stadium lights. Its life compressed into five-minute acts for the public. All while its spirit was slowly crushed.

Isabella could not breathe.

She saw herself.

Not metaphorically.

Exactly.

The camera zoomed in. The animal trembled at the sound of a crowd. It did not resist its leash, it had forgotten how. It stood, vacant, brutalised, trained to entertain strangers who did not want its truth, only its show.

People cheered.

Isabella whispered, “How can they not see it?”

Then softer, “How did no one see me?”

She sobbed.

Not dramatically. Not delicately.

She sobbed like her lungs had been storing it for years. Curled into herself. Bit into her sleeve. Rocked like something feral. Like something imprisoned.

The tears did not cleanse her.

They punished her.

And when the silence returned, she let it wash over her.

The animal had been chained, stripped of choice, its instincts reshaped for convenience.

But unlike it,

She could still fight.

Even if it shattered her.

That night, Isabella sat in the quiet of her lounge room, notebook balanced on her knees. The paper was yellowed. The pen trembled in her fingers. She did not write poetry. Did not reach for eloquence.

She wrote truth.

To those I hurt during the medical storm:

You became collateral damage to a rage I did not know I was capable of.

I’m sorry. I was drowning, and I chose venom over vulnerability.

You did not deserve that.

To myself,

I am sorry I forgot you.

Sorry I let doctors shut you off.

Sorry I let pills erase your laughter.

Sorry I stopped brushing your hair like you were still alive.

You deserved better than the echo I left behind.

You deserved compassion.

You deserved choice.

Today, I remember you.

Not perfectly. But fiercely.

You were caged like that animal.

But unlike it,

You can still fight.

You can still choose defiance.

You can still choose light.

She had been a consumer who desperately needed support, and instead, was left to unravel alone.

When she reached out, she was at the edge of herself. Medication had dulled her mind, destabilised her body, and buried her identity. She was in crisis, not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically. But instead of help, she was silenced. Medicated into submission. Pushed beyond her limits and then punished for having a reaction.

They labelled her “aggressive,” “non-compliant,” “too complex” during a time of medical neglect and emotional collapse, because no one stepped in when she was drowning. The system did not protect her.

The support she sought never arrived.

Her behaviour was not cruelty.

It was desperation.

Untreated trauma echoing through every word.

She lost her way in the bureaucracy.

And she was sorry, to herself.

She did not stir immediately.

She sat in silence, medicated, docile, absent-minded. Her limbs heavy. Her thoughts fogged.

But somewhere behind the haze, a promise flickered.

A vow, not shouted but whispered in fragments:

I will make this right.

Not for them.

For me.

Because nothing shifts overnight. A process begun.

yes, Isabella tried, once more.

She looked up rehab programmes.

Sat through online yoga classes with trembling limbs.

Stretched, even when her muscles screamed for mercy.

She journalled messily.

Sobbed on the bathroom floor.

Started again.

Some days were static.

Some were a flicker of grace.

Not every day was a win.

Sometimes not even a minute.

But it was movement.

It was breath.

It was choice.

It was beginning.

It was her amends.