[Today for you, tomorrow for me]: 256.Claustrophobia

  I awake gasping to a room seemingly devoid of the four swastika l’s: light, love, luck and life. For just one night in a several year long crusade in independence the night feels stiflingly lonesome. The blackness seems to reach out and wrap around me like a python waiting to choke the life out of me. I rush to the window only to find the familiar, pained glass structure is gone. My hand lies flat against a wall of metal. I feel the panic rising and all too familiar heaviness in my chest beginning. As the strange, alien metal walls begin to close around my body I tell myself I have long since ridden myself of my unreasonable claustrophobia. My breathing becomes erratic and shallow as my list of rehearsed reassurances grows thin. As I begin to run out of the hopeful, deceit filled tales to tell myself, I feel a wave of dizziness cover me. Before long I am curled in a corner, ready to scream if the walls inch any closer to me. I let out a sigh as they seem to stop moving and as soon as the breath leaves my body I notice the metal start to inch ever so slowly towards me again. Tears begin to stream freely down my face as I plead to the glimmering walls to release me. My arms cover my head as I scuttle further back into the corner wanting more than anything to just get out! The next thing I know I stand myself up and begin to pound on nearest wall.
   “Let me out!” I cry, sliding back down to the floor. I lean my forehead against the cold, unfeeling steel wall exclaiming, “I just want out.”
  The walls show me no mercy and soon I am in the corner again, screaming wordlessly at the maddeningly slow progress towards me. I close my eyes and the next thing I know I awake gasping, sitting in my own bed with the light of the full moon streaming through the nearest window.