you're an object with clipped wings

Humanity is capable of so much cruelty. In some ways, we may be the only species truly capable of outright cruelty, rather than mere violence. Or maybe that was still anthropocentrism, failing to consider that dolphins using seal corpses to masturbate could be whatever the animal equivalent of dehumanizing the other species was. Then again, once a creature was dead, maybe they were nothing more than an object? Dignifying the dead was not a trait exclusive to humanity, as other large mammals also mourn their dead.

Humanity is capable of so much cruelty, to the point where oftentimes victims of those cruelties find themselves questioning whether they too even qualify as human. After all, disrespect is a mark of how many (mis)treat animals and objects, so treating someone carelessly, shoving them on the floor like a newly emptied backpack, can lead to the person feeling less than a person.

Objectification, that was the word, and an object cannot feel pain. An object cannot be considered pathetic for failing to resist gravity, for following the arc of motion to its logical conclusion. An object couldn't feel, and he,d no moral authority, could not be blamed for actions conducted upon it.

You were an object. That had to be the explanation. Otherwise you had no explanation for the sheer amount of cruelty you had been subjected to. You had no explanation that didn't lay the fault exactly where you wouldn't be able to withstand it belonging: at your all-too-often stepped-upon feet.

No, you can handle being this, this object, the outlet for real people's anger and heartbreak and happiness. You can handle being the object of cruelty - you're used to it. You've learned how to survive it. You know what happens to you is wrong when it occurs against other people, and you intellectually could probably reason out that as a human being you deserve better, but there's no point in trying to do that when better feels unattainable. You know the life you've grown used to living, one where you belong to someone else, and you can't even blame said ownership on circumstance like if they were your parent. She wasn't your parent, wasn't someone you had no choice but to live with. You had chosen her, had chosen this.

You were questioning your own humanity, and in doing so found yourself relating a bit too well to the creature you saw outside your window: the squirrel whose tail had been flattened by a car, the rabbit that appeared either sunburnt or bloodied by a predator, yet lazed in your yard as though it had found safety at last. You relished that your yard could be a provider of safety for other animals, since your home was never truly safe for you. Your girlfriend had an unpredictable schedule, could be home at a moment's notice or gone for hours or even days, but if you weren't home when she arrived, there'd be Hell to pay. So your interactions with the outdoors mainly consisted of looking out the many windows of your house, except when the urge to leave, to at least pretend you were a person, overpowered your fear of her and fueled a long overdue hike.

She would go on walks with you occasionally, only you usually ended those walks having been banged by branches, pushed into thorns, and laughed at for being slow. Still, the walks were worthwhile, welcome breaks from your routine of otherwise staying home, cooking for her, searching for jobs and applying to them, rearranging the rejection letters in your email mailbox, and otherwise failing at adulthood. Animals had it so much easier - a bird would just be pushed out of the nest to fend for itself. They didn't have to try to prove themselves to the older adult birds until mating season began, if it began. You were already mated, but learning about the mating habits of other animals was still interesting.

And maybe sometimes you fantasized about being one of those birds that moved on after their mated-for-life partner died, finding someone maybe kinder, although you loathe yourself for thinking that when she had just taken you out on a hike - that was itself kind, not to mention she kissed you after you fell into those thorns. You were lucky enough to be loved - who were you to try to demand that twice from the universe? But as you laid awake, her soft snores background noise to the sorts of fantasies you never indulged in during daylight, you would imagine yourself as a bird, wings growing over their having been clipped (although you had no idea if anatomy actually worked that way).

Once, on one of the walks you knew you would eventually be punished over, you saw a robin that flew across the street as you neared it, and when you stood where it had been, half a worm was poking out of the ground. You felt a bizarre kinship to that robin, having escaped with half a meal. You didn't know what your version of the worm would be, just that the idea of being able to fly away from what frightened you was a freeing thought, one that almost as quickly as the robin was out of sight brought guilt. You weren't a bird. You weren't a person. You weren't anything but a glutton for pain. You would feel like nothing but sensation, but aches and newly forming scabs when she returned home and you weren't home. She was convinced you had left specifically to frighten her, to control her, and the truth never mattered, you knew this would happen.

But you were able to interact with other living beings, even if one was half dead or in the process of dying. Even if none of them were human, as you always left interactions with humans feeling more other than you entered them, more of a freak, more certain she was the only one who would ever love you because of the weird pitying looks you sometimes received when you were brave enough to seek out humans. You belonged here, at home with her, not out among the real people. Here, with your main company being robins and gray squirrels and chickadees, at least those creatures were smart enough to be afraid of you. Actual humans who didn't know you offered you something far more foreign than fear or anger: gratitude, kindness, occasionally even that pitying look that had you retreating back towards the familiar.