You knock on the shell.

You know it’s there, you can feel it restricting you, but you don’t know what it is.

It frustrates you.

You know you have to be free of it, you know that you have to grow and that you’re being held back. Not the feeling of frustration from bouncing around in it as you move, but that restrictive pressure even as you try to breathe – a key difference lost on the young. You can’t see, everything is hazy, and your hearing, feeling… diminish.

It’s crushing despair. It’s unbearable.

You have to breathe. Have to. There is no question. You draw in that breath and push outward, feeling the restrictions fall away. Feeling space to… breathe. To move around freely. To bounce against the new outer wall in time.

Time served.