IN THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

The room was stifling. The sickly yellow wallpaper was peeling in places, and the pattern seemed to writhe and twist as if alive. I could feel the walls closing in on me, suffocating me with their sickly sweet scent.

My husband had rented the house for the summer, hoping the change of scenery would help my nerves. But I felt trapped, confined to this room with its strange wallpaper and cloying smell. My husband assured me it was just my imagination, and I was overreacting. But I knew something was wrong.

As the days passed, I grew increasingly fixated on the wallpaper. I saw a woman trapped behind the pattern, struggling to break free. She seemed to reach out to me, pleading for my help. I felt a kinship with her as if we were both prisoners of this room.

I begged my husband to let me leave, to take me away from this place. But he refused, insisting that I stay in the room and rest. He would come in and check on me periodically, but he never stayed long, always rushing off to attend to his own business.

As the days turned into weeks, I became increasingly obsessed with the wallpaper. I spent hours staring at it, trying to decipher its secrets. I could feel the woman behind the pattern growing more assertive, her grip on me tightening.

One day, I tore off a piece of the wallpaper to see if a woman was behind it. I worked at the paper, tearing it away in strips until a small hole appeared. Through the spot, I could see the woman, her face twisted in agony, trapped behind the pattern.

She grabbed me with a desperate need to free her. I ripped at the wallpaper to reveal the woman with my bare hands. I could see the pleading in her eyes as she was pale and thin.

But as I looked closer, I realized that the woman was not a separate entity. She was beside me, my reflection staring back at me from the twisted pattern of the wallpaper.

I was struggling to break free from the expectations of womanhood that society had imposed on me. Trapped within this pattern, I sought an escape from myself and my situation. I lived in a world of men with no power or agency.

But now, as I stood before the stripped-down wallpaper, I realized I could no longer return to that life. I had to break free, assert my identity, and find my way.

With renewed purpose, I set about tearing down the rest of the wallpaper, destroying the room that had held me a prisoner for so long. As I worked, I could feel the weight lifting off of me, the oppression of the wallpaper, and the societal expectations that had kept me confined for so long.

When my husband returned to the room, I horrified him at what I had done. But I stood before him, no longer the helpless woman he had confined to this room but a force to be reckoned with.

I left the room that day and never looked back. The yellow wallpaper symbolized my oppression, which I had torn down, revealing the true woman beneath. I had broken free and would let no one hold me back again.