This was a writing club assignment titled The Bird Cage, in which we each wrote about an oppression that brings us down in life. Mine is illness. I had just been informed I couldn't be diagnosed with arthritis or amplified musculo-skeletal pain (fibro-mialgia) because there was not enough evidence. After all my medical struggle of trying to make people understand and believe me, the battle must still continue. But after an emotional club meeting, I think we all realized that our problems are mere posts of the cage, and though one may be staring us in the face, if we looked around we'd see the rest of the world with their own posts, connected to us. "In the same way (as a fish) the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one." –Karl A. Menninger. As an aspiring psychologist, I believe God made me this way so that I can understand my fellow hooked fish. "It's a hard life, but it's all mine."