Identity is a protective trap we all fall into.

The shelter we build becomes the cell we cannot leave. Every label we accept — the name, the role, the diagnosis, the inheritance — begins as armor and hardens into a cage. We mistake the costume for the body wearing it, and then forget there was ever a body at all. The trap is set with the softest bait: belonging, coherence, a tidy story to tell at parties. The strange grace is that the snare and the snared are made of the same thread. What might loosen if we set the basket of labels down for a single afternoon?