... the egg ...

Our new assignment, we were given an egg. Just a simple white chicken egg, likely from the grocery store. What it meant and what we were supposed to do with it was up to us find out and decide. It was a completely open assignment... centered around one egg.

I thought. And I thought. And I thought some more.

Should I microwave it? Make a huge mess and have fun cleaning it up? Nah. It didn't feel right.

Should I freeze it? That's what I was going to do. Freeze the egg and bring it to class, frozen and peeled. I was going to write a neat little narrative, too, from the egg's point of view. Something about being trapped in a strange cold place that only gets colder. Nah.

Instead, I put the egg in a jar full of vinegar.

The fun thing about this experiment? The shell of the egg is slowly removed by the acidity of the vinegar, but the membrane remains intact.

It reminds me of me, actually, and how stress, anxiety, and anger work against me.

Little things that shouldn't matter slowly tear away at me, and I let it just build up, bottling everything in. I try to keep from breaking down, or exploding, but it's difficult.

The vinegar, that looks on the surface like harmless water, eats away at the shell of the egg, until only the membrane is left to protect what's inside. But what's inside has become bloated, filling up with gasses and just ready to explode. 

Eventually, something... something small, will set me off and all that frustration or irritation will be released in a mini-nuke of emotion.

Just like it doesn't take much to burst the membrane of the egg.