[ WP ] You spend years as a war prisioner in a small cell . Suddenly you realize you are , in fact , a dog .

They treated me like an animal. I would be locked in a cage every time my captors left. No food or water or time to go to the bathroom during the entire time they were gone. 
 
 To be honest, I didn ’ t know any better. Memories flitted at the edge of my mind of brothers and sisters and a mother, maybe, but now all I knew was this life. 
 
 Wake up. Go out and do my bodily functions outside like an animal. Eat out of a bowl like an animal. Have a collar put on me like an animal. Be left in a cage like an animal. Go out and do my bodily functions again like an animal. Eat out of a bowl like an animal. Sleep on the ground like an animal. Repeat. This was my life. 
 
 I tried to gain the trust of my captors. Sometimes I understood them Sometimes I didn ’ t. Their language sounded so foreign. I tried to communicate with them, but they never understood. 
 
 I ’ d stand at the window when I was free from my cage. If I alerted them to threats maybe they wouldn ’ t see me as one. This only made them mad, and they would yell. I stopped doing it. 
 
 I picked up some words, but it was only for things that would humiliate me. Sit. Stay. Roll over. Fetch. 
 
 Over time my sense of self slipped away. Years of being treated like an animal wear on you. One can only be hit with a newspaper on the nose or be scared by a rattling can full of rocks or locked in a cage all day before one begins to see themselves as animal. 
 
 Perhaps I am an animal. Perhaps I am what they call me. Perhaps I am a dog. 
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