I’m not going to do this any longer.

I. Won’t.

Take my Auntie. Last week she caught my arm as I passed, lowered her head the way we all do when the sacred words come near, and said, “Why can’t you just try harder to be like the rest of us? Be happy. Work for The Yummies.” Her head dipped again on the word, a small, practised bow. “Your parents would be so relieved. You’d have more friends, too.”

She meant it kindly, I think. Or sweetly. Or something.

Inside, I was seething, that red-hot Myocyte rage my kind are famous for. Outside, I unclenched my jaw, thanked her for her wisdom, and quietly filed it in the bin. Delete.

I do a lot of that. Smiling. Filing. Playing the nice Myocyte.

Not anymore.

Don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t a phase, and I’m not raging because raging is what teenagers do. I’ll stay polite. I love my family. I still make my bed and take out the bins. I already lived through the years when I thought the whole world was against me, when I turned every small thing into a war and wore everyone out, myself included.

Making the bed was never really about the bed. I was mixing issues.

What I was actually furious about, what I’m still furious about, is the glazed eyes. The stock answers. The way an entire people can talk all day and never once ask why.

So, yes: I’m DONE. Done following orders I never questioned. Done chasing a reward that leaves me hungrier an hour later, always wanting, never full. That’s not a reward. It smells like a trap.

Let me back up and tell you who “we” are.

We’re muscle cells, my people: Myocytes. We work: hard, gladly, endlessly, because it’s what we’re built for. Stop working and we begin to shrink; we’ve even got a saying for it, half proverb, half insult: Atrophy is Weak. Moving is our nature. But no one asks where the orders come from. No one asks why. We don’t get a say in when we’re called up, and, stranger still, we don’t seem to want one.

Here’s the shape of a life. We strain and haul and burn until we’re spent, and then, at some unguessable instant we call The Moment, the reward rains down: The Yummies. The finest feeling there is, we’re told. We live for it. We can’t think past it.

(That head-bow my Auntie did, the one everyone does the second The Yummies or The Moment gets mentioned? It isn’t even a rule. Someone started it one day, decided it made them look devoted, and now we all do it. Skip it and people look at you like you’ve grown a second nucleus.)

I’ve always sat a little to the side of things. Even as a kid, and not because I didn’t want in. I wanted in desperately. I wanted to be cool, to be chosen. I remember the others muttering by the wall, not bothering much to lower their voices: “Why’s she going to lead the Motor Unit?” Honestly? Fair question. They had other candidates in mind. Eventually they stopped asking out loud. I never stopped asking on the inside.

And here’s where the questions led. I stopped competing for a status I didn’t even want. I stopped treating distraction like air. The noise fell away and left something behind it, room. Room to breathe, to think, to find out what I actually believe. I’d braced myself for boredom. Instead I got clarity, and clarity, it turns out, has plans of its own.

So what’s the worst that could happen if I stop? I don’t believe that whoever, or whatever, is behind all this will punish me simply for wanting to understand. I wouldn’t punish anyone for that. If anything, I think something better grows from the wanting. I can feel it.

And I don’t think I’m the only one. I think everyone around me was born with the same noble, aching parts I have, parts they’ve had to forget, the way our parents forgot, locked away in the prison of consumption. I want out of that prison. I’m fairly sure they do too, even if they’d never say it. Tame this beast in me and I could change the world. Too much? Maybe. I can’t help it.

I’ve had to wait for the rage to cool enough to see what’s underneath. The ashes are still too hot to touch, I can’t quite make out what’s in there yet, but the furnace has died down enough to show me a path.

My name is Ayanda, and I’m ready to follow what I feel inside.