The Animal Under My Ribs

A truth with a heartbeat. A creature you haven’t looked in the eyes for years.

And yes. Sometimes it’s your heart.

Sometimes it’s the little girl still hiding.

And sometimes it’s something much older than both.

There is a place under your ribs that you do not touch.
Not physically.
Not mentally.
Not even in dreams.

You may rest your palms on your chest when you breathe.
You may stretch your arms in yoga.
You may open your ribs when someone tells you to “take a deep breath.”

But the place under your ribs - that soft cave where instinct meets memory -
that is a story you haven’t finished reading.

Because something lives there.
Something you trained.
Something you silenced.
Something you sent to its room decades ago and never let out again.

And it’s been scratching at the inside of your bones ever since.

MAYBE ITS YOUR HEART.

The version that beats differently when you stop pretending.
The one that has opinions you don’t voice.
Desires you don’t allow.
Boundaries you don’t set.
And grief you’re too adult to admit.

A heart can only be polite for so long.
It can only whisper “it’s okay” so many times before the whisper becomes a bruise.

Sometimes the animal under your ribs is the part of your heart
that refuses to keep participating in your self-abandonment.

MAYBE IT’S THE LITTLE GIRL YOU LEFT BEHIND.

Not the inner child from therapy worksheets.
Not the “go hug her” cliché.

I mean the actual girl.
The one who hid under the table when people yelled.
The one who held her breath when adults argued.
The one who learned that smallness is safer than truth.

She’s still there.
Not frozen. Just tired.
She’s been holding your fear for decades, quietly,
like a secret animal that curls into itself when the world gets loud.

Sometimes the animal under your ribs is the child
who never got the chance to grow up into her full size.

BUT SOMETIMES, ITS NOT HUMAN AT ALL.

Sometimes what lives under your ribs
is older than your childhood
and wilder than your personality.

A instinct.
A pulse.
A creature.
A knowing.

Something that existed in your body before your story did.

A kind of prehistoric clarity.
A primal intelligence.
A soft, warm, animal truth that once guided your whole life
before you traded instinct for manners
and accuracy for acceptance.

This isn’t the “wild woman” archetype.
This is not fantasy.
This is biology, somatics, evolution, an acient memory.

WHAT DOES THE ANIMAL WANT?

Not to roar.
Not to break things.
Not to run barefoot into the forest
and start howling at the moon.

Your animal is quieter than that.
More honest. (did you ever notice, how hones animals are….?)
More subtle.
More sacred.

It wants:

• a breath that actually reaches the back of your ribs
• a truth that is not edited for likability
• a boundary that does not tremble
• a pace that does not betray your nervous system
• a life that fits your real shape

Your ribs are not there to protect your niceness.
They are there to protect your truth.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THE ANIMAL UNDER YOUR RIBS IS WAKING UP?

You start sighing without meaning to.
You start wanting to be alone more.
You get impatient with conversations that aren’t real.
You lose the capacity to tolerate half-truths.
You feel a movement rising from inside that is not your personality.

You stop apologising.
You start pausing.
You breathe deeper.
You choose differently.
Something in you says:

No more shrinking.
No more performing.
No more negotiating with my own aliveness.

It’s not rebellion.
t’s accuracy.

WHAT IF THE ANILAM UNDER YOUR RIBS COULD SPEAK?

It wouldn’t tell you to be fearless.
It wouldn’t tell you to be fierce.
It wouldn’t tell you to be powerful.

It would say something much simpler:

Let me out.
Let me breathe.
Let me move the way your soul was meant to move.

It would say:

I remember who you were before you learned to behave.

And maybe that’s what this whole life is about?
Not becoming someone new,
but becoming someone ancient
that you abandoned along the way.

THE ANIMAL UNDER YOUR RIBS IS NOT ASKING YOU TO BE WILD.

It’s asking you to be true.

To live in a body that no longer apologizes for existing.
To breathe in a way that doesn’t betray your nervous system.
To move like someone who has nothing left to prove.

To stop bending your skeleton around the expectations of others.

To remember
that you were never meant to be polite
with your own life.