Free Yourself

Early in life, we build cages to protect ourselves. From the inside they look the way Wonder Woman’s jet does from the outside: invisible. Sometimes other people see what we’ve built and furnished and comfortably live inside, but in order for us to detect these domiciles, we need fortitude, tenacity, determination, and a willingness to ask the questions we were never allowed to ask. After that, the work of leaving the cage begins. This can be the hardest part, even though there is no lock and the door is wide open. Taking that first step toward it, though, is hard. A cadre of jailers outside the cage is what makes it so hard. Yes, we constructed this thing to protect ourselves, but there’s almost no end to the guards who stand sentry, rotating shifts, threatening us with dirty looks, hurtful words, threats. Like all bullies, though, they’re cowards. They tell us baaaadddd things will happen if we don’t stay in the cage: we’ll have no friends, no family, no community. We’ll lose our reputations or our jobs. But these are just threats, and are those people outside the cage really so great anyway?

I just walked away from an entire clan of jailers—sauntered right out of the cage—and the funny—no, great—thing is that I’ve strengthened other, better relationships, and have already found about half a dozen people, in everyday interactions, who want to hear my story and share theirs. One of yesterday’s highlights (and it was a great day) included a nearly hour-long phone call with the person at the dentist’s office who was charged with setting up a new patient account for my son. I’m lucky we remembered to make the appointment; she’s lucky she got a credit card number because neither task was as interesting as the other subjects we were discussing.

The night before last, in running errands, the kids and I stopped at our local natural foods store, where I picked up homeopathic remedies and herbal tinctures and left a couple of books with Tammy and Hillary, who had another 30 minutes or so before closing up for the night. Hillary wrote a note for each for the intended recipients (who would be working the next day): The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was for Hannah, who I had one day been discussing literature with, and The Body Never Lies was for Mia or her daughter Lena, both of whom I’ve had long discussions with. As I slid The Body Never Lies across the counter, I told Tammy and Hillary that the book had literally changed my life.

I don’t think I been terribly straightforward about it, but it’s really very simple. Miller gave me permission to question the “truths” I had always assumed—had always been trained to believe—were unassailable. In her own words:

Experience has taught me that my own body is the source of all the vital information that has enabled me to achieve greater autonomy and self-confidence. Only when I allowed myself to feel the emotions pent up for so long inside me did I start extricating myself from my past. Genuine feelings are never the product of conscious effort. They are quite simply there, and they are there for a very good reason, even if that reason is not always apparent. I cannot force myself to love or honor my parents if my body rebels against such an endeavor for reasons that are well known to it. But if I attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment [“Honor thy father and mother”], then the upshot will be the kind of stress that is invariably involved when I demand the impossible of myself. This kind of stress has accompanied me almost all my life. Anxious to stay in line with the system of moral values I had accepted, I did my best to imagine good feelings I did not possess while ignoring the bad feelings I did have. My aim was to be loved as a daughter. But the effort was all in vain. In the end I had to realize that I cannot force love to come if it is not there in the first place. On the other hand, I learned that a feeling of love will establish itself automatically (for example, love for my children or love for my friends) once I stop demanding that I feel such love and stop obeying the moral injunctions imposed on me. But such a sensation can only happen when I feel free and remain open and receptive to all my feelings, including the negative ones.

The realization that I cannot manipulate my feelings, that I can delude neither myself nor others, brought me immense relief and liberation. Only then was I fully struck by the large number of people who (like myself) literally almost kill themselves in an attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment, without any consideration of the price this exacts both from their own bodies and from their children. As long as the children allow themselves to be used in this way, it is entirely possible to live to be one hundred without any awareness of one’s own personal truth and without any illness ensuing from this protracted form of self-deception.

Miller’s parents were long dead when she realized this. My father and mother have been dead for 21 and 18 years, respectively. That doesn’t mean that the force of the Commandment and the societal embrace of it just disappears once they’re gone. Not at all. It tightens it’s hold on you until you actively work to pry it loose. The fear of losing the love of your parents by doing something wrong or of “being a bad person” because you didn’t “obey the rules” just gets transformed into: fear of upsetting your husband, nervousness about saying the wrong thing to an acquaintance, a driving phobia, an addiction, social anxiety, panic attacks, fear of failure, a constant need for approval/respect/love, you name it. Instead of your parents standing there, threatening punishment if you don’t behave, you’ve substituted: teachers, bosses, doctors, “scientists,” newscasters, celebrities, friends, strangers on social media, a church, the law, the government, or even some Joe Schmo who had help in rigging the game and acquired a government appointment or became an “elected” official.

Are you feeling any anxiety from reading this? There’s a reason for that. Yes, it’s daunting, but breathing the free air after taking that first step outside the cage is an amazing experience. It’s worth the effort, and your life may depend on it.