The Discomfort of Freedom
“One of the reasons people cling to their hate and prejudice so stubbornly is that they sense once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with their own pain.” - James Baldwin
“Freedom does not mean fighting against or suppressing troubled emotions. That would be another form of tyranny. To be free, you first need to be conscious of them, and then you can learn to work with them wisely.” - Jack Kornfield
All my life I had someone telling me what to do. For the last six years, a lot of them were men. Particularly one man: my father.
His power, his judgment, his harsh ways of dealing with himself and others, still looms over me like a dark presence. A ghost that demands to be fed. Doubt, fear, perfectionism, anxiety. It’s happiest when I’m frozen in procrastination.
For years the drugs and alcohol worked. It fed something else that made the ghost go away. I felt invulnerable. Powerful. Insusceptible as long as I was drunk or high. Then morning would come, and I’d be too weak to care. This subsisted week after week. A pattern my brain had grown used to.
It’s been just over a year since I had my last drink. And four months since I quit my job with my father. A month since I last saw him or spoke to him. Our last words to each other were not bitter. Simply from different plains of being, seeing. I spoke the truth of the burden he’d asked me to carry for the last six years, the secrets he’d asked me to keep, that I could no longer hold in my body any longer. And he, in shame, could not hear the pain I’d asked him to witness. His words of desperate defense rang hollow, without weight or conviction, and I answered them with silence. But this time, it wasn’t silence out of fear, but acceptance, and peace. I left, and in leaving the past was finally behind me. The ghost I’d been so scared to face all along was just a child, asking to be held. A child scared to death of the wrath of her father, the violence she’d thought was just another part of life she couldn’t understand yet had to accept as a consequence of her actions.
As an adult, I get to choose. Freedom is uncomfortable. Without anyone telling me what to do, I’m solely responsible. There’s no one to blame except myself if I make the wrong decision. If I fail. But what I’m quickly coming to learn is there isn’t really a “wrong” path. That’s still just the judgment I’m scared of for not getting something right the first time. The disapproval, the anticipation of the blow that’s coming. But the dark presence isn’t here anymore. Whatever is left in my mind is just fear of letting go, because no matter how bad, it still wants to cling to what it knows. If for years the abuser is also the protector, it will keep running back to the abuser for protection. The preference for a cage I’ve known all my life, every square inch of it a sure thing, than whatever else is out there. It’s easier to stay the same. Easier to forget our power, like the elephant that has resigned to her fate, thinking the chain that held her down as an infant still has the strength to hold her back now that she’s grown. Sometimes the scariest thing is acknowledging just how much power we do have, and what actions we can actually take. Because then, we’d have no reason not to do it. The door’s been open a long time.
But while there’s discomfort in freedom, there’s also freedom in discomfort. Once I’d quit my job that was it. I had to figure out what the hell I was going to do. And even though it was uncomfortable, I also wasn’t alone. Support is all around me, has always been. I was just led to believe it wasn’t, because isolation keeps us under control. It’s the beliefs that kept me chained. And there’s so many. Buried. I can’t break what I can’t see. So every time I’m having another stint of procrastination it’s another one I have to unearth. It gets easier. Especially with the help of these people who have chosen to help me. Who try so hard to convince me not to believe the things we’re taught to keep us small. It’s hard to be convinced some days. But every once in awhile, in the middle of the night, my body will wake me, tell me to sit up, and really acknowledge all the love that has got me here. To sit, in the heavy blanket of the night, and allow their kind words to really be felt and absorbed by this rejecting mind that tries to protect me, that thinks good words will weaken me, as I was taught. To know it’s safe to accept, to move on. To let be, if I can’t let go right now. To sit in discomfort and know that it’s temporary, like everything else. And in that sense, even it can be cherished. Freedom will feel less and less scary, the width and vastness a possibility rather than a threat.
As Mary Oliver so succinctly put it, “Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?/Tell me, what is it you plan to do/With your one wild and precious life? I’ve wasted so many years desperately convincing myself I was happy. That the intermittent affirmation was enough. And that’s the most dangerous, isn’t it? When the approval we seek is never truly given, but dangled just far enough that we feel we can reach it, tomorrow, by trying something else. But the finish line always moves. That is the art of manipulation. It’s addictive, this way of seeking for love. Especially from a parental figure. “Do you love me know? Am I good enough now?” Questions we don’t think we need answered, and yet when they’ve never been a certainty in childhood, become the ever present underlying chord of dissonance in the soundtrack of our adult lives.
Where to go from here? Perhaps the advice of needing to parent ourselves, nurture ourselves, is fitting. We’ve all probably heard by now, “be your own best friend,” and “be the adult your young self needed.” Shedding the layer of “victim” and emerging as the survivor. Realizing is a function of the mind - once we believe something, we can make it into our reality. And when we realize the mind holds so much power, it just makes sense to befriend it rather than fight it. It’s easy to mistake it as the enemy, but the suffering it causes, after all, is for our benefit. The incessant knocking at the door until we choose to answer; an alarm that won’t turn off in a dream until we wake up and do the damn thing for real.
And that initial regret of waking up slips by quickly. As we look around, another day is here, for us. The possibilities start to flood the mind. And we get to choose which ones we believe, which ones we can make real. The bed is so comfortable, safe, and warm. But the discomfort of leaving is short-lived. Once you’re up, you’re up. So what will you do with this one wild and precious life?
