Our Self-Created Prisons
On October 28, season 5 of A&E's Paranormal State premiered. I watched it along with many dozens of my twitter friends and thousands of other fans across the United States and other countries. Paranormal State introduces the possibility of many other concepts of living beings other than just strictly here-and-now physical human and animal life. These are certainly not concepts I was raised to believe growing up in my strictly Christian family. According to my parents a la the church they attended, there were only physical humans and animals, God, angels and demons.
It is not my intent to suggest that you believe what Paranormal State projects as possibilities. Whether these other living beings exist or not is not the point of this post. Instead I want to point to another issue I noticed. It reminded me of things in my past, and no, they were not paranormal things I am referencing.
The episode that reminded me of days-gone-by was the episode named "Death Room." There was a woman who was heinously imprisoned in her bedroom by her niece. The niece wanted her elderly aunt's house signed over to her. The elderly aunt was left untended, unwashed, malnourished, not allowed visitors even from other relatives, and not allowed even the sight of the outside world. She was kept within one single room of her own home. The windows were completely covered with newspaper by the niece so the aunt could not see out her bedroom windows. All this was to coerce the elderly aunt into signing over the house deed.
Don't get me wrong. I am not implying she imprisoned herself in this way. I am not implying that I ever lived this way. Stay tuned for my point. I'm getting there. Bear with me.
One has to wonder why she didn't tear the newspaper off the windows when her niece was not in the room. One has to wonder why she didn't try to bathe herself. One has to wonder why she didn't use a nearby object to break the bedroom windows and scream for help. Chalk it up to the mentality of someone who's been abused. There's a name for the syndrome. Right now I can't think of it. I'm sure it'll come to me at the most inconvenient time, when I don't have pen and paper available to write it down. But that's life.
Instead, it brought to mind all the times in my past when I was forced to listen to abusive things other people wanted to say to me, taught to conform to hair styles and clothing styles. I was taught that skirts short enough to see my knees were an invitation to getting sexually assaulted. I was taught that wearing lipstick or any other makeup was an attempt to look like a hooker, no matter how little was applied. I was taught that wearing my hair short (I am female) was telling the world I was a lesbian. I was taught to hate all forms of non-straight sexual expression, be it physical, dress, hair-style, etc. I was taught that God only loves conformists.
As a matter of fact I was taught that God only loved members of our church. I was taught that God only forgives sinners if they were in our church. I remember one person (who shall remain nameless) telling me that God forgives those in our church because he knows our hearts. At the same time this same person said God does not forgive outsiders according to their hearts because God only cares about what you actually perform physically in deeds.
Of course, there were many other beliefs associated, some far more damaging. These other beliefs damaged my self-worth, my self-image, my relationships.
That set of beliefs became my prison. I have remained in that prison for too many years. Why did I not leave as soon as I turned 18? Why did I not scream out for help to whomever would listen? I can only claim lack of self-esteem, that I believed no one would believe me, and to an extent, did not realize there was a way out. To an extent, I did not even see I was in a prison.
Looking back, I can see where at times, I was reaching out for help. There were times when people tried to ask why I insisted on doing all the same self-destructive things, and sticking with the same old sorry lame excuses for religious beliefs. I was raised to believe in conformity, that it was the only way to create a "happy" society. I was not open to listening.
A belief system is like a net under a trapeze artist. The net is there to give the trapeze artist a sense of security, knowing that if something goes wrong, if he misses his mark and falls, or if his partner misses catching him, he won't hit the ground. It not only gives him this sense of security, it is supposed to work. It's supposed to save his life. If that net gets damaged, or is defective in a material way, the trapeze artist can be seriously injured or killed. A belief system can be just as defective or damaged. And the aftermath of being failed by a seriously faulty belief system can be just as deadly.
When I was 18, some very traumatic things happened to me. I don't want to go into the details of those events. They tore me to pieces, emotionally. It took over 18 more years to get enough of myself back together enough to even start feeling like those events happened a long time ago. There are still parts of myself that feel permanently and totally destroyed.
My beliefs were so rigid, and so wretched, that when these events happened, I had no way to comprehend how to heal or how to survive. In some ways, I did not survive. This was made exceedingly worse by the responses of those I trusted and admired most, others who had always believed the same as me. Their response was to blame me, tell me I had asked for it. One "friend" had the nerve to tell me God wanted this crime to be perpetrated against me, God wanted me to suffer. Other well-meaning friends said I was being tested by God. Some claimed I was being punished by God.
My child was born with a foot deformity. In some other post I may tell about that. Now I am speaking about my "friends" reactions. I was told God caused her foot to be deformed, to punish me. When I asked the minister to anoint my child to ask for divine healing, they did it, but their prayers included comments about how I should be forgiven for whatever it was I did to bring this misfortune upon my child.
But it was those events, and the heartbreak associated with them, that forced me to take a very long hard look at the things I had always believed. I began to see the harshness and the intractability of those beliefs. It's been a long journey. That journey is not over. I have a long way to go. Like the poem "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" says, "I have miles to go before I sleep."
I had some really good friends back then, a few anyways. I don't see how, looking back. When I think of some of the things I said to them, I cringe. But I certainly didn't have many. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why. My beliefs got in the way of my friendships. It inspired me to say really cruel things and not see how cruel I was being. That being said, I've had to make many changes, and change never comes easy.
I have many friends now. Many of these friends I have I have found via the internet. They have and continue to help me sort through some of the things I need to re-evaluate in my mind.
I don't always know whether to believe what they say, but it gives me many things to think about. It gives me the power to reach up and tear the damn newspaper off my prison windows! The view is incredible!
To all my twitter friends who have listened with their hearts and put up with some of the truly crazy things I've said, you are my rock! You rock! Epically!
November 5, 2010
3:00 a.m. CST
Updated November 5, 2010 @ 12:44 p.m. CST
