Born in a Cage

World on Fire

The projectile shot out across the room and struck my face just above the brow of my right eye. I felt the blood pouring down the side of my face and ran to the restroom to clean the wound and hide my embarrassment. My brother was outraged when he received a reprimand for breaking my skin and even more so when the assault didn't immediately turn into affection. Consequently, I was forced to express love and forgiveness despite my own pain.

The words poured from my sister’s mouth like poisoned water. Promises and vows that were broken before they were spoken flooded every room she entered, yet it was everyone else who was at risk of drowning. Credit cards and pain meds disappeared with little question as to who was to blame. She lamented that no one trusted her despite the constant betrayal and deceit. She promised we would have lunch, get coffee, play games, etc. I was stood up a dozen times before I realized that I would never truly have a sister. Yet no matter how much I was cheated and lied to, everything I was taught made me believe that if I didn’t want to spend time with her or look past the lies then I was the bad brother.

My father would often come home in a “mood.” I remember when he returned from a hunting trip empty-handed. $30 in gas, $20 for ammo, and a day off work later he was outraged, but not at his loss. She had spent $16 dollars to rent movies and video games to entertain our family for a week and this defiance would not go unpunished. He stomped and screamed around the house in his camos as we soaked up the shame for wanting to play Super Smash Bros.

The air filled with screaming as my mom slid down the wall, the weight of her mental illness too much to stay standing. "Why doesn't anyone love me?!" she cried with little regard for those caught in the sudden blast of emotions. I don't know about my brother, but I still haven't recovered from that day.

Guilt and shame enslaved me to a life of anxiety and depression; chained to a family lost in chaos, struggling to survive. We didn't have to live that way, but distorted crosses and commandments veiled our sight from the path back into the light. To err was human; to suffer divine...

I lived in a prison disguised as a home. I felt deep down that something was wrong but everything around me screamed that the problem was me. My teenage years came and went before I came into the realization that I was a victim of my circumstances, that I was enslaved to a broken familial system and a destructive cultural paradigm. I was imprisoned by the overwhelming, unstable emotions of a dysfunctional family. And as a result, I was chained up in anxiety and depression that felt like I could never escape from.

Journeys

My first taste of freedom came to me in a small farming village about two hours outside Venice. I was participating in a study abroad program offered by my college and was spending a semester in a small community surrounded by vineyards and no more than 700 Italian locals. I didn't know any of the 13 Americans with me and that terrified me. Our days were filled with bread, exploring, and community building. There was no yelling, no screaming, no threats...it was anxiety-inducing.

Growing up surrounded by chaos will often make the peaceful places of the world feel unsettling. I had traveled to a foreign country and I had begun to experience other humans in their alien biome. But even those I lived with and who shared a similar culture and spiritual background with me had very different experiences than I did. As we got to know each other, we would share our life stories. As I shared who I was, they caught a glimpse into my life, calmly took my hand, and said, "that's not normal and that's not ok."

It was here, as a 19-year-old that I began to learn what it means to have a safe community and to learn what it meant to have individuality and autonomy. I had always been an artist and philosopher, but I found those parts of me bound up in unrealistic standards, expectations, and crippling propaganda common in the Southern U.S.

My cage was shaken and though it was terrifying to me, it was exactly what I needed.

A year later I was challenged even further as I accepted an internship through my school where I worked with Iraqi refugees in Amman, Jordan. This was even further outside my comfort zone than Italy had been. I didn't have the luxury of being surrounded by a culture that affirmed the religion of my youth. And I'm forever grateful that it didn't.

I experienced love and mercy in a way that I never had before. I remember sitting in a van with a young man who shared, with tears running down his face, the loss of his uncle who flew for the Iraqi air force during the time of Desert Storm. Or when I had coffee with a Palestinian who struggled to share memories of being driven from his home as a child and watching his life burn around him. War is so feverishly romantic for those that don't ever see the consequences.

It is the privilege of being free to sit around debating the plight of the refugee and the enslaved.

Of Metal and Mentality

Cages come in many forms. For some, they are physical bars of metal. For many, their cages are the manipulative behaviors of authority figures. I am all too familiar with the tyranny of dark dogma and false doctrine is often used as a tool for the unhinged to maintain control over others.

There are a million stories of people who endured great pain for the sake of maintaining peace or believing that they had to appease some deity. "God loves families and He wants us to always put family first” was a common rhetoric in my home. The “biblical” standards that were set were beyond realistic, yet I was conditioned to think these were divine and as ancient as creation itself.

I was told to never speak of my pain outside the family and constantly told that family is everything and that "if you can't rely on family you can't rely on anyone." As a result of constantly being fed this lie, I grew to not trust humans at all. But that’s what happens when the main source of emotional abuse is found within the four walls of your own home. All the while we were extremely active in local churches, yet our spiritual community (which taught love, mercy, and peace) saw our troubles and did nothing to intervene.

These are confusing parallels for a child to grow up in; a dissonance of words and actions that entraps the mind and makes it difficult to grow. I grew up in a world that said, "love thy neighbor", but with clenched fists ready to strike. The residue of that violence still resides in various spots of my memory and I can't seem to escape it.

The chaos our parents fed us as kids manifested in us differently, but it still manifested. In truth, I am unsure of how my siblings are coping with it. Our paths took us all in very different directions. I know one thing for sure: leaving was the best thing I ever could have done and I wish I had had the insight and courage to leave sooner.

Recovery

I sometimes find myself back in those old cages, fighting to find my way out. Those familiar bars start to form when I am subjected to the old rhetoric that used to control me. I’ve had many try to tell me to get over it; that others have it far worse than I do. I must stress the reality that trauma is trauma and the reality that someone has it worse doesn’t negate your own pain. Everyone deserves a chance at a life of peace and to recover from whatever form of aggression they are forced to endure, whether physical or otherwise. We all deserve a chance at living free from the chains of abuse and mental illness.

My best advice for anyone suffering is to get as far away from it as soon as possible and to build a community of people that will love you and not take advantage of your suffering. Certainly, this is easier for some more than others. But if you get the chance to taste freedom, I hope you will drink deeply and never go thirsty again.