Imagine when you were a child and that your parents became aware of something, let’s say ‘out of balance’ with you, and you appeared to be suffering on the inside. While you know them to be loving and caring parents, they tell you that you are to be locked in your room until you can learn to understand and deal with your problem.

Although their reaction feels a little drastic as you can’t relate to their concerns, you are an obedient child and reluctantly go to your room; believe this to be a temporary situation and things will quickly return to some kind of normal. However, you are unable to give answers that change their mind, and you are kept in your room longer than hoped. This carries on for a week. By this time you have become worried and concerned as you are unable to find anything that you have done that felt wrong, and as such fail to find an answer time after time.

The situation continues not just for a day or a week, but now for over a month. You are fed and your life carries on as much as possible within the confines of your room. Your mind turns to thoughts of escape, only, the drop from your window is high, no way of climbing down safely, would you risk jumping and hurt yourself. If you did get hurt in a fall, you may not get away and be ashamed too and also feel that you failed.

So, let’s drive this further! Now image you have managed to make a life, that you can find a way to deal with, and now the age of 25. Some 10 years later in your life, and where are you? You are still unaware of why you are still locked in your room, other than it’s a result of not answering a question. How frustrating, if only you could find the answer!

Your parents know that life in that room may not be great, so they allow you to marry and have a child. Ok, so it’s a bigger room than I implied, but you’re still locked in. You are aware of the world around you and find ways to interact; you have been educated and have made a few friends while being restricted to your room. Really, the only thing that makes your life different is being locked in your room.

I now take you on a leap to a much later stage in life at 53; your parents have passed away and you are now free. You were never able to answer their question and out in a new world, but are you free? Your marriages never survived, because the same question arose that you have never managed to answer! Have you given up trying to answer, or is it something you know and cannot face up to? Is it fear of consequences, for some unknown reason you find yourself feeling guilty?  But you don’t feel as if you have ever done anything seriously wrong! Maybe best avoided and just accept that you don’t have an answer, life goes on in the room

Your pattern of life as an adult has been with a partner and producing a child with each. Both failed, and now your off to seek another partner, as that is what you believe you should do? Repeating the same habit and pattern, unconsciously!  It almost as if you have been put under a curse or a spell, and wonder what you may have done to bring such misfortune into your life.

Oh big surprise, the next relationship fails too!

This is so ridiculous!

I am really hoping by this point, you are thinking that this is just plain stupid, ridiculous, unrealistic or whatever you feel, but that it just doesn’t add up! If you do right now, that is what I wanted you to feel in a very deliberate way, while at the same time seeing a possibility or comparison to reality in some way.

The essence of the story is based upon my own life journey. Not being aware of my inner-self, what or who I was. Only, I had locked myself away in that room for the larger part of my life. Unable to see or accept myself no matter which situation I put myself into or at what age!

Something must have happened in my life that made me believe how I felt, even though I didn’t understand any of it, that made me so secretive and hide my true self, to myself and others. Looking back over my history, it doesn’t make much more sense than the fiction that I started with here. It feels so obscured and incredible, that I could actually have done that to myself. While I accept that I wasn’t able to break free from that lack of understanding, I am aware that many influences were at play from my birth. Until the age of seven, I doubt that I would recall having understood anything that posed such a powerful and damaging threat or impact on my self-perception, and unwitting knowledge of what was acceptable to society. Is it possible that I did create the concept myself, or was it suggested or programmed into me? Will I ever know for sure? The only thing I can tell you with certainty is that it happened and I finally broke the lock on that door to set myself free.

If you have any doubts about yourself, please devote as much time on yourself, as you may already do with others, and perhaps more than you devote to yourself. The better we can become in being our true selves, the better a person we can be in the world and make those around us happy too.