All That I See

I spent most of my youth in a very rural town in northwest Tennessee. Half-way through third grade I was pulled from public school and began a tumultuous trial-by-error series of homeschool curriculums, and it wasn't until I started eighth grade that my family finally settled on a permanent choice. They didn't select it for the religious indoctrination of it (ever curriculum was Christian based), but rather it offered my parents support in ensuring that my brother and I received a modicum of belated support and corrective feedback that neither of us received from our parents.

"Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its entire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain the same spot, able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads."

While my mother had completed her high school diploma and was well read, she lacked any real mathematical skillset. Our stepfather, who would later adopt my brother and I, never completed high school, was drafted, and then spent 17-years in the Army before a heart attack pushed him towards a life of alcoholism. He had street smarts and brawns, but was permanently tethered to the trauma's of Vietnam and his childhood in the 1950's. My mother, being 20 years younger that my father, often struggled to set and enforce boundaries, and so often conceded on ground she should not have. This was not a well put together concoction for the academic success of two young children that also lacked a social life for nearly seven years.

My brother's plea's to be sent back to public school were finally approved by the time he was in his 10th grade. I graduated shortly before turning 16, having plowed through three grades in less than two years. During this time I mostly worked (under the table for a friend's mother), studied martial arts, and tended to the many chores we had growing up. A year later, I started college.

"See also, then, men carrying past the wall implements of all kinds that rise above the wall, and human images and shapes of animals as well, wrought in stone and wood and every material, some of these bearers presumably speaking and others silent."

In the vacuum of space, everything is constantly falling because of gravitational forces. The astronauts aboard the International Space Station are constantly falling due to gravity, but simultaneously missing. Without explaining the mathematics, this is due to the fact that the station is moving forward at the same rate that it is falling which allows it to orbit the earth.

2005 felt as though I was falling with a fractious degradation, and it wouldn't be until 2007 that everything sort of crash landed.

In late August of 2005, while in orientation at my university, my mother and brother brought a few boxes of my belongings, dropped them off in my dorm room, and left. My father was no longer speaking to me, as I had expressed interest in living in the dorms so that could get better acquainted with college life and make some friends. He perceived this as an afront to his affection, and disrespectful towards his efforts in raising me. It was my duty to the family to remain at home, or so I was told on a regular basis.

And so, I started college, all by myself. Guyliner, some Tripp pants, a few band t-shirts, and one ensemble thrown together after going to Goodwill that could (but probably shouldn't) be called a suit.

"A strange image you speak of, he said, and strange prisoners. Like to us, I said. For, to begin with, tell me do you think that these men would have seen anything of themselves or of one another except the shadows cast from the fire on the wall of the cave that fronted them?"

I failed that semester. In fact, the only A that I received was in classical guitar, and that is because it is the only class that I cared about. I will never know for sure, but the professor may have taken pity on me. Remember, I had not participated in any for of public education since I was eight years old, so when I approached him in his office to ask if a guitar was a required instrument for the class his response was a very sarcastic "well how the hell else are you going to play?" followed by what was likely noticeable confusion. He was very engaging, had a dry sense of humor, and loved what he did. He also wasn't a fan of small talk, and for that I am eternally grateful.

I also had to take two intermediate level algebra classes before I could begin to take collegiate level courses, and those classes were all based off of the same curriculum and software that I had done while in high school. Needless to say, I found it boring and useless. The instructor sat at their desk and often played on a Gameboy. I put no effort into the class, and because attendance was not mandatory, I skipped half of them. A mistake, of course.

But something else happened that semester that fundamentally shifted my trajectory in life: I made friends. Not teenagers that were paid by my father to get me out of the house that also happened to be the same kids that beat me up in third grade (this actually happened). No, these were my friends.

I was walking through the primary courtyard to the main university center in my black jeans and a well worn AFI t-shirt when a group of young adults hollered at me to come talk to them. This was a group of about two-dozen individuals, and every single one of them was an art, music, or theater major. They loved menthols and swearing. They were also incredibly inclusive, and ranged from being introverted anime nerds to boisterous "fuck the system" anarchists (of which one later became a successful accountant). Most importantly (obviously), they had good taste in music.

"How could they, he said, if they were compelled to hold their heads unmoved through life?"

I ended that semester with a 2.25 academically but a 4.0 in life as far as I was concerned. While I don't speak to anyone in that group, and haven't since 2010, those moments helped to unfetter my perception of the life that I was living.

From 2005 to the fall of 2007, I changed my major twelve times. I have no regrets. I probably would have changed it less had I had an academic advisor who took the time to get to know me, my areas of growth, and to help guide me, but the running logic is that I should have had that prior to going to college. During this time I also completed all of the pre-requisite courses that come with a well rounded undergraduate education. I really enjoyed astronomy, theater, and piano. Everything else bit.

You know what else bit? The relationship with my family. Over the course of those two years this deteriorated a great deal. I was simultaneously expected to live a co-dependent life by visiting every weekend and be treated as though I did not exist.

My father, in particular, would hold conversations but would never speak directly to me, would move his eyes so that my body did not directly cross his line of sight, and would have my mother or brother communicate commands to me on his behalf - even while sitting at the same table. I'd like to call this petty, but really, it was just abusive. On the rare occasion that my father would say something it would be a monologue regarding my failure as a person, for being too stupid to choose a profession that would make me rich, all laced with profanity.

"And if their prison had an echo from the wall opposite the, when one of the passers-by uttered a sound, do you think that they would suppose anything else than the passing shadow to be the speaker? By Zeus, I do not, said he."

During my entire collegiate life, my mother would say to me "you need to be the bigger person and just admit that you did something wrong, because he could die any day. You know how his health is." That was her advice. My dad would say "you know my heart could give out any day, you really need to be here to take care of your mother. That's what family does." That was his demand. At least once a week, I heard something to this effect.

My mother would sometimes text me and tell me whenever my dad was "popping nitro pills, I'll keep you posted." For example, one day, my family convinced me that my dad was in dire straights with his health, and told me that it would be best if I skipped class to go visit. That he hadn't gotten out of bed, and things were grim. They'd even talked to his primary care doctor (a lie). Turns out, he had a cold and some really bad gas. It would be easy to think that this was a prank, but it was not.

In the fall of 2007, I was feeling as though I was finally getting the hang of college life. I had made some new friends, ditched the goth clothes, and was taking classes that I enjoyed and found interesting. The introductory class to sociology was my favorite, less because of the material, and more to do with the professor who was a retired colonel who taught the class as if everyone in it were six. There was routine, expectations were clear, and I'd say that he was unforgiving if it wasn't for the fact that he was very forgiving when it came down to personal circumstances.

"Then in every way such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects.

Quite inevitably, he said."

Half-way through that semester, I had personal circumstances. Earlier that morning, my mother and father got into a verbal argument over how best to cook a game hen. My mother had the power of Google, and my dad had the experience of family tradition. After a brief moment of passive aggressive name calling and yelling, my father went out to the garage to work on a tracker (something he did frequently, mad or not). It was at this time that my mother proceeded to end her life.

I often wonder if I have a poor memory, or if I just don't care enough for most things to expend energy towards the creation of new neurological pathways. I'll never forget the phone call from my father informing me that my mother was in the hospital after a suicide attempt. I had only seen this man cry once in my entire life, and this was that time. But if you ask me to recite the lyrics of Metallica's Master of Puppets, a song that I've heard no less than 1,000 times, I could not tell you.

I remember seeing my mother attached to a ventilator while having her stomach pumped, and I remember watching my father sit depressed in a hospital waiting room rather than yelling at the nurse (which was his primary operating procedure, to yell). I remember talking to an alleged detective who said he needed to conduct an investigation regarding attempted murder because "suicide is illegal" (I wish this was a joke). I remember listening to the doctor explain that my mother would need to have a variety of scans done because her heart had stopped for at least seven minutes.

"Consider, then what would the manner of the release and healing from these bonds and this folly if in the course of nature something of this sort should happen to them. When one was reed from his fetters and compelled to stand up suddenly and turn his head around and walk and to lift up his eyes to the light, and in doing all this felt pain and, because of the dazzle and glitter of the light, was unable to discern the objects whose shadows he formerly saw, what do you suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion, but what now, being nearer to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truly?

What I remember most of all, though, was sitting in the intensive care unit with my mother after she had woken up. She was eating strawberry Jell-O, lethargic, and asking if I was okay. It was just the two of us. At the time, I really was okay. In some ways, I had been prepared for this moment my entire childhood up to that point, just it was for my mother, and not my father. At the time, the thought of losing either of them simply felt meaningless, because it had been treated as such for more than a decade.

As we sat in the ICU, my mother asked if I wanted to know why she did it. I politely said that I only wanted to hear about her truth once she was ready to talk about it. She then blurted it out. "I wanted to punish your father."

At first, I questioned my mother, "what do you mean you wanted to punish him? My understanding of this sort of thing is that there's always more to it." My mother proceeded to explain that she was tired of being ridiculed and feeling small whenever she'd get into a disagreement with my father, and said that they had been arguing every day for months.

Before finishing her explanation, she paged the doctor over, and politely asked him to stay for the next part. She then proceeded to explain that she did not regret her decision, or her attempt. She said that my father deserved to feel the weight of his consequences, that she understood it was vindictive and abusive, and said that her only regret was that she did not think to call me as she did my brother.

Immediately preceding her attempt, she called my brother to ask how his day was going, told him that she loved him, wished him a good rest of his day, and hung up. This was not an uncommon occurrence between them, so nothing out of the ordinary.

Sometime in 2031, the International Space Station is going to re-enter Earth's atmosphere at a little more than 17,000 miles per hour, at which point most of it will disintegrate in the atmosphere but some of it will crash into the ocean. I was no longer freefalling through a vacuum in geocentric orbit of my own life. I crashed on land.

I was seething with rage. This was a cluster bomb. Sure, the primary target gets hit, but there's collateral damage which is why they've been banned by the Geneva convention. I simply nodded, and said "it's okay, you were hurting, and your feelings got out of control. You're alive, and that's all that matters." I meant what I said, but I also felt disappointed, confused, hurt, and lost. But I bottled it up at the time. My mother's doctor praised me for my calmness and empathy, and walked off, and I gave my mother a hug and went back to my apartment.

"And so, finally, I suppose, he would be able to look upon the sun itself and see its true nature, not by reflections in water or phantasms of it in an alien setting, but in and by itself in its own place."

It was after this moment, that I made an important observation. It was around 1:30 AM on October 29th. I was sitting on a bench on campus near the music building. Whenever I couldn't sleep I would tend to go for a walk. Because of the proximity of my university campus to a large river, there would often be fog. I was asking myself some big questions. Not like "who am I as a person," but more "who do I want to be, and what's stopping me from becoming that person?"

Experiences have led me to see the value in asking the right questions rather than simply asking any questions. And these were questions that I needed to answer.

For a long time, whenever I would explain even the basics of my life story, I would blame my parents. They put boundaries. They set expectations. They demanded near perfection. I placed a lot of blame on my parents for the failures and pressures that I had, from not ensuring that I had a quality education to not allowing me to have basic childhood experiences, like eating pop rocks.

My version of rebellion up to that point was strict compliance while being silent about my anger. Sure, I'll do what you require of me, but I won't be happy about it! That'll teach'em. Except it taught them that I would always comply. It positively rewarded their behavior, of which was often manipulative, toxic, disrespectful, and vindictive.

I sat on that bench until sunrise, and I made a promise to myself that I would work towards setting boundaries, and being my own torch bearer. After the holidays, and into the next year, a lot happened. I started saying "no" more. I quit going to my family's home (which was about a one and a half hour drive) every weekend as required. I was an adult, I could say no. It wasn't a requirement, it was a demand. Except now, I was able to set terms.

"And at this point he would infer and conclude that this it is that provides the seasons and the courses of the year and presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some sort the cause of all these things that they had seen."

I changed my major that semester to political science (pre-law) and psychology. Electives were completed in history, philosophy (world religions), and I flourished. I made new friends (of whom I still talk to three nearly every day for the last 15-years).

Later, I got accepted into a law school, only to deny the offer and go to graduate school for a master's degree in mental health counseling. This very swift decision followed my experiences working on four political campaigns between 2008 and 2010. My undergraduate GPA finished at a 2.98 (although the last two years were a 3.7), and I finished graduate school with a 3.85. Between 2010 and 2014 I got to present a paper at the South Eastern Psychological Conference, calibrate a 16,000 bit CCD camera that was mounted to a telescope that I got to help construct for the university, and serve as a graduate research assistant.

When all that we see are the limitations set by others, we fail to fully understand our potential.

In the afternoon on October 6th, 2016, my father died. Exactly on his terms. He suffered a cascade of complications that culminated in a stroke and a heart attack and died almost instantly. Whenever he would discuss death, he would say two things. The first being, "don't get old, it's a bitch." The second thing he'd always say, usually while yelling at a doctor and my mother about it, is that he wanted to die at his home, in his underwear, with his very large TV, his wife, and his four dogs. And so that's how he went. On his terms.

After graduate school, I got hired on as front-line in-home counselor for a national non-profit that provides intensive therapeutic services to kids and families (among other things). I've been with this agency for nearly seven years, and in that time I have helped more than 3,000 kids and families to get stabilized, reunified with their parents, or adopted. I serve on an oversight committees in my city to ensure that courts are doing what they need to do to protect the rights of children, and I was appointed to sit on a subcommittee of my city's council to review grants in efforts to end homeless. To top that off, I'm working towards a PhD.

For twenty years I was told on a near weekly basis that my father would die at any moment. The morning of my father's death was no different. My mother had texted to let me know that his health was not good, that he had taken four nitroglycerine pills, and that he appeared clammy and lethargic. He'd had four heart attacks in his life, so this wasn't news to me. She said that she was going to call the doctor. Three hours later, I received a phone call. When I answered, the only thing that was audible was the sound of an AED beeping, followed by "do not touch patient, analyzing rhythm," followed by "no pulse detected." This happened three times before my mother said "he's gone." I knew before she said it. I told her that I would be there in a few hours. I hung up, pulled over and I cried on the side of the road until I felt calm enough to drive.

You might be wondering what all of the quotes are. They're from Plato's The Allegory of the Cave. If you aren't familiar with this, it is a discussion between Glaucon and Socrates on the effects of education, among other things. The allegory speaks to me in a variety of ways, mainly the idea of being unshackled and seeing the sun for the first time.

Freedom has a few definitions:

1. The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hinderance or restraint;
2. Absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government;
3. The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved;
4. The power of self-determination attributed to the will; the quality of being independent of fate or necessity;

Freedom for me meant unrestrained from the toxicity of co-dependence. It meant my own self-determination towards my own future and goals. It was the aftermath of uncoupling from the shackles of the expectations placed upon me that went unquestioned, and also unmet. It is easy to think about freedom something that is given to other people, and in political and judicial contexts that is often the case. Most of the time, you have to fight for it, and it takes work to maintain.

More importantly, freedom meant letting go so that I could grieve, and heal. Had my mother been the one to call me in 2007 to tell me that my dad was in the hospital having almost died, I probably would have shrugged it off, said he had it coming, and went back to class. I was angry, bitter, and sick and tired of the hypocrisy, double standards, and impossible expectations. Of course, none of those things changed after my late night epiphany. What did change was how I moved about those expectations.

Sometimes, freedom means learning how to read a map, or asking for directions, rather than being mad that the road didn't just take you there automatically in the first place. It is not a divine principle imbued upon each person that manifests itself equitably.

It is really easy to sit here and talk about how freedom means that I can wake up every Saturday three hours later than my daily schedule. Or that I can drink three cups of coffee each day (and suffer the consequences, i.e., heartburn later). And how it means getting to go to a candy store and buying sugar in myriad shapes and sizes or going to fairs and eating too much funnel cake even if it's "overpriced."

More than simply getting to choose those seemingly trivial things, it means getting to make mistakes and learning from those mistakes. It means we get to get dirty sometimes, and indeed, sometimes we must get dirty. Self-determination sometimes means that you're going to frustrate people because they disagree with your decisions (and in some cases means that you have to ward off an entire country; Slava Ukraine). It means moving forward at the same rate that you're fall down and getting to choose where you're going to crash, be it on dry land or the deep pressures at the bottom of the ocean.

Freedom means getting to see all that you see, and deciding for yourself how to proceed.

What all do you see?