No safe place to hide. In the cells of loneliness surrounded by people, everyday is a war. A fight you cannot win. Staying low is all that is allowed. Get back. Back into your corner. Invisible to the outside world. Speechless. Crushed. Silent. Eventually you find an occupation to cope with it all. Like music. A noise louder than the screams inside your head, chaotic, doom-like, metal-like, a soothing chaos. Some have fallen victims to drunkenness or even worse intoxicants. Rebellious jailbreaks leading only to self harm.

Suddenly, a glimpse. A small hint that your savior, protector and friend has been a mental prison warden for all these years. They might pose as a care-giver or lover, though they deny you your own truth and personality. It is their world you are living in or no world at all. Once you smell a realm of your own creation, fresh air, clues that some of the things the former holds in high belief over your head like a painful sword are a lie, a veil that benefits them but not you, you begin to ask, shyly at first, for that sharp torture instrument to be lowered and to be allowed to open your mouth as a friend and equal, without fear of being censored, mocked, dismissed or abused. You look for a neutral ground where all fight ceases. In vain.

All these truth-fetters around you are the natural instruments of the warden. They take pride in being able to enslave, out of pleasure but most likely due to some pains they themselves suffer from, torments they can't get or don't know how to get rid of. The wardens were born like that for all intents and purposes. They cannot change. Not without total disintegration from head to toe. No change is possible. If a sudden switch from the neat military uniform to the shabby civilian clothes were to take place, their power would instantly vanish. From deity to non-entity. It's either you or them. No middle ground. It's a battle for life itself on both sides. They will never change clothes for you.

Asking for permission to your prison warden, filing a complaint, requesting, looking for that instance when you, the beggar, are at least once in the right and receive a small paint job in your cell with a yes, these black walls were not appropriate remark leads to nothing. No change. Slowly you go mad. And when you do, they're there to help. They feel good about it, too. Wardens with medicines in their pockets wondering why are you sick.

The separation is a sad farewell. There is no hand waving, no smiles, no going out the front door, no negotiation into it nor asking permission, no temporary release, not even pleading or hoping year after year, to be seen one day, to be understood and acknowledged. The King does not truly become King by committee but by stealing the crown or inventing a new title for himself and wearing it proudly with or without approval. Otherwise, he who giveth the crown can taketh the crown away on a whim.

And thus, on the gloomiest of nights, a starless night, you emerge from the blackest pits of the Earth, climb over the barbed fence, risk death by the cut of a thousand blades and run away into the wilderness. Dirty, foul smelling, beaten up, used up. Alone, homeless and bloody. At the end of your powers. It would have to be this escape or the escape into breathless silence. Claws, sharp teeth, loud voices, incessant violence are not for the living but for the half-dead on life support. Metaphorically killing your warden so that you can live and find yourself. Once outside, the violence of the solitary confinement reveals itself even more clearly day after day, year after year.

For a while you constantly gravitate towards helpful humans, constantly seek approval for even the smallest of decisions and insecurities you still have about yourself. You were trained like that. But that's no escape. That's no salvation. If you really mean it, you'll figure out eventually that there is no one to ask for help and guidance. The first big step. You can choose what to do, no approval from above, no acceptance from wardens required.

The warden comes to your hiding place one day. Suddenly. A plot to shame and draw you back in. They want an explanation for you behavior but offers no excuses for theirs. You reply calmly, without the revengeful tone of your former years, without the anger, the resentment and without demanding an explanation. Just facts. You are in control of yourself now. Though you've clearly explained why that dungeon and the rebellious hobbies were not the cozy places they've imagined, they admit in not understanding you. Either way, it is now too late for that understanding. What use would it be now for it anyway? Now is the time to forget, recover and rebuild.

Before they leave they coldly put out a good luck, I hope you will be happy kind of a reply. They will not reach out any helping hand to guide you. You were right all along. This encounter is a moment of pain but also of confirmation. You are alone in this regard. You alone have to cross the bridge over the stream of life as the philosopher said. It's either prison way or the unknown, dangerous but possibly liberating way.

No encouragement for your braveness, no good words for your survival skills. No happiness for your composure, clear words, your struggle for your own well-being, no questions regarding past or current life. A reprimand for how things will never be the same if you don't return. A confirmation, finally, that things would not have changed had you bowed down in your cell, silently waiting, waiting for the king to at least share a part of if not renounce and pass over his crown willingly. Waiting in vain it would have been.

I remember that all those years, which were so much alike, passed drearly, miserably. I remember that those long wearisome days were monotonous, as drops of water trickling from the roof after rain. I remember that nothing but the passionate desire to rise up again, to be renewed, to begin a new life, gave me the strength to wait and to hope. And at last I mastered myself; I looked forward, and I reckoned off every day, and although a thousand remained, I took pleasure in ticking them off one by one. I saw the day off; I buried it, and I rejoiced at the coming of another day, because there were not a thousand left but nine hundred and ninety-nine days.

I remember that all that time, though I had hundreds of companions, I was fearfully lonely and at last I grew fond of that loneliness. In my spiritual solitude I reviewed all my past life, went over it all to the smallest detail, brooded over my past, judged myself sternly and relentlessly, and even sometimes blessed fate for sending me this solitude, without which I could not have judged myself like this, nor have reviewed my past life so sternly. And what hopes set my heart throbbing in those days! I believed, I resolved, I swore to myself that in my future life there should be none of the mistakes and lapses there had been in the past. I sketched out a programme for myself for the whole future, and I firmly resolved to keep it. The blind faith that I should and could keep these resolutions rose up in my heart again. I looked forward eagerly to freedom, I prayed for it to come quickly; I longed to test myself again in fresh strife. At times I was overcome by nervous impatience. But it hurts me to recall now my spiritual condition at that time.

Of course, all that concerns no one but me. But I have written all this because I think everyone will understand it, for the same thing must happen to everyone if he is sent to prison for a term of years in the flower of his youth and strength.

Dostoevsky - Notes from a Dead House