Dear Ravi:

You are a prisoner in practice. Your grandmother is the main prison guard and supervisor of the two other prison guards: your mother, second in command, and your father, a removed, passive third in command.

Like the great majority of long term prison inmates, you feel comfort in being provided food, clothing (and extras like internet), very grateful for those. You are “institutionalized” and understandably so, since you don’t know another kind of life.

You are waiting for your grandmother to okay opening the gate for you, saying: you can get out now.

Am I correct so far?

anita

Dear Ravi:

I too am concerned about the “inertia, reclusiveness, lack of confidence and so on” that you indeed developed as a result of being a prisoner for 28 years (I am including the in the in-the-womb time).

You adapted to your imprisonment the best you could, by being sort-of-okay with the inertia, not challenging it, by being sort-of-okay with the isolation, by being comfortable not going out into the world. You adapted. You were not born to be these things. You would have been active, social, confident, often enough excited and interested, curious, adventurous if you had a different childhood and since.

Good news about such adaptation, is that it is possible for you to adapt to a different kind of life. If you experience long enough period of activity, like the law of Physics states: a body in motion tends to remain in motion.

And of course you are distressed, how can a prisoner not be distressed? It would be impossible.

anita

Dear Ravi:

Back to being a prisoner: the most isolated prisoners in the US, as I understand, stay in their cells 23 hours in each day and get one our of yard time: walking around in a larger area, outside their cell and having the opportunity to exercise using equipment they don’t have in their small cells. I think it is necessary for you, to take at least two breaks during the day and go outside for at least half an hour each time, walk around, see things that are different than the walls of your room and home.

Will you please do that? Also, in your room take a break every hour or two for 5-10 minutes of exercise/ stretching. Will you please do that? It is very important.

These breaks will relieve your distress and the anger associated with the distress of being imprisoned/ stuck in monotony.

To not be angry, it takes more than will power. It takes changing your schedule a bit to allow a change. You can’t live like this and not be angry and distressed, and consequently drained: no one can.

anita

Dear Ravi:

The library is a change of scenery, which is a good thing. Walking in the garden is a good thing. Why don’t you ask for an X amount of money to go buy something, a loaf of bread, something and go buy it, just for the sake of having a new experience?

Coming to think about it, this is a way to beat inertia, one new activity at a time, even though you don’t feel like it. By the laws of physics, if you are inert, you tend to stay that way. If you are active, you tend to stay that way. So do something new every day, nothing earth shattering. I believe you never exchange money, from what you shared. So please do such one exchange, and tell about it, will you?

anita