The Prisons We Build

How Marcel Proust Helped Me See the Walls I Made and How to Tear Them Down

French novelist Marcel Proust wrote, “For if habit is a second nature, it prevents us from knowing our original nature, whose cruelties it lacks and also its enchantments.”

That sentence didn’t hit me until my own life began to unravel. I had built a life on endurance, on doing what I thought was the right thing, on keeping everything steady for everyone else. I thought that was strength. I thought that was love. What it really was, I now see, was habit: a second nature that kept me safe but also kept me numb.

For years, I said I was staying out of loyalty. I told myself I was staying for the kids. The ugly truth was simpler and louder: I stayed because I believed if I left, they would be ruined. I knew they would end up with her, and she would break them in ways I could never fix. She tried to do exactly that when she left. I stayed because I thought I was the only one who could keep them whole. I stayed because guilt felt worse than the slow erosion of my life.

So in a way, I became the martyr. I worked my ass off, I swallowed insults, I carried the weight of everything, and I called it love. I was protecting them, and in the process, I buried myself alive.

After it ended, the kids—now adults—saw it. They saw through her games, and they were angry. They pulled back until I encouraged them to reach out. That clarity from them cut me open and saved us all in a way my silence never could have.

I wore duty like armor, never realizing I was building a prison from the inside. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Each time I said “it’s fine” when it wasn’t, another brick went up. Each time I swallowed my truth to keep the peace, another layer of mortar. I wasn’t preserving a family. What it really was, I now see, was habit: a second nature that didn’t keep me safe, just passive enough to survive. Habit kept me blind. So, I stayed, even as I disappeared piece by piece.

Seeing with New Eyes

Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

When my marriage ended, I thought my world had collapsed. I mistook the sound of the walls falling for loss when it was really liberation. The anger that followed wasn’t about being left. It was about realizing I could have walked away long before. I had the key to the prison cell I built all along. It was in MY hand the whole time. I just refused to use it.

What I didn’t recognize at first was that what I was feeling wasn’t anger, it was grief. Grief for the thirty-plus years that were gone. Grief for the person I thought I was. And a slap in the face when I realized I was the one who had allowed it all to unfold exactly as it did.

That’s the hardest part of awakening, realizing you were both the victim and the architect. The bars weren’t built overnight, and neither was the blindness that kept me there. Since things ended, I have never seen with such clarity. I don’t know if I was blind, manipulated, or just unwilling to face certain truths. I forgave things I shouldn’t have. I went along with bad ideas. I accepted zero support and called it teamwork.

But when the wave of anger, fear, and anxiety finally broke, it was as if the clouds parted and I saw everything as it truly was. That clarity has been good for more than just me. When the split happened, it freed my kids too. Not because they chose sides, but because they’re adults now and they see. They’ve told me more than once that I should have walked long ago. They told me they hated to see me so unhappy—that cut deep.

I’ve encouraged them to keep a relationship with their mother and not burn that bridge, but they recognize the patterns, the manipulation, the constant need for attention. And while I hope she never reads this because the last thing a narcissist wants is to be called out, I’m not scared. If she goes scorched earth, so be it. This isn’t my prison anymore. And it’s not theirs either.

The Fire That Heals

Proust believed, “We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”

That’s the part most of us avoid. We think healing means soothing, but true healing burns. It hurts first before you learn from it and grow. You have to have that experience of the pain to get past it all.

Today, instead of avoiding pain, I let myself feel it, raw and unfiltered, the way Trent Reznor described in Hurt. It’s not self-pity; it’s presence. Pain doesn’t own me anymore. The pain reminds me that I’m still here. Alive for the first time in years.

Back in August, I marked that lesson in ink. I sketched a twisted tree, a symbol of endurance and growth, and trusted an artist to bring it to life. He did, almost exactly as I had drawn it, adding his own flair with a negative-space moon behind the branches. Beneath it, a line from Chris Cornell: “I am not your autumn moon, I am the night.”

Choosing With Clarity

For me, it means this: I’m done being the fleeting, pretty thing people admire and forget. I’m not here to reflect someone else’s light. I am the night, constant, vast, whole. I don’t need to be seen to exist. I know who I am, and I won’t lose myself again. I’m not exactly sure what I want next, and part of the journey will be the joy of figuring it out. What I do know is these two things:

1. If it isn’t a “fuck yes,” it’s a no. An idea I borrowed from Mark Manson.
   • I don’t do: “maybe, we’ll see” anymore.
     You’re in or you’re not. It’s basically a filter for decisions about people, projects, and commitments:
     If something (or someone) doesn’t make you say “fuck yes,” with energy, curiosity, and genuine desire, then it’s a no. It’s not about chasing intensity every second. It’s about clarity.
2. I want to be with someone who doesn’t need me.
   • What? Huh?
     Yeah, that’s right. I want someone who chooses me. Not someone who needs me there to take care of them.

Walking Toward Freedom

Here’s what I know now. Our time on Earth is painfully short. You don’t get extra years for enduring misery. You don’t prove love by erasing yourself.

We build our prisons with the best of intentions, in the name of duty, loyalty, and peacekeeping. Then we forget that we built them and that we can leave. The key has been in our hands the entire time. Turn the key. Step out. You will stumble. You will bleed. But every scrape is proof that you’re awake.

Freedom isn’t about running away. It’s about walking, steadily and bravely, toward yourself.

As Proust taught me, the true voyage of discovery isn’t about finding a new life. It’s about seeing the one you have with new eyes. And once you see clearly, there’s no going back.