I had one of those sudden revelations about myself recently :

I have never been controlled.

And by that, I have never been threatened or forced into obedience. Not by my parents or my teachers or my bosses or anyone else.

All my life, I have chosen to cooperate most of the time, and felt entirely free to withhold that cooperation if I felt I was being wronged.

So I never had to accept discipline in the most direct and basic sense. I don’t think I have ever done something purely out of fear of punishment. I have never felt like my life was not in my own hands.

And it occurs to me that most people are not that autonomous.

I am not exactly sure how I ended up so independent. The easy answer would be that my parents’ neglect of me kind of forced me to be that way, but that would be glib and facile and does not ring true to me.

I think I was fiercely independent from birth, or shortly thereafter. I have a strange blend of easygoing agreeability and absolute refusal to surrender one inch of my autonomy that makes me a complicated guy.

And you know what? Sometimes being complicated kinda sucks.

I have been probing my memories of what I was like before I ever went to school and got bullies lately in an effort to remember that I was a happy, charming, precocious little darling at one point.

And it occurs to me, as I look back at that time, that even then, I was remarkably autonomous for a child. My parents would take me to some event and I would get bored when nobody was paying attention to me and just wander off on my own to explore my surroundings.

And of course, then my poor parents had to search for me (I must have worried them so much! Sorry, Mom!), and usually they would find me talking to the scariest looking adult around, who was usually utterly bemused and bewildered (and charmed) by this little red-headed kid who talked like an adult.

Even then, though, my parents never used forced on me. I was never spanked or anything. I was not even verbally reprimanded that often. Partly that is because my parents had a distinctly laissez-faire attitude when it came to childrearing philosophies. And part of that is because I am not rebellious by nature, and generally genuinely wanted to do the right thing and make my parents or caretaker happy.

And speaking of caretakers, that time before I even went to school was ruled by my babysitter Betty, a tough but kind lady from the other side of the tracks, and she could handle me.

She was not any more physical with me than my parents were, but she was tough as nails and not inclined to put up with any crap from some smartass kid. So partly because I loved her, partly because I am by nature agreeable until I’m not, and a great deal because she had the force of personality to put me in my place, I was quite happy with her.

And I think that observation yields a great deal of insight to my character and nature, because I realize now that this set the bar pretty high for future people who would have to deal with me, like teachers.

My favorite teacher in elementary school was Mrs. Rogers, who most kids thought was a grumpy old battleaxe. She was definitely an old-school type teacher (so to speak) who predated the more touchy-feely buddy-buddy style of teaching that was all the rage during the 70s.

So she believed in discipline via strength of personality. She was not warm or pleasant and she was definitely not interested in being your friend.

And I adored her. I think it was because her strength of personality made me feel secure. She, like Betty, did not put up with any crap, and when you are a kid, you need someone who can stand up to you and be the authority figure in order to calm down and feel safe.

Very few of my teachers had that ability. Couple that with the fact that I was so bright that the school work was never difficult for me, so much so that I never even had to study, and you have a picture of someone who grew up with a very low amount of governance.

Whoopee, right? After all, authority sucks! Our freedom-loving culture teaches us that freedom is inherently good and hence more freedom is always better. Must have been a great childhood, right?

But no. I think we learn to govern ourselves by internalizing the governing we have received. I think that part of the reason I grew up so insecure and timid is precisely because I was that impossible, unreachable child that very few people could handle.

And so I almost never had that feeling of security that comes from knowing you are not alone in the world and that someone is looking after you and making sure you are OK and do not hurt yourself.

So I ended up having to govern myself, and a child, even a terribly bright one, is not very sophisticated when it comes to nuance or fine distinctions, and so I grew up feeling like the world was a dangerous place filled with booby-traps and that the only way to be safe was to have as little to do with it as possible. With nobody there to teach me how to deal with the world, what else could I do?

And sure, the bullying was a big part of that. I have no doubt of that.

But as I look back at my past from this new perspective, I am increasingly convinced that it was also because most adults simply did not know how to handle me.

And I was not impossible. A few teachers managed it just fine, as did Betty.

But it took a rare kind of person. Most of the time, there was nobody in my life who could handle me, and I did not feel secure.

And I think that this has a lot to do with why I am so insecure now.

Unpacking the past is hard work.