Boxes Hold Beautiful Gifts

“Woke up this morning
Closed in on all sides
Nothing doing
I feel resistance
As I open my eyes
Someone's fooling
I've found a way to break
Through this cellophane line
Cause I know what's going on
In my own mind.

Am I living in a box
Am I living in a cardboard box
Am I living in a box
Am I living in a cardboard box
Am I living in a box?”

Living In a Box by Living In a Box (1987)

I’ve spent most of my life living in a box. As a child, I began constructing cardboard walls. Each and every passing year led me to reinforce these walls. During grade school and high school the walls were so well reinforced that they were practically indestructible. And by the time I reached college, I had closed the top on the box so tight that I could barely breathe inside of it.

In many ways the box was an invisible shield around me. It protected me any time I needed to leave my room—my only place of safe-refuge within our house or the world for that matter. So the box protected me as I moved about the house or if I was forced to leave the house. It kept me from feeling the full intensity of my emotional pain. I had had enough of feeling like a reject and so it was the job of the box to protect me from further rejection and shame.

Choosing to live in a box is a lonely experience. I almost never let anyone in. Looking back I realize that I had practically no friends in grade school or high school. I spent most of my time by myself living in my head and inside of my box. It was the only way I felt safe.

Luckily, I had my stereo and many records. The stereo became my only real friend and the records provided music that: 1) instrumentally made me feel sometimes sad and sometimes hopeful; and that 2) lyrically helped me to express my sadness and yearn for the possibility of one day being lovable in the eyes of others.

Since I’ve been in recovery, I’ve learned that my childhood experiences weren’t as unique as I had previously thought. I’ve heard the stories of many people who were just as fearful as I was. Some have told stories of living much of their childhood either hiding in closets or under their beds.

As adults, I don’t think we can take these experiences and just brush them aside, however. I think we have to face them and take our power back from them. At some point we have to be willing to open up our boxes from within and to allow light and life to find us. In doing so, though, I think we have to honor the frightened child that is still shaking inside of us.

There’s much talk about the inner-child in recovery circles. I haven’t yet done much inner-child work, but I know that most of my fears that still engulf me today began when I was four or five years old. Over the past many years, I have worked at freeing my adult self from the box I had been living in for most of my life. But that’s only been one piece of my puzzle.

I believe there is still a small, frightened child clinging tightly to the walls of the box that he erected many, many years ago. And if I am ever to be free of this box, I will have to rescue my inner-child from it.

Yes, I found a way out of the box—well, almost all of the way out. And today, I better know what’s going on in my own mind, which has helped me to take the lid off of the box. I have chosen to stop treating myself like nuclear waste that must be carefully boxed-up and buried. And I have chosen, instead, to see myself as a beautiful gift.

Sometimes boxes come with lovely ribbons and when we remove the ribbons, we find precious gifts inside. We can all choose to see ourselves as precious gifts. In doing so, it makes it easier for us to push open the tops of our boxes. And it makes it easier for us to then share ourselves in life-giving new ways with the world we no longer wish to hide from. This much I have done and I am so happy to be free from my childhood-created box.

I am no longer living in that box, but I’m afraid that part of me—the inner child part of me—still is. And so I am beginning the process of re-parenting that small child that is still frozen with fear inside of me. Step one is to read more about the concept of re-parenting the inner-child. There are plenty of books about it. So here we go! Another giant step toward inner-wholeness and lasting, lifetime recovery.

**Living In a Box was a popular British band of the late 1980s.