The Cage of Betrayal

Metaphorical Narrative

There was a boy who once watched a film about people trapped under siege.
They were starved, cornered, surviving only on scraps of grass and onions.

The boy watched with quiet curiosity—until someone beside him whispered:
“This is how you deserve to be treated.”

That comment was not discipline. It was not guidance.
It was cruel, unfair, and undeserved.

Now grown, the man sometimes still feels it—a hidden distress like ribs tightening into a cage. Not from the movie, but from that betrayal disguised as a sentence.

Yet here is the truth: the comment was nothing. It held no wisdom, no justice, no authority. It was a theft attempt.
And he has permission now to unfreeze that moment, to erase the mark, and to walk away.

Core Insight

Cruelty often arrives in whispers, not shouts.
A single unfair sentence can install a false agreement: “You must suffer to be worthy.”

But agreements written without consent can be torn apart.
This one needs no fixing. It needs erasure.

Release is not repair—it is refusal.
The man does not carry the cage. The cage was never his to begin with.

Saturday Experiment

1. Name It Plainly — Write the sentence as it was spoken. Beneath it, write: This was unfair and untrue.
2. Strike It Out — Physically cross it out with a pen, or delete it in bold strokes on a screen.
3. Permission Phrase — Speak aloud: “That comment is nothing. I release the betrayal. I give myself permission to live free.”

Sunday Reflection

Write in third person:

• Where does he still feel the trace of that betrayal?
• How does he imagine his body moving once he has erased it completely?
• What does it look like when he no longer carries cages built by someone else’s cruelty?