Reflections of a Rebel Heart – August 2023

I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear. ~ Nina Simone

Since I opened Rebel Heart Books six years ago, I have occasionally been subject to a certain kind of inquiry. Some people come into the bookstore and peruse the shelves before asking, “Do you have a problem?” or “What is your deal?” I know what they mean of course, but when I’ve asked them to explain their feelings, they’ve been reluctant to do so, waiting instead for me to fill in the space they meant to create.

Over the last three years, beginning with the pandemic, the rhetoric has only escalated. I’ve received messages with pictures of smashed windows left at my back doorstep, a newsprint emblazoned with skeletons stuffed in my front door, emails calling displays during Pride month disgusting and offensive, headshaking at Black history and Native American history displays, and a woman on a local radio show calling for a boycott of the store. Not long ago, I also had a man come into the store and interrogate me for over an hour in front of customers about my religious beliefs, about how I could possibly believe I’m a good person if I didn’t share his own beliefs.

This past June I had a bridesmaid-to-be pound her fist against the window, people turn over books they found objectionable, people call us blasphemous from the street as they walk past. As a bookstore, we’re not alone. In Jacksonville, as well as many other places around the country, bookstores have been the objects of threats, broken windows, and protests.

Recently, I received yet another anonymous missive in the mail addressed to me and no return address. This one was about killing women, the manner in which women should die, that a woman saying the wrong thing could cause her justifiable homicide, that a seemingly meek and mild man could only take so much before he would be forced to “squeeze her little neck until she could talk no more.” “Pioneer women knew how to hold their tongues,” it said. My fate is in my hands: “Of course she can play tough, and get herself killed, or maimed for life. It’s entirely up to her.”

When I was a doctor in the ER, there were times when I had unpleasant interactions with patients who were under the influence of drugs or alcohol, psychotic, enraged, or terrified for one reason or another. In those moments, it was hard to stay non-reactive, to protect myself without withdrawing care. I’d imagine the person as a young child and think, They can’t have wanted this for themselves. This is not what they would’ve chosen. It was a small thing but it allowed me to look beyond the moment when I saw a human being at their worst and extend a caring hand. I remember this sometimes in the bookstore. I extend that same hand to everyone who walks through my doors.

I have thought about the person who sent me this latest violent message, and I’ve thought about all the others before. I wonder what might have made them so afraid at some point in their lives that they believe that the only freedom that matters, the only freedom worth preserving, is their own. What sense of safety must they require to willingly discard their own humanity and make others pay the cost for preserving their own notions of the way the world should be? What’s in their hearts?

Freedom is not a closed system. Our personal freedom impacts the freedom of others. We must ask what we want for ourselves and those we love, what kind of world we want to live in and to offer to our children now and in the future, to the children we once were, to the people we once hoped we would be. We must ask ourselves what it means to be good.

If we can’t tolerate discomfort or different opinions, if we need to make others afraid so we don’t ever have to experience discomfort, if we can’t be accountable for the harm we cause and confront our own fears about ourselves, if we can’t have empathy for other human beings, can we call ourselves good people?

When we choose, by action or inaction, to threaten another’s freedom and their right to live as their fullest selves, we tear at the web of humanity, our community. My years in the ER taught me that so much of what happens is not entirely up to us, no matter how much we want it to be. But we can choose who we want to be while we’re here on this earth, if we want others to fear us, if we want to love. It’s entirely up to us.

Eileen Bobek is a former ER Doctor and now owner of Rebel Heart Books in downtown Jacksonville.