Safe

This space doesn’t feel safe anymore.

I’ve never tried to find safety in people. For how dare I expect a flawed and pained human being to become a cold and reliable anchor for me? I’ve instead learned to enjoy observing the chaotic whirlwind of people zooming in and out of my life, to frantic in their own journeys to notice just how much muddy footprints they’re leaving in mine.

So I pride myself in never finding safety in people.

But I’ve always found it within myself.

And that safety manifests in gently reparenting myself, a severe dedication to my spiritual practice and creating my art through writing on this very blog.

Recently, however, I haven’t been doing any of those things. I’ve been sitting in a haze of obligatory presence, waiting, nay, frantically itching for the day to end so I can rejoin my cocoon and slide into blissful unconsciousness. It’s safe there.

Last night, however, I lost that oasis too. It’s astonishing how much you can scare yourself. How the sobs of the subconscious feel so real and how much that realness hurts.

I realised it was getting bad when I noticed that I haven’t breathed in a while. I have kept up a sloppy set of small heaves and scraped by, but I have not felt the electric air brush against the tip of my nose as I pull him in, travel through all the necessary pipes to fill up my begging lungs and then know that the very oxygen I had just consumed, ripe and delicious, was now flowing through each and every vessel of my being.

No.

I’ve just been silently grunting for a while and crossing my fingers that I make it to the next.

I flinch when people talk to me. It’s ridiculous, but I seem to have contracted a severe paranoia of all. And I do mean all. Trusting feels as though I’m hiring Ted Bundy as my masseuse and expecting a rejuvenating back massage. I keep waiting for the piercing moment of the bite.

So I keep tapping my feet against the floor because I need to be reminded that it really is there and I keep tucking my hair behind my ear so my fingers feel something of a semblance of a grip on reality. My stomach is in a constant turn, and I’m glad that it is, because it keeps me from drifting too deep into the crooks of whatever other-world I seem to be eager to dissolve into.

I’m trying to remember that I’m alive.

I’m exhausted. I’m on edge. I’m beyond anxious.

And it’s been this way for a while.

But I declare no more. From this moment on, I am safe no matter the external happenings. This is a safe space, I am a safe person and the actions of another cannot impact my sense of self and safety.

This post is quite literally me peeing on this blog and reclaiming my territory. And boy, is this one fierce stream of pee.