I Am Safe

A daily rehearsal for safety

Photo by DesignerVN on Unsplash

I wake from my sleep and as my feet hit the floor, I tell myself I am safe.

But even as the words rise, I challenge the thought before it leaves my lips. How is it possible? How do I know? What tells me I am safe? Whose voice is it commanding this daily rehearsal?

Each morning I repeat it. One day, I am safe. The next, I am safe now.

I never had to convince myself of this before. I used to live in a way that didn’t require this language. Safety was a crosswalk. A stop sign. Looking both ways. Learning to swim, having a buddy. Avoiding the deep end.

Then safety became hiding and bracing. Running and lying still. Leaving.

There were so many ways to be safe. Or perhaps just to survive. Until there weren’t.

So now, to say I am safe, when I didn’t know those words belonged in a sentence when I didn’t know I would need to use them when I didn’t know I’d have to beg them to stay. Feels foreign. Feels unsafe.

I looked wide-eyed at the world, scanning every path, parking lot, and hallway. Every room, every face. Everything.

I thought this was seeing. I thought this was the only way to take it all in.

I thought holding in the scream, hiding inside myself, and saying nothing when I was begged to speak would keep me safe.

But silence buried every transgression, every pain, every fear, deep within me with nowhere to go.

I thought material security meant being safe. Being hypervigilant and driven, getting the credentials, doing all the sports, attending the events, and travelling the world. Bearing all the weights, pleasing all the people, filling all the roles, curating the perfect life, and holding all that hurt inside, so very close, meant being safe.

It wasn’t.

So what does it mean to be safe? Will I ever be? Can I ever be? What does it take to truly be, to believe I am safe?

I left security in search of safety. Whatever that meant.

And now, strange things emerge from the dark. Emotions strike from every direction, raw and unmapped. Memories scatter. They refuse to form a single story. They refuse to show me what it means to be safe.

I feel too old for this. Yet I feel so young. So little. So small in the middle of it.

Will I ever stop hearing and seeing, feeling and guessing? Will the ripples ever stop tripping me?

I want to run again, to hide, to find safety, but I don’t know what the destination feels like. I don’t know what safety is.

So how do you know? How will I know I am safe?

Is it just some hopeful mantra a guru had me chant each morning when I wake, in hopes I would forget that I was not?

Or is it the wedge that keeps the door open, for me to be, for me to feel, to see that it lies within me.

That I am safe enough.

This piece was born from a shuttle practice prompt “I am safe…”