severe elevation | high elevation | moderate elevation | slight elevation | normal | slight depression | moderate depression | deep depression | severe depression || anx : 0 , agit : 0
As I sat on the floor this afternoon, stripping a cardboard box for my pet rabbits, I got to do a bit of thinking. I was fashioning for them a safe environment where they can run semi-freely and enjoy little bunny joys without fear of harm. While I though about what would make the rabbits feel safe, I tried to think about where I felt safe.
I tried to think about the last time I felt safe.
I tried to think about what "safe" should feel like.
I remembered this space back in the old house, from when I was a child. It was a storage room used as a luggage cabinet. Whenever I was home alone with this mean-spirited, Miss Minchin-like house helper, and she happened to be in even meaner spirits, I'd lock myself in as a sort of defense. I'd stay there until either of my parents came home, or any adult for that matter, knowing that she wouldn't dare lift a hand to harm me while anyone else was present. She knew I'd retreated there, and she always attempted to break the door open, but she never did. I was safe of course from any physical harm she intended to inflict on me, but I wasn't safe from her taunts and insults, as I could hear her quite clearly through the wood panels. And sometimes, her words could harm worse than her hand.
"Safe" is relative.
Likewise, In That Place that is supposedly a "safe" place, I don't feel safe at all. Certainly, I am safe from being stabbed or mauled; but I am not safe at all from critical gossip and unfair judgment. In that regard, it feels in a lot of ways like the most unsafe place in the world for me.
Hey, I'm not paranoid. Paranoia is in a whole other disorder.
Somewhere in my soul I seek that place of comfort and assurance, as of a shielding, nurturing womb. Not a wall; never a wall. A cocoon I can curl up in and feel safe as I wait for my wings to grow out.
