Gratitude for Safety...

I am grateful for safety as a way of being and as a concept.  My only regret about safety is that I didn’t realize how important it was, sooner...

I attempt to be a safe person for others.  I try to be a person that is reliable and consistent.  I’m not always capable of achieving that.  But I try and, think, most of the time, I succeed.

I have worked hard to be safe for others.  I didn’t realize how important being safe was in relation to others.  I just never thought about it, because I had the luxury, on some levels, of feeling safe most of the time, while being absolutely unsafe in this kind of parallel existence.

What I mean is that I live in a safe community, I have a safe home, I live with people who are safe and trustworthy for the most part.  I do not have to fight for my life or look over my shoulder all that much in my day to day existence.  And I have been very fortunate and privileged to live this way most of my life.

So physical safety has been somewhat of a given.  This is not to say that I have always been physically safe.  But I have been safe enough that I didn’t have to think about it most of the time.

Emotional safety is a whole different topic.  First of all, I do not think I thought in terms of emotional safety.  I didn’t think to provide it or ask for it.  I mean, of course, I was always seeking it, but it was very below the surface.  Very much not something that I thought about.  And if you look at my relationships, you can tell.   I picked and allowed a lot of unsafe people in my life and then bitched and moaned about how often they did me wrong, forever failing to realize that I was the jackass that let them into my life to begin with...

In the last three years, safety has become a more “front and center” issue in my life.  I have thought a great deal about it and found my life to be quite lacking in this regard.  When I kind of woke up, I realized that a great number of my relationships were not safe at all.  They weren’t going to physically hurt me, but they were continually injuring me on the emotional landscape of my life.

I had some house cleaning to do.  And it was a painful process.  I had to leave a great number of relationships that I valued greatly.  But my evaluation of those relationships, left them lacking and wanting.  When I got right down to it, I did not feel safe with these people and to a large degree, there was little I could do about that or them.  So after a great deal of consternation and hand wringing, I left those relationships.  It was a long three years.  But today, I am happy to report that while I am not so proud of the way I left a lot of them, I am out and my life has improved substantially and fundamentally.  I am not sure why it took me so long to realize that the people you surround yourself with, are your fodder for growth and change.  And if they are not growing and changing, but instead practicing their own dysfunction and calling it living, then you are holding yourself back from living your fullest, most authentic life.

My life is safer today.  And I can see that a large part of why I picked totally unsafe people was because I was not a safe person. Like tends to select like.  I was not capable of being honest.  I allowed people to believe that I felt one way because of all the stuff I didn’t say.  I did not want to rock the boat with these people so I kept quiet and kept my thoughts to myself.  Which is just a fancy way to say I lied.  I was not honest.  And to some degree, in a couple existing relationships, I am still doing that.  I have my reasons, but then again, don’t I always?

My great sweeping relational housecleaning, provided a more stable basis for living, but I still have some work to do.  I am really working hard at becoming very safe by being my most authentic and transparent me, but I still hide and in so doing, lie about what I think and feel.  And I guess perfect safety is not something that is entirely possible for me, at least not at the moment.

I am grateful today for the concept of safety and to think of people and relationships in these terms today.  It is not always fun or easy, but it has been revolutionary in forcing to me to make better relational choices.

Today I work at being safe, and in so doing, hopefully attracting people who are safer.  This will be life long task.  I am one who is excited and intrigued by dysfunction.  I love me some hot messes.  And again, I do see that it takes one to know one.

Which brings me to the admission or perhaps better stated, confession, that I am not sure how safe I am in dating relationships.  That is why I am currently excusing myself from that particular life genre.  I want to be safe, I think I try to be safe, but there is still so much about me that I am not really in control of.  Hard admission, harder to change.

I guess for me safety is something that I want.  Financially, emotionally, physically and spiritually.  And I am working on it.  I think also, inherent in the search for safety in this life, is the idea that it is something you work towards.  It is not, at least in my experience, something that is just found.  It is process of unlearning all the shit that made you want the excitement and intrigue that comes from all the people who are a great deal of fun but make you feel as if you are always teetering on the brink of disaster. The assent is marvelous, but oh, that fucking fall.  Devastating.

Today I work to spend more time in the middle, neither seeking the great highs or the great lows and finding peace and contentment somewhere in the middle.  The safer middle.

I am not sure I will ever achieve relational safety across the board in my life, but I am trying and working on it and I do see that in order for that to happen, I have to do the work to become a safer version of myself.  To myself, for myself and in spite of myself.  Without that work, I haven’t a prayer to ever be safe for you.

Again, still...

I am grateful for

Marie taking care of animals when we go to Big Sur

Finding Lulu yesterday when she jumped the fence

The ability to restart my day at 4 am

That I can see the humor in that

Andrea avoided a bad situation

Being able to trust my own judgment

Knowing how to spell

Writing

New books

My cozy house

Maybe finally having a completely full staff

The ability to pause when agitated