My safe space

Alone in a room...

It’s just me and you.

I paused for a minute to see what I had written. I had nothing in particular to write but I knew I wanted to write something, that was my escape from most things. Everything.

I wasn’t sure how to start, so I started with my favorite song.

My favorite comfort song.

In my darkest times, the lyrics always came to mind because they reminded me of my own words. They were things I would say

I feel so lost,

And I don’t know what to do.

I wondered for a little while what went through her mind when she wrote that song, that very special song that had comforted me since the first time I heard it three years ago till now.

I begin to write again, that was really all I knew to do.

So what if I choose the wrong thing to do?

I’m so afraid of disappointing you.

I stopped at that particular line as my eyes began to water. Life did not have to be this hard for me. I began to write again, this time about how I really felt, not holding anything back. In the past, I used to be scared of journals, what if someone saw? What if someone read it? What if someone saw my feelings? So I avoided them for a while, and even when had them I lied in them.

The pages of my journal were filled with half-truths, paragraphs with important omissions because I was scared, or ashamed?

I wanted to be honest, to express how I really felt someway somehow and people had proved to be useless for that. Some, I worried that they would tell, the others did not understand. And I desired so badly to be understood.

I realized that it was one of the most important things to me, to be understood.

When I had conversations with others I had so much to say, so much to express but I don’t know why the words came out the way they did.

In my head, they made perfect sense but when I said them, they weren’t well put together. So instead, I wrote.

Wrote to me, the only person I could trust, the only person that understood.

In my head, everything was clear but in all honesty, my head was overlabored. I needed an outlet for these numerous thoughts.

But I wanted to talk too.

I wanted to be heard, I wanted to make meaningful arguments and have people agree with me.

I wanted to be eloquent and well-spoken

But instead, I wrote.

Even in my journal, I didn’t feel safe. For a long time, I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. When Mother was shuffling through the books and looking for one of hers my heart rate skyrocketed because I thought

“What if she decides to open it up and read? What if a page falls open?”

The things I knew could cause controversy, I never said but I wrote.

My little brother threw my door open, distracting me from my thoughts and I looked up to see an overexcited little boy looking for a playmate. I smiled and stretched out my hands for a hug. He loved those. Tobi smiled at me and began to play with my braids while urging me to come outside and play some football with him

“You know I know nothing about football” I laughed whilst rubbing his head, he knew that and he had chosen me solely for that reason. He needed an easy win to lift his mood and who better to play with than his big sister who was terrible at football?

He stared briefly at my open journal and I paused warily, unsure of whether to close it or leave it open to avoid suspicion. Uninterested he looked away and continued to play with my hair still pleading for me to play football with him.

One thing about Tobi, when he wanted something he never stopped until he got it. I admired that, even wanted it for myself. He wasn’t very much in touch with his emotions like I was but the emotions he could identify, he expressed. Loudly.

He never thought before he spoke, which I found annoying and endearing,

Eventually, I budged and agreed to play.

When our Father said something he didn’t agree with, he said something. This was something I couldn’t do even if I wanted to. I just wouldn’t find the words. My excuse was always that my delivery wasn’t perfect but in my journal, delivery didn’t matter.

And that was okay for me.

My mother always said that most character traits that a person possessed show up in almost every aspect of their lives, whether they were aware of it or not. My life was a good example of that

I gave myself excuses for not speaking up. At school, at church, amongst friends and family. I told myself that it was better to work around hurtful situations within myself because people wouldn’t understand me anyway. But the truth was that I was scared.

Scared that I might say the wrong thing, scared that I might hurt someone with my words, scared that I might say something I would regret.

Scared that my words may be twisted.

A person’s childhood sets the tone for everything else in their life, whether they are aware of it or not. I was never a chatty child, I was the child that liked to write. Even when I misspelled the words, I wrote because it was safe.

There were times when I spoke up and people reacted harshly to me, so it made me want to talk less. In my experience, adults take advantage of this whether they know it or not.

Maybe they really did not know but they did it anyway. They want you to be smart, outspoken, eloquent but not with them. They want you to question everything but not their views.

When I asked questions they twisted my questions around and made it seemed like I didn’t know what I was saying, like I was a stupid child. So instead, I wrote.

I had some questions, some dreams some may regard as unrealistic or even foolish and I desperately wanted to tell someone, but I knew they wouldn’t understand.

One day I was at my wits end after a terrible argument with a friend, I had so many emotions coursing through me, so I turned to my journal. I needed to process all the things I was feeling so I started to write, then I remembered a line from a book I had read a week before

Find a safe space where you can be fully honest about your feelings.

Then it hit me that I could make my journal my safe space.

Instead of half-lies and omissions why not unburden myself fully and really say what was on my mind?

So I wrote, but honestly.

After a while, honest writing became my thing. If I couldn’t really tell people how I felt at least I could tell it to myself, and it was a great improvement from writing only things I thought people could see.

I found power in honesty and facing how I really felt about myself and every other thing in the world.

“What are you always writing?” my mother would always ask.

I feared to tell her that I was writing down my feelings because then her interest in my journal would grow so I made up excuses, writing contests, articles, and even school work.

One fateful night at dinner my father began to talk about how I detached myself from the family

“You don’t tell us anything anymore,” he says, half accusingly, half mocking me, “maybe you are more comfortable discussing with those your friends” he continued.

“Maybe I should talk,” I think.

My new-found courage from honest writing made me want to give it a try.

“What would you like to know about?” I say with a smile. I could do this.

“Is there anything bothering you?” he inquired, the whole family listening quietly now. I mentioned my anxiety.

Now that I think back maybe I shouldn’t have.

He went on a long rant about how weak I was, what did a 16-year-old know about anxiety? He went on and on about how the shows and programs I watched influenced me negatively. How could a child of God say she has anxiety?

I leaned backward in my seat. Exactly what I had feared, being misunderstood.

Dejected and defeated, I tuned out through the rest of the monologue.

Next time, I would write instead.