Safe seems to be the big word in my life lately. How often I don't feel safe and how much I long for that safety. It is something as children we should be entitled to and not have to question, but somehow I never got there. And have no clue how to get there...
How does one feel safe in being able to trust others to protect them, when the people who were supposed to protect us as a child never did....
How does one feel safe in who we are, when the people who made us who we are never saw a single good in anythng we did or said....
How does one feel safe in reaching out to others for help, love or support, when those who claimed to love us used and withdrew love as a weapon to control and to punish.....
How does one feel safe in their own body, when that body has turned against you and failed you on such a catastrophic level, when your legs have not held you and your feet have tripped you to the point of broken bones and painful bruises....
How does one feel safe in eating, when food has been dictated as the enemy and the cause of so much bad in your life...
How does one feel safe in their own judgement, when you have been proven a fool and used so many times....
How does one feel safe to show who we truly are, when the world has done little but laugh, criticize and condemn...
How does one feel safe in the words of others, when those words have lied, schemed and hurt more times than they have healed or comforted...
My mother used to tell me over and over again, the past is the past, what she did has no impact on me, that I was now responsible for my own future, to stop living in the past, it's done and it's over, move on...! And I believed her, just like I believed there weren't monsters under the bed!
"Song"
ReplyDeleteBY BRENDA CĂRDENAS
You shout my name
from beyond my dreams,
beyond the picture window
of this Rosarito beach house.
Rushing from bed to shore
I glimpse their backs—
volcanoes rising out of the sea.
Your back, a blue-black silhouette,
feet wet with the wash of morning waves.
Fountains spring from mammal minds,
my hands lifting a splash of sand.
I'm on my knees,
toes finding a cool prayer
beneath them, fingers pressing
sea foam to my temples,
while you open arms wide as a generation,
raise them to a compass point,
dive.
If you could reach them,
you would ride their fins
under the horizon,
then surf the crash of waves
left in their wake.
And if I could grasp
my own fear,
I'd drown it,
leave it breathless and blue
as this ocean,
as the brilliant backs
of whales
surfacing
for air.