Safe Place

Do you have a "safe place"?
I suppose you could say that a coffee shop somehow does this for me. There's a slowing of time. A steady ebb and flow that is quite soothing, and it's also quite entertaining. Yes, I enjoy the coffee shop. It's where my creativity blooms and my thoughts tend to slow a bit.

I have mixed thoughts about the idea of a "safe place"; as with so many things, they are not good or bad. Bulimics (I am very guilty of this) automatically seem to think in black and white... a food is good or bad, we have either succeeded or failed, we are either pretty or ugly. Sigh. Tis a horrible habit, one that takes quite a bit of time to even remotely unravel. I feel like my mind is a big, jumbled knot...and it takes a while of picking and pulling and mistake-making to understand how to loosen it.

Now, when it comes to the "safe place": I think this is where you can stop, sit back and view the knot. It's not a place to hide, to escape yourself for a while. You carry yourself wherever you go, so there's really no way to run away. The more you run, the tighter the knot becomes. So I consider my "safe place" a place where I can sit and BE MYSELF. Feel the sanctity of sanity and CALM. That's the biggest thing: calm. It's not necessarily happiness or euphoria...that's not what what I seek. I know life is not full of consistent happiness, but I also know that my mind should not rev up to full throttle as often as it does. So, those moments of calm? Priceless.

What to do with them (the safe places)? USE THEM. Use them to be yourself. That can be a difficult proposition, as many bulimics don't know who they are outside of that obsessive mind...BUT you're in there somewhere. So that safe place is, perhaps, a place to sit and remind yourself that there are those precious moments where you can get a breath of fresh air...get a glimpse of the person you want to be...the person you are. That's hope.

The safe place should not be your escape. It can sometimes be a hard place, where you find out things about yourself you don't necessarily love. However, there should be something about it that, for some reason, does not let you fall all the way. For example, in my coffee shop, I smell the sweet smell of coffee, I watch the calm faces of people around me, I see friends and couple, I see the bright walls and paintings. Here, I see an inspiring and beautiful culture of relationships and art. There have been times when I feel so sad, so depressed in a coffee shop. There have been times when I have been journaling and I realize something about myself that is just the hardest thing in the world to accept...But I look around and I notice these things. I notice the colors and people...these things seem constant and outside myself. They gently whisper to me: "Hey! Common. There still are nice things in the world. Look! You're already noticing!" Just noticing means that some of them are in you.

Your place may be in an armchair in your living room. It may be on top of a mountain (oooo a good one!!), It may be a library. It may be in a park somewhere or in the lobby of a random building that's four blocks from your apartment. I like knowing I have a place to go that holds such hope.

Find a safe place. And remember: you don't have to go there all the time...but know that it's there, and figure out WHY it's your safe place. That way you can appreciate these qualities even more.

Hey...you may even find that these nice little features are all around if you take the time to look.