I Was Never Wired For Safety: How Healing from Trauma Has Taught Me to Feel Safe

I shared a story on Threads yesterday about our mechanic going above and beyond to make me feel safe in a situation that he just flat-out didn't have to. But he did. And that will forever be ingrained in my brain as a moment that helped rewire this very broken brain of mine. Yeah....yeah....I know people in the healing community say it's bad to say it's broken, but ya know what? It really is. My brain was never wired for safety. I have never actually fully settled into anything. Not a home. Not my body. I am ALWAYS on guard and prepared to take action. My fight-or-flight system was wired wrong. And I'm okay saying my brain is busted. Because that means it's fixable. That means my nervous system can, eventually, learn to just be.

Some of the comments made me sit far deeper with all this than I have in a while because I have made leaps and bounds in this feeling. But I often find myself saying that I will never fully feel free to be myself until my mother dies. There will always be a part of me that watches my surroundings more than other people, no matter how small. I struggle to fully feel safe in my own home or at markets. People in my inner circle know a lot of the details, but more often than not, I just don't talk about it. It feels so useless to constantly rehash things that I cannot change. But those things absolutely shaped me. They formed how I see the world and how I show up in it.

I'm sure there will be many blogs typed and never published from the musings happening in my brain. Maybe I will be brave enough to post them. But I stop myself from speaking so often because of how often I was called a liar. The number of times I was accused of plagiarism in school. The times I was asked to make myself smaller to accommodate other adults in the workplace. But mostly because, deep down, there is still part of me that believes the lie that I am a piece of shit liar who is incapable of making a good decision. I am worthless. I battle these voices often, despite them rearing their ugly heads less and less.

I've never shared my story publicly because I just don't want the attention. I don't want to do more to bring the ire of my parents upon me. Because they stalk me. Society says parents can't stalk their child, but if it were any other relationship, that is exactly what someone would call it. Tracking down someone's new address when they want nothing to do with you. Showing up at their home, knowing they want nothing to do with you. Contacting them through their business page when you know they want nothing to do with you. Knowing that they might show up at any business event or class because it's a public space and "they have a right to be there." Knowing that they see every single social media post. Having your private photos stolen and shared with them by someone who is a mutual contact, but you have no way of proving who actually did it. Having confirmation that they drive through your complex, hoping for a glimpse of your children.

That's my life since going to contact. There is no resolute safety that can be found in that other than having a DEEP knowing in your soul that you are capable of handling anything thrown your way. I cling to that thought process with everything I have and know it to be true because I'm too stubborn to quit. I have survived every last thing that has been thrown at me, and I will survive this too. I don't know any other way to be. But it is genuinely exhausting. It's a fucked up dance to deal with. It is not something I want to deal with or would choose to deal with. It's just one of those things that you figure out how to live with or you wallow. And I don't wallow.

So when people who did not have to provide safety, provided the safety. Yeah... it impacted me in ways that have me sitting in some deep shadow work. Because feeling safe is supposed to be a fundamental cornerstone that is built during childhood. When it's not...it's a lifelong battle to try and find it. So much of how we operate is ingrained in us before the age of eight. When I think about all that had to have occurred before then to make me have next to no memories of that time...

I remember throwing up on my fourth-grade teacher's shoes because she wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. I remember the demonic possession of the house we lived in. I remember being suicidal by ten and having it blamed on my grandma. I have vague memories of being sexually abused at 2. Glimpses here and there of things that are more a memory of a feeling versus an actual memory. But that's it. Nothing solid or concrete until I hit about 15. Almost everything prior to being a teenager is just gone.

It's made it exceptionally difficult to heal, but every therapist and holistic practitioner I have worked with says that in itself is proof of the trauma. I wish I could remember. I've tried. I really have. But even if I could remember, I don't know if I would actually trust the memory. I was gaslighted so severely that I question the memories of my best friend's death. Did they really happen that way, or am I just remembering wrong? My truths were always a lie, my happiness was just mania, and my sadness was my illness. My pain was always wrong. My hurt feelings were always my own fault. I was even asked what I did to piss my brother off when he held a knife to my neck and threatened to kill me. My tears were dramatic or manipulative or not necessary. I could never do anything right.

So when the encouragement came from strangers, I couldn't help but cry. Kindness always makes me cry. And then I am ashamed for crying over something so "silly." But that is the side of social media I love. That is the side that keeps me from dumping all of it because god damn... the meanness is more than people should ever have to bear witness to or be on the receiving end of. Compassion for the situation. Empathy. Confirmation from strangers of my strength and the growth I have experienced in learning to set boundaries. No one called me dramatic. No one called me too sensitive. But I'm still braced for the mean. Because I've always been braced for the mean. It's just always there, just like the folks I want nothing to do with.

Then there was the LOVE for the dear man who gave that safety...the outpouring of well wishes for him I choose to see as a spell that can be directed right at him to bring all the abundance he deserves. Because this man truly is the GOAT. He has done so much for our family in the last several years that I could write an entire blog just on his kindness. This is literally just who he is. And those kinds of folks deserve to have every joy their heart desires.

I deserve the same thing. I deserve safety. True safety. Not just the kind that comes from knowing I can handle anything. But the kind that is inherent to my surroundings. The kind that comes from living with people who respect boundaries. I have that now. In both big and little ways. That's why my nervous system has settled so much in the last couple of years, despite still having this nagging in the back of my brain. Maybe one day I will no longer feel like full safety is tied to their deaths. Maybe it will forever be that way. I don't know right now. But I do know that I am surrounded by truly safe people who have my back. That is some extremely powerful shit, and my gratitude for them, and the work I have done since going no-contact to find my own being, is so far-reaching that maybe it will finally snuff out every last bit of self-doubt that I was taught to embody.

With love and so much gratitude,