Safe space.

Not the people but the place – Springfield Hospital is where I feel the most stable, the most safe. The Hospital is so much more than I realised, those smelly rooms, the unacommodating, hostile reception staff sat in their chairs behind the glass perspex boxes, the cream coloured walls with its odd choice of art work, the chairs that are too close together and more recently than not the building works, making so much noise that one can’t hear themselves think in the therapy room. All those things that made it the places I need, and having had that taken away, my own sense of security has kinda derailed me. That along with the other circumstances, that I am living through, that we are all living through. The place allowed me to converse how I was feeling, emotionally and physically for more than 2 years. It allowed me not to be judged in what I think and feel and was teaching me news ways to trust and be open. Not just one person there, the whole place. And I think, because I cannot know for sure, but that is why I am struggling so much with having therapy by the phone. I am not in my safe space, I am disconnected and unable to truly let loose. Tell my inner workings to my therapist L, who I have been seeing for over 2 years now. Tell her that my emotions are flighty at the moment, that I just need to be held, by someone, anyone. Not just physically but emotionally. Someone strong to come along and scoop me up. I need to be able to tell anyone working there that this confusing and unnatural world that I am living in is not working for me, I feel insecure and vulnerable in my external settings and there internally too. And I’ve seen it unfold before my eyes, as soon as the team told me that we were moving to telephone calls. I felt my heart jerk, my mind crumble. My insecurities on show but for me to be unable to show them clearly. Perching on the outside of my skin, that one would see if they saw me in person. And that was a month ago now. I saw it coming. Absolutely and utterly. Coming right before my eyes.

I get it now, it wasn’t just L, or R, or A or E that at times made me feel more connected, more emotionally safe. Safe enough to explore and be curious with my emotions. It was the building, holding my secrets within it’s walls, allowing me to explore and revisit emotions and experiences. Allowing me to reveal those long lost parts of me – those that have been hidden deep inside me for decades. Those invisible parts of me, that vulnerabilty that people so rarely see.

I get it now.

It wasn’t just the people but the place. I now understand why my body forces me to the direction of the hospital each time I run, now forcing my little legs to run an extra 5k so I can bypass the hospital and down the hill. So that 3 times a week I can feel a brief sense of certainty. I told myself that I was running around the hospital so I could remember how bad it had got. How troubled and powerless I was, how I was to not to let it get that terrible again. How I don’t want to end up in that voluntary admission again, not where I was but 2 months ago, walking around numb and dead – no shoes on my feet. No light in my eyes, smoking, wandering. Knowing that I could leave but actually that was the right place for me.

But it wasn’t that.

It was protection from my own mind that I needed.

Disclaimer – I wasn’t going to post this, it felt too fragile, too emotional but maybe tht is what I needed to, get it out.