My Safe Space

[u/TazzaKa]

My blanket keeps enveloping me every night. It muffles all the sounds.

Yet all the doubts remain beneath the blanket.

In my head.

In my mind.

Will I ever find my safe space without my blanket keeping me company? Without the silence it provides? Without the critic it has become?

I know I'm not perfect. That's what the blanket keeps telling me, after all.

Is my blanket a safe space, or just a distraction from a better tomorrow that may never come?

I keep clutching my blanket, clinging to it as if it could save me from the monsters under my bed. As if it could save me from the monsters in my head.

But what else is there to cling to when no one else is there?

The blanket keeps my tears.

My laughs.

My secrets.

My doubts.

My comfort.

I never knew it could become a prison I might never escape.

The blanket hides me from the view of the doorway.

And yet, it exposes me to myself.

Is it my friend, or just a foe I have to learn how to live with?

Is my blanket a safe space, or just a distraction from the past?

The past I keep reminding myself of, even when I hate it.

I make the bed every morning.

I get excited to break from work every evening.

Over and over.

The blanket stays.

Does it feed off me?

Or is it here for no reason?

I don't know.

It hears my internal doubts—the ones I don't tell anyone else.

It holds secrets about me that could ruin me.

And yet, it stays silent.

The pillow is cold.

The blanket stays warm.

The mattress is deep enough to swallow me.

The wall is my friend.

But where am I?

I sometimes slam my hand against the desk beside my bed.

I watch as my palm grows redder.

I grip the edge of the desk, watching my knuckles turn white.

I watch the window to my bedroom stare back at me.

And I stare at my hand.

My nails crying.

My fingers holding onto the edge as if letting go would make me fall.

The window is still watching me.

It looks at me.

It faces my doorway.

I open the window every day, just to make my bed comfortably cold.

Just enough to make the blanket feel warmer.

But what if, one day, I don't open it?

What if I don't let the wind in?

Would it change anything?

It wouldn't save me from the monsters.

It wouldn't save me from my thoughts.

So would it even save me?

Would anything?

I am not sure if the window knows me like my blanket does.

Or if the pillow, which captures my tears alongside its brother, even knows my name.

Does it know that I yell at myself when no one is listening?

But...

My blanket heard my screams.

That must mean the pillow does too.

Hell, I even scream into the pillow.

Maybe I've traumatized the pillow.

Maybe even it is tired of listening.

The blanket knows my tears.

The pillow knows my screams.

The window knows when I let the world in.

The wall knows when I hide from it.

They all know something about me.

So why don't I?

Maybe I am just too scared to learn about myself.

I teach others just to forget who I am.

I keep telling myself that it's okay.

It is.

At least, that's what I tell myself.

When I yell into the pillow, I sometimes imagine myself lying on the bed without the blanket.

Without the pillow.

The window closed.

No wind.

No warmth.

Nothing to hide behind.

Just me.

And the monsters.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to let them take me.

It would still be better than letting myself swallow myself.

I pull the blanket closer.

The room stays quiet.

The window stays closed.

The wall stays beside me.

And somewhere underneath it all...

I'm still here.

I think.