Unsafe Everywhere
A journey looking for peace
Everywhere I go, everywhere I look, I see danger. The feeling of unsafe screams loudly in my head. From the looks my coworkers give me to the drink I order at the bar. My neighbor can be helping me or talking shit behind my back. Is she rooting for me or wishing for my demise? The Uber driver, will he kidnap me? Drug me? Am I going to become one of those statistical numbers from the news? Will the car run over me? Am I going to be fired today? Or maybe I’ll trip on the stairs of my home? There is always the possibility that if I leave the house I won’t be able to return for it.
My mind is filled with these sorts of thoughts, of danger, death, and difficulty and all it gives me is the will to never leave the bed, to stay under the covers and hide from the world. Thinking about the outside possibilities, isn’t it just better to stay inside? I believe so. My gut is telling me so. But my shrink tells me otherwise. He tells me I need to expose myself to the outer world and people. Even if people are cruel, unfiltered, arrogant, and mean.
Whoever sees me will never guess the war I’m raging against my head. All they will see is a pretty, successful, smart, and independent woman. And I am all those things but also so much more. And every time I let someone near the chaos that is my daily thoughts and life I have this core belief that they’ll eventually leave because the woman they expect is not this. Is not an insecure, fragile, lazy, depressed, anxious mess. All I can think about is how they’ll tire of me eventually and I’ll end up all by myself again. That’s fine I guess, I’ve come this far with less than what I have right now. And I also know that this is just my mind playing tricks on me. To make me doubt my relationships and to make me withdraw and isolate.
After all these years in therapy, I’ve learned how to ignore most of these thoughts and keep going forward. It’s a struggle I have every day after waking up. I have to convince myself that I need to get up, that I need to shower, that I have to go to the office, that I’m not selfish, that the driver won’t kill me, that my friend doesn’t secretly hate me, and so on. I grew up in an unstable home. With an absent father, who traveled a lot for work, an abusive brother, and an emotionally absent mother. My family wasn’t the most perfect example of perfection, but what family is? I’m working to overcome the past, forgive in the present, and look forward to the future and that is my journey looking for the feeling of being safe, of peace. I’m not sure if I am nowhere near finding it but I know I’m not going to give up the possibility of being free. Free of those fears, of the past, and of the tricks my mind keeps playing me.
There’s this author, he’s a songwriter, that makes me feel connected and seen. It’s funny that I feel this way since we had different upbringings. His name is Mano Brown and he writes about violence in São Paulo’s favelas. About the trauma of seeing his friends dying, of poverty, of choosing the art life instead of the thug life. He uses his art to talk about peace, inequality, and police violence. Where I come from, shootings happen too. People I met died, from gunshots or overdoses, some were arrested, and some orphaned. But if I’m being honest, I wasn’t even close to this reality because my family always made me look to the “education path”. I had to study, have good grades, and be smart, so I could leave the community and have a better life. In a way, I understand this feeling from my fellow Mano Brown. And when he writes about his struggles to keep going a certain way without losing sight of what matters, I feel it to my very being.
On my worst days, when I feel that I’m losing myself, that my fears are trying to catch me and I wake up at noon feeling guilty for not leaving the bed. I try to think of him, my friend who doesn’t even know I exist. Of how much he went through and how he survived. And so I will survive too. And I keep going, on my journey to find my Peace’s Magical Formula.
It took a while, but today I can comprehend that to truly be thug is to live. — Fórmula Mágica da Paz / Mano Brown
If you’ve come this far, please make sure to follow this young author. Thank you!
