” peace and harmony, love and joy surround and indwell in me. i am secure and safe, i am safe.” 

i repeat this to myself over, over and over again. continually throughout the day, its the first thing i say to myself in the morning, its what i repeat while i am walking to work, while i busy myself with tasks at work, then when i walk home, while i shower and as i drift off to sleep.  i have a tendency to believe that the floor will drop out from under me at any given moment.

“i’m safe, i’m secure ” has been my mantra for awhile.  i tell myself this as my skin itches to the point that i can’t take it any longer so i say it out loud while i scratch, digging deep into my skin, tears and exhaustion rushing over me.  there’s bruises and scratch marks all up and down my arms, neck and my face.   i think nothing but of the way it feels. its painful but almost a good pain. the only way to describe it is like an orgasm.

after all of that i put on my oils, lotions and think about what i might have ate to cause it, what was i thinking about right before.  i had a beer, barely one and i thought about him.  one of them, perhaps all of them.  and then i repeat my mantra over again.  pulling a sweater over me, protecting myself, the world against my raw skin.  climbing into bed, turning the lights off, hoping that i don’t wake.

i think about my mantra, do i believe it. is it doing any good for me.  can it, will it change patterns in myself. how i see myself and the world around me.  i was told last week that the way in how we cope with stresses is learned within the first 6 years.   i went to a life coach last week, talking for a bit about why i always feel i am in constant survival mode, never enjoying just doing.  its all automatic to me.  anything else that could happen i am ready for it, i’m numb from the pain that it could cause.   its only when i’m not ready that it does the most damage and then i spiral into a dark place in my mind of why i’m not good enough.  its my pattern and i am learning it, i suppose that is one good thing.

learning the patterns, figuring out where i learned it from and seeing why it is damaging and doesn’t serve me.  why it blocks me from what i want. its the anger that i feel, that i believe that i shouldn’t feel. so i suppress it. telling it to go away.  i don’t know where i learned that i’m not allowed to be angry.  to say what i am really thinking, feeling. but its all there, buried with some notion of why being angry is wrong.  but it’s all there in my mind, on my skin.  i’m not even sure who or what i am angry at or about.

maybe its to the men that i gave my heart to willing, voluntarily.  maybe to those who where supposed to protect me and didn’t, maybe to those who where to teach me the first things about love and it got lost in everything else. maybe perhaps its those who where supposed to give me security and faltered on their end.

but im learning to forgive, and i am learning that i can create all of these things for myself. that i can change my own patterns. with a little time and with just one mantra at a time.

with love,

jess