Safe Spaces

Today I have been thinking a lot about safe spaces.  Places where I feel most like myself.  Or the person I most want to be, my highest self.  Places where that simmering, shaking quiver of anxiety that holds my chest tight and my breath shallow recedes.  Places that feel like home.

Even though I have the tendency to be quite extroverted, most of my safe spaces involve being alone, or with other people only on the periphery: bookstores, libraries, hiking trails, lonely beaches.  I love being in empty yoga or dance studios or curled up in a sunny porch, reading or knitting.  I love lying in a field of grasses staring up at the sky, or lying on my living room floor listening to records, or lying in a snowbank at night, staring at the stars.  I'm not religious, but I love being alone in giant, ancient, echoing cathedrals and cloisters, zendos, shrines.  It is the quiet I crave, not the doctrine.

I feel very calm around plants, digging in the dirt, riding a tractor, stacking hay in a loft.  I like animals but their unpredictability makes me nervous.  I'm more at home in an empty barn, when everyone's out to pasture and I'm shoveling shit.  I often feel the same about human animals.  I watch them with intense fascination, observing herd patterns and mothering odd ducks and spindly runts; but I'd rather deal with their messes (perhaps more abstractly!) than be in their constant company.

I relax in an art studio, in front of a typer and a blank page, or a sewing machine, as long as what I'm doing isn't perceived as work and there are no deadlines.

A wall of books and a comfy chair and nothing else to do but drink a cup of hot tea is heaven.

I love sitting up high in trees, looking out at the horizon, or in a greenhouse, smelling the moisture and growth.  Any type of water attracts me, lake or river or swimming pool.  And any type of fire.  I love running, hard, like I'm being chased, through woods and over hills and glens, jumping roots and rocks and water puddles, my heart screaming in my chest.  Preferably, predictably, alone.  I don't want to race.  I don't want to fall behind or feel like I have to slow my pace.  I just want to run.

If I am with someone I love, I want to snuggle in blankets, walk hand in hand through forests, read under the same light bulb and discuss what we've learned.  I talk out of nervousness, boredom, the need to share and grasp at connection, the need to help and heal others, wanting to resolve conflict, wanting to develop ideas that are only presently vague notions, and to attack and defend my private cathedral.  When I truly feel comfortable with someone, I'm able to say nothing and let them into my safe space.  This is a rarity.

I feel like there is some magic key in these revelations.  Examining my safe spaces feels like a road map, telling me future destinations, urging me to go back and dig up treasure I'd long ago buried and forgotten about.  I think there are answers here about where I should be heading, where I should live, what I should do for money and what I should do for fun, and with whom I should spend my time.

Where do you feel safe?  Where is your metaphysical home?