Looking for Safety

 I did not feel safe in the home I grew up in.

Without realizing it, I spent much of my life looking for that missing sense of safety in other people.

Sometimes I found it.

Often, I did not.

Because what is familiar can easily disguise itself as what is comfortable, I was drawn to relationships that echoed parts of my childhood. Not all of them, but enough that the pattern became impossible to ignore.

I confused connection with loyalty.

Proximity with trust.

Hope with reality.

Some friendships carried the same confusion I had known with my sister—mixed messages, disappointments, and truths that lived beneath the surface but were rarely spoken aloud.

I don’t blame them.

And I don’t blame myself.

We can only love from the level of understanding we have at the time.

The truth is, I didn’t know what genuine friendship felt like.

Not yet.

But life has been a patient teacher.

Over the years, many relationships have fallen away. A few have remained.

The women who are still in my life today offer something I once searched for but could not name:

Honesty.

Loyalty.

Safety.

The kind of love that does not require me to ignore my instincts or abandon myself.

It took me many years to recognize the difference.

But I know it now.

And knowing it has changed everything.