Safe

The dictionary defines the word safe as: “protected from or not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to be harmed or lost.”

Are we ever really out of harm’s way? We are but fragile creatures that could die in a second from the dumbest of things. If you watched the TV series 1000 Ways to Die, you know this. A guy funneled himself to death through his asshole with beer. This is the world we live in. Sometimes our own stupidity does us in.

On a more serious note, we are truly but a second away from pain at all times. It could be us meeting our untimely demise, or the people we love the most. Either way, we are affected in a way that will forever alter our lives.

The word safe has a fluid meaning I suppose. In truth, it is nothing more than a feeling, an idea of sorts, a word used to describe a thought process in which we trick ourselves into believing that we’re more than the blip that we are on this earth.

I’ve never been safe about any aspect of my life. I’ve swam in the ocean plastered, with waves so high and rough I could barely catch a breath. I’ve jumped out of moving cars, I’ve taken a cocktail of prescription pills—enough to kill. I spent my nights roaming the bars, too intoxicated to ever remember where I was, or who I was with. Safe was not a word that defined any part of who I was, until I found a love that is so strong, so real, that the “idea” became tangible. When you’re truly loved for all that you have been, all that you are, and all that you will become, a love that embraces your soul and moves you from the dark into the light—you’re safe to be yourself. You’re safe to live reality. No need to self-medicate, because the love lets you be you, just you, no walls, no barriers, no buffers. When you’re secure in love, everything else just falls into place.

I met my safe in August of 2014. An entire worldly view wrapped up in one handsome human package. Sure he was good looking, sure he smelled amazing, sure he could swallow me whole with his amazing lips, but that wasn’t what pulled me in. It was the way he looked at me as he spoke. He spoke similar words to those that I had heard from lesser mouths, but when he spoke, there was purpose, there was promise. He looked me dead in the eye and professed his love for me; he told me stories about myself from his perspective as he watched me from afar. His dark eyes melted right in front of me. The white disappeared, and his eyes became jet black and shined like solid onyx stone. Tears were forming, but he held them back. His voice was shaky and cracking. The skin on his hand holding mine grew hotter by the second. It felt as if he were on fire. He’s part Italian and apparently skin made of lava is a characteristic that I’d grow accustomed to.

As he spoke, I fell into a hole that I’ve never gotten up from. I didn’t bother to try. I knew in those moments that this was the person I’ve waited on my entire life. These words were for me. They were always for me. I had been his so many times before, and he had been mine. I knew him more intimately than I’ve ever known anyone. In this reality we had only met each other five hours earlier, but we knew that there had been other existences. We were there. We were here, and will forever wander amid realms. Every alternate universe in this world, every reincarnation, no matter the circumstances, we find each other. Our love transcends time and space. We are souls that are never really lost, eternally on the journey to each other. “Not likely to be… lost.”