Protection

Didier spent part of the afternoon fortifying the fence around the pool.  The girls have become so confident with their swimming skills that we fear their getting bold and walking right out into the garden to the pool and trying to take a swim, unsupervised.  Generally, I am all over them and do not allow them into the garden or on the patio if I am not just a few feet away, but with adventurous and creative small people about, you never know what mischief might develop. 


I have been, since arriving in Barbados nearly a year ago, incredibly concerned about safety.  A feeling of insecurity has descended upon me, and terrors both real and imaginary, rational and irrational have overtaken me.  At first, it was the monkeys, the lizards, the toads, and the mosquitoes.  A threat in my physical world.  My "fight or flight" mechanism was working over time, only I knew there was nowhere I could go.  I was flooded with adrenaline and getting drunk and crazy on it, then crashing.


The greatest threat is really to my psyche and to my sense of being.  I don't feel my footing and therefore want to control every aspect of my life and the girls' lives.  It is not only exhausting, but it prevents me from being in the moment, from being really present because my hypervigilance has me monitoring my surroundings like the Secret Service.  I feel naked.  Unprotected here.  Because Didier is often away.  But also because I have never felt looked after or taken care of, that feeling has been with me all my life.  I have certainly never believed that I was someone's priority and that they would do anything for me.  My safety has always seemed my own concern and now, left in the middle of the jungle, without my friends or family, I must keep us all safe.


We put up the fence around the pool.  We live behind a stone wall.  There are burglar bars on all the windows and doors of the house.  My protection is a gilded cage.  Nothing can get in but I also can't get out.

(c) copyright 2010. Citymominthejungle