Back to my only safe space.

I've been thinking about why I started this blog years ago. I kind of forget the reason.

Long as I can remember, I started this blog to channel my creativity that manifests into writings. Every time I go back to this blog and start writing, I would always act like a columnist in a newspaper, writing to tell people what's going on with everything, which most of them are my cluttered mind. Think of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex And The City. That type of job was initially my dream job, but destiny seemed to be carrying me away from it. Well, that's okay.

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Along the way, some people offered me jobs to write here and in their channels. I loved it. I really loved it. I wrote about a lot of things; culinary, fashion, lifestyle, and whatnot.

One day a friend saw my writing on a new channel about a street stall that sells roti bakar & Indomie for 24 hours. There I wrote about my perception about the stall. I was inspired by the way it operates consistently for more than a decade. For me that time, it served more than roti bakar & Indomie. 

The commitment to choose the stall as source of livelihood for that amount of time is beyond cooking the foods, it's rather cooking the flavor that stayed with the customers. Yes, "Bule", as we called the owner, has repeating customers. And yet, the friend condescended the story in a colloquial that for me was, in a way, unnecessary. After confessing that it was mine, this person apologized for doing so.

Many other similar cases, outside of writing context, occurred to me. The pattern was quite similar.

That very second I realized that I don't have a safe space to tell stories, especially personal ones. People can easily be triggered by your personal stories, good or bad, and annihilate the existence of the overall stories including the main idea of it. 

I know up to them whether or not they want to listen, process, and remember anyone's stories, but I would appreciate someone's ears that can listen to stories. Mind you, I'm not that person whom will tell everyone every single minute of moments in my life. But when I do, I make sure I share it wholeheartedly. This is not in any way my ego-driven demand to always get the spotlight, nor that I treat my people as a closet to flush out my shit, but I believe everybody likes it when someone listen to them in a rare moment when things really matter to them.

Image by Bryan Goff/Unsplash

For years, I forget the existence of this blog and completely amnesia about why it exists. For years, this blog provides me a safe space to tell stories without worry of being neglected. I share whatever matters to me here. There are my life journey, my lessons-learned, my depression story, and whatnot. 

Today I remember that this blog is my only safe space. Probably you are my only safe space, too, if you exist. Thank you for being here.

And just like that, I revisit and recalibrate my purpose to blog. Now the reason of existence to this blog is my only safe space to tell stories. Long as I can write, I think I'll be safe when the world is not available to listen to whatever stories I tell.

Dear you, what's your safe space? Have you found one?