What Safety in Relationships Means to Me as a Survivor of Medical Neglect

I didn’t grow up knowing what safety in a relationship felt like. My body learned to brace. My voice learned to stay quiet. And my needs learned to wait, and wait, and wait.

As a child, my pain didn’t seem urgent to the adults around me. I learned that being in distress didn’t guarantee care. I learned that silence often felt safer than asking again. That kind of medical neglect doesn’t leave just because I got older. It planted itself in my nervous system. It shows up now in the way I hesitate before asking for help, or the way I over-explain when I try to say no.

For a long time, I thought safety just meant "not being hurt." But that’s not the whole truth.

Now, safety means I don’t have to prove I’m in pain for someone to take me seriously.

It means I can take up space and still be loved.

It means I can say no and not be punished with silence or distance.

It means someone checks in with me, not just when I break down, but just because they care.

I used to think I had to earn care. Be useful. Be easy. Be quiet. But the more I heal, the more I learn that safety doesn’t come from how little I need. It comes from the presence of people who don’t flinch when I show up fully.

I’ve started paying attention to how my body feels around others. If I can breathe all the way down into my belly, that’s a clue. If I don’t feel like I have to rehearse what I’m going to say, that’s a clue. If I can make a mistake and still feel welcome, that’s safety.

It’s not always obvious. Sometimes safety feels boring at first, especially if I’m used to chaos disguised as passion. But safe love is not dull. It’s steady. It’s the kind of steady that lets me grow instead of perform.

I want relationships that don’t require me to shrink.

I want to unlearn the idea that being “low maintenance” is a virtue.

I want to believe that my needs are not too much.

I may still catch myself defaulting to survival mode. But I am learning that my life gets bigger when I stop bracing and start trusting what feels calm, respectful, and mutual.

Safety is a practice. One, I’m still learning. But I know now that I deserve it. I deserved it then, too. 

And if you’re reading this and wondering, the truth is—so did you.