When I was little, I carried around a security blanket. Well, it was actually a bunny. I called it…Bunny. My mom and dad said I was a cautious child. I scuffled my feet on the floor to make sure the ground was there when I stepped. I jumped, but never too high. I clutched cups with both hands. And always, always, I had Bunny, its long blue arms wrapped around my neck, faded from the sun, torn in places where I held it a little too tightly, dirty from its loyalty to me through all the time I spent searching for ladybugs in the grass.
My parents said that we went on a vacation, and somehow – no one knows how, but I suspect my parents had something to do with it because Bunny was becoming a bit of a health hazard – somehow Bunny disappeared. Just like that, gone. Naturally, I was devastated. I wanted to alert the police. But Officer, I would say, it's clearly foul play. Bunny would never leave me. My mom and dad said I cried for days. And they wanted to get me a new Bunny, but I said, emphatically: No. I did not want a new Bunny. Like a small child who loses a precious animal, Bunny could not be replaced.
We all have our security blankets. We all have things that we can't let go of. Some things are neither here nor there – they don't hurt us, but often, they don't help, either. They just…exist.
And then there are the security blankets that cripple us. The things, or people, that we keep in our life because we have never known life without them, at least the life we envision now. The security blankets that act more as shackles than safety nets. The blankets that weigh us down and stunt our growth. We're either afraid to get rid of them, because they're weaved so tightly into our lives that we don't know who we are otherwise, or we aren't strong enough to let them go. It's probably a combination of both. We clutch these blankets so tightly, that, even when the blanket doesn't feel like it used to, we can't let go of it long enough to see what we might grab if our hands were free. So we carry it around, like a monkey on our back or a ghost that just pesters, because we can't let go. The simple act of uncurling our fingers, stretching them out and exhaling, is just too painful.
I'm left to wonder, though, if putting the blanket in a drawer for awhile is such a bad thing. It might mean I would be cold and uncomfortable, at least for awhile. Probably a bit lost. But my hands would be free to grab and explore. My body would be able to move in a new direction. I could always take the blanket out again if I missed it. It might not be the same. It might have moved on from me, actually. But I could still hold onto its place in my life. I could smell it, hold it close to me and remember. Like Bunny.
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