Focus: Trust

I've been on an adventure of sorts lately. About 2.5 weeks ago, I started an art journaling collective - 40 days in which several of us are learning how to put our feelings and thoughts on the page through painting, drawing, and found poetry. And oh my word, this journey has already brought up some deeply buried issues. 

This last journaling prompt I did has made me delve deep into my own soul. I have issues. We all have issues, but dealing with your own issues is...tough sometimes. It's tough to talk about with anyone else, but especially with yourself. So, I have these issues. And the words I found for the poetry in my art journal just kept coming at me, like darts, piercing straight into my heart.

And once I had the paint on the page, dried and ready, and I glued on the words, and I sat back to figure out what kind of artwork I would add to the page, I realized something.

I have a trust issue.

And I don't mean I have problems trusting other people. I mean, yes, it can be difficult for me to open myself up to people fully. But it's not because I'm afraid they'll hurt me. I have been hurt, certainly. But it's not other people I fear most.

It's myself.

I don't trust myself.

I realized that I often hold myself back because I'm afraid I'm the one who will do the hurting. Even if that hurting isn't seen or felt. 

There are things in my own soul that I am still working through. I probably will always be working through these things. Always. And it completely sucks. It feels like an injured limb whose wound never stops bleeding and never scabs over. And I just wanted the limb amputated. But that's just the easy way out. What I really need to do is analyze the wound; poke around, even though it hurts, to find the thing that makes it fester. I need to work through a process of healing, despite all the pain that comes with that. Because healing a part of myself so that the whole of me can be fully functional is much better than just chopping out and throwing away a piece of my soul. (And I don't know if you can actually do that, anyway.)

So. Yeah. I have trust issues. With myself. 

It's amazing the things that art journaling can bring up. I highly recommend it.