First of all, sorry, everyone who looks, if this painting is disturbing or triggering. I woke up with the mental image – me on the stairs looking down at what’s beyond – on my mind and I could not get rid of it. I felt the compulsion to draw/paint it. I don’t know why. Maybe to turn it into a real picture. Maybe to share. I don’t know.
So anyway, that’s what I ended up with:
It’s pretty much what you see. Me, feeling pretty small, sitting on the top of a staircase that leads down into some creepy basement, looking down, feeling uneasy, yet glued to the spot, pondering, doing nothing. I try to think, but my mind refuses to comply.
I guess the symbolism doesn’t require a shrink to figure out. It’s looking pretty nasty down there. The colors speak for themselves. Behind me, there is light, but my back is to it. I don’t see it. All I see is what’s in front of me, down there, but only from a distance, because I’m not going down there either. No way in hell, me thinks, and I freak a little at the thought.
I talked about it with my mom, and she said she wonders if that doesn’t describe my current situation quite well. It’s no secret that I’m traumatized – PTSD doesn’t fall from the heavens after all – and I have some sort of an idea of what happened, too. But at the same time I don’t want to look at it. I’m quite content dealing with the BPD stuff, leaving the PTSD out. But at the same time I’m getting nowhere. There’s so many good stuff, lots of light (like my family now, and I could probably be doing a lot of things), yet my back is turned on it and I can’t go there, because I’m sitting, at a safe distance, my feelings neatly cut off, staring at the possibility of going down there. Down where the crap is.
Just staring. Nothing more. But nothing less either.
My mom says she thinks just turning my back on the basement, going into the light and living happily ever after ain’t gonna happen. How could I just step away from the basement, when it’s not a real one, but one within me? She’s got a point there. She says in order to be able to let go, I’d need to make trips down there. While being safe and feeling safe, this time around. So I can look around. Integrate parts that I have split off. Take away its power to instill terror. And in the end, come back up for good, close the door and step into the light.
Sounds so easy in theory. Is so hard in practice.
So I’m still sitting. Pondering. Frozen.
Scared.