Iceberg tips

Monday 3 March 2008

I feel a bit wussy and vulnerable at the moment. There's a few reasons for that. One of them is my art therapy sessions, which start today. I'm excited, but also feeling rather nervous. Nervousness and excitement are sister emotions in my body, sitting right next to each other, it seems - I noticed recently a move from one to the other while on my way towards something I'd been feeling trepidatious about. It kinda surprised me with the smooth, seamless way it switched over from one to the other, while I was on my way - sometimes the excitement doesn't kick in till I'm venturing forth. Sitting at home in my own head (a disastrous place to be at times), sometimes it's just all about the nervousness and the excitement doesn't get a look in. Weird. I'm sure the switch will flick over today, too, somewhere on the Eastern Freeway. Now, if only Olive's CD player will start working, and spit out the CD it's been hanging onto for over a month while refusing to play.

I can't help wondering if I would be feeling less nervous if I was feeling less unsettled in my body. I'm taking a few things at the moment for my immune system which are helping, but also reminding me there is something or things in my body that are being killed off. I can feel my body is working hard to right itself - which is a good thing, but rather tiring in the process. The unsettlement in my body and in my soul the last few days has made me restless and grouchy, as the kids down the road can testify. They appeared yesterday several times, and in the end I locked the door and turned up the music to crowd them out. Call me Van Morrison but I just wanted to be alone :)


In the past several weeks I have returned to my monthly writers' group, to uni (last Friday, with my favourite teacher) and just about finished The Artist's Way. And today is art therapy. Which is a pretty big load of changes for someone who is still feeling nervous and vulnerable about all this awakening creativity, and is still feeling scared that she is going to find new and marvellous ways to block herself.

Which is where the art therapy comes in. But oh, part of me feels like climbing back into bad and pulling the covers up and sucking my thumb :)

Meanwhile, the detached, observant, writerly part of myself sits taking note of that feeling, nodding sagely, saying, "Hmmm. Me thinks the unconscious you is suspecting that it is going to be dredging some things up to the conscious you, things that you have tried to kept hidden." A strange but true place to be in. I feel like an iceberg :)

2 comments

  1. Sorry you feel like an iceberg. :(
    Hopefully as some of those hidden things come up, that huge weight at the bottom of your iceberg will get lighter and the exposed portion will not seem so vulnerable.

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  2. Jennifer - I already feel better about it. I think in hindsight "iceberg" was probably being a bit dramatic. I also think that it's the unknown which is always scarier when unknown than when it's known

    (That almost started getting Rumsfeldian, that sentence)

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