Collage: Fighting the Box

This is the first collage I've done since maybe 2004. I'm still not letting it (whatever it is) go, or letting it out, but at least I'm addressing that fact, finally. I used to do collages all the time, and they are good for my mental health and sense of self. After awhile, they get less intense - usually. I did them especially when I was anxious or tense. I often did three in a row. The first was either too controlled or all over the map. The second often had something to say that was readable, and was usually the one with any artistic merit (if any of them was going to have artistic merit). By the third one, I was usually over whatever it was, and there wasn't much left to transfer to the image.

Today I felt I was in none of those three categories, but I felt that whatever it was, the lid was still on; my inside was boiling. It was frightened to have the lid even be lifted with any chance of the content escaping. Partially, the lid was on because I don't know where to go with it. And, I'm censoring. And I'm doing that partly because I have enjoyed blogging photos and images, and I thought I might blog whatever came out. But this did not feel safe, and it felt like an imposition on anyone who might see it, but I also felt that I wanted to put it in blog format so I could see it that way and add some text. It feels journaled and more complete.

Making the collage felt good and bad. There's a reason I've been resisting. I was tense by the time it was done, but quite relaxed an hour later [and the typing didn't affect my hands badly as it usually does these days]. The image is more or less the same as many of my more emotional but less elucidating old collages, but there was something new and liberating in the visceral aspect today, maybe because I hadn't felt quite that in such a long time. I need to do this. Taking and posting photos may be more fun for people to look at, but it doesn't do much for the stuff that's locked up. Without the art side of it, just blogging photos probably helps keep the lid in place, because it makes me think I'm having a dialogue with the inside, when I'm barely whispering.

I wonder how much of fibromyalgia is trying to keep the inside stuff inside. That, for sure, is stressful.

I noticed that in today's collage there is no humor and no real place of safety. Many of my collages have those elements, so maybe they will come back over time.

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