After yesterday’s outdoor immersion, I decided I’m going to try to step outside every morning, and if I have time do a five minute walking mindfulness practice or meditation. So this morning, I did. John joined me. It was a really nice way to start the day, even after waking up from a bad night’s sleep (my typical morning). I felt more of that feeling of agency, seeing I can start my day with some peace I choose even if I can’t control the nightmares I wake from.

I’ve also been trying to take better care of my skin, to take the time to cleanse and moisturize every morning and evening. It’s interesting how adding more things into my routine is actually helping me be more mindful of time, how even though I’m giving myself more to do when I’m always rushing and running late, I’ve been on time or early more, too.

To change, you have to make changes. There may be things – oh my god, so many things – that no matter what I do will never change. But in the three weeks I’ve been doing this program, I’ve gone from having a profound and depressing deeply learned belief that I can control absolutely nothing about anything, to already learning and seeing and knowing that there are things I can change and that even small things make a big difference.

So when I get to art therapy, that’s the mindset I arrive with. I’m feeling okay. I’m feeling good. The art therapist asks what’s been going on, and the truth is I could talk about the somehow still enduring lawsuit saga, the things I’m still waiting for, the frustrations I still have, the fears I have. But it’s not eating at me. There’s nothing really to say. It’s happening, but it’s not exactly happening to me like it used to.

My previous two weeks of artwork are laid out on the table. The clay mound from last week has kind of collapsed but retains its essence at the same time. The paper has sort of wrinkled; the art therapist explains about the moisture in the clay interacting with the paper as it dries. I like how it’s changed.

I want to work with the quadrants the art therapist told me about – top half, conscious; bottom half, subconscious; left side, past; right side, future. I have a vague vision of what I want to make. I know I want to play with watercolors, which I haven’t used since senior year of high school and remember finding frustrating. I’m surprised to see a stack of magazines, scissors, and glue. That kind of collaging is something I’ve done to help process trauma before. It inspires me, and I enjoy it a lot. I grab everything.

I start with the watercolors. I’m trying to gradient the subconscious dark side up on the past side and light side up on the future side. We talk about watercolors, some of how they work, and I watch the way they have a mind of their own. I’m not frustrated by it now. I almost feel like how I felt walking with Ricky, like we are partners working together. I like the way they unpredictably transform what I’m doing. They still confuse me, but more in an amazed way than a frustrated way.

I start flipping through the magazines and find so much inspiration in them. I no longer know where I’m going with this. I’m still using the framework of the quadrants but not in the way I expected to. I realize as I keep collaging and creating that the past conscious section is more representing the subconscious, at least back then, but I guess it’s what I’m presently conscious of about the past.

The art therapist asks how it feels going back and forth between the magazine and the watercolors, and I pause to ponder. They are different. Watercolor is more abstract and emotionally expressive. The clippings are more naming the feelings. They are sharp where watercolor is soft. I realize there is a very different feeling working with each of them. A shift occurs with each switch. Watercolor is more patient. Magazine cutting is more urgent.

We don’t talk for a while. I’m very focused. I do wonder what it’s like for the art therapist to sit there just watching, but I’m trying not to worry about her experience. She’s constantly reaffirming to me that I should not.

I’m not sure what time it is, but I know I will not finish this today. At least not how I planned to. When she informs me there’s five minutes left, I have one final piece I’ve cut to glue on.

We talk about how it felt. I tell her about how art therapy has felt like instead of going down the rabbit hole, I’m pulling stuff out of it. She asks about reconnecting with watercolors, and we talk about how it’s cool to be able to engage with something that I associate with bad times, like with Sweeney Todd and now these. I tell her how I’m having thoughts about and making connections with the traumatic stuff, but that I’m not in any way triggered.

One thing that’s made me feel hopeless about healing is just how much of my life can be traced back to my rapist. I met him when I was 13. We remained in contact until I was 22. Nearly everything that reminds me of my adolescence can remind me of him and then what he did to me. It often feels like I have to choose between having no happy memories and being triggered by them somehow.

In one sense, going to see Sweeney Todd and playing with watercolors are such small things for me to do in the present. In another, doing these things is showing me that there is a way to change my relationship with my memories. That is huge. The different lessons I’m learning in all these different services are helping me experience (again, in very small ways, but AT ALL is something I would have thought impossible) what it’s like to remember something from the past that triggers me, and for it to feel more like normal remembering than PTSD.

To have a modicum of hope that someday the act of remembering will not feel like a dangerous weapon is groundbreaking. I feel that hope.