Art therapy: drawing how I feel

The Dutch word for "complicated" is "ingewikkeld" which also means "entangled", kind of like a rope. That's how I felt after dating a man (that one time, in college). I was 20, feeling like I finally fit in because I was conforming to the norm, but at the same time he treated me like a second class citizen and I had exhausted all my efforts trying to prove my worth to him. So yes, yikes. 

The whole situationship lasted less than 5 months, and it took me 3 years to get over it and 5 years of celibacy to step into my queerness out in the open. While being with him, I didn't manage to draw anything. Only this moose he wanted me to draw, oddly enough. And when I did, of course he wanted a deer instead. Even odder. But I was too entangled to realise this was gaslighting, and I was being narcissistically abused. Only after I got out, and started drawing again, did this artwork come out of the fog.

I sat and meditated on how I felt, and just started drawing the image that came to me. I have no words to describe this familiar feeling, only this image. This artwork now reminds me to never let anyone make me question my reality ever again.

(And it worked, as soon as my first girlfriend started this with me too, I left her. Yes I'm not out of the woods yet, my childhood trauma still haunts me. But I am improving).

Materials

Ballpoint pen & markers on paper

Size

A4 21 x 29.7cm

Year

2019