Trust Yourself

A phrase ringing through my head - Trust yourself to feel everything, you can handle it.

I have a children's coloring book about feelings.  While doing age play at *Mom's* house I was asked to choose one of the pictures that described how I was feeling and color it.  I really didn't want to.  I tried to go somewhere else, but she was pretty insistent.  Looking through the book, I finally decided on bashful and shy.  When I read it, I knew that is what I was really feeling.  I started coloring while she fixed dinner.  My little head went every where.  I felt the tears starting to come to the surface.  That is a seriously dangerous place especially for the little me.  I stopped coloring and drew an eye at the bottom of the page.  I know that if I draw an eye, it means that the tears are close and threatening.  If I can draw the eye, maybe I can keep the tears inside it.  It is another form of controlling for me.
But, what wasn't I trusting myself to feel?  I know it was not about the bashfulness.  The one who is Mom, reaches right past that.  She interacts with me regardless.  She came and laid on the floor beside me and commented on my picture and the drawing.  I wanted to tell her, but I knew I would cry.  Somehow the little me found the courage to ask if I could lay beside her.  I still couldn't tell her.  And the tears came anyway.  What I was feeling was fear, specifically the fear of rejection.  From that little head space, I wanted to open up and embrace and accept.  I was afraid to trust her.  Afraid that it would be like the past.  So afraid to believe that it was real.  Snuggled together for a few minutes, the wall came down, some of the pain washed away right along with the fear.  She didn't make a big deal over the tears, she let them, and me, exist in the moment.
Trust yourself to feel everything.  I know that some things feel so horrible, intense and hurt like hell.  I know too that even when it feels like I can't handle it, when emotion is so strong it feels like 100 pounds is sitting on my chest, I can handle it.  It may be in baby steps and that is okay.
Trust yourself to feel everything - you can handle it.