Cover up and Feel Alive

Today I've got my spread for the DOCUMENTED LIFE prompt from February 14 to share with you.  The theme for February was "Layers You Will Love", the art challenge was "Cover Up Good Stuff", and the journal prompt was "Going Undercover".

Here's what I made:

"The hardest thing you will ever have to do is to let yourself feel alive."

I got the words for today's spread from this song "Time to Leave" by Melissa Ferrick:

I used lyrics from this song in another spread recently, but these ones are so good, I figured it'd be alright...

Do you see the theme in the images?

When I thought about the prompt "Going Undercover", images of people shrinking back into themselves came to mind...of people hiding...all kinds of negative connotations.

For me, this spread is about the things that hold us back from being "alive"...from being our true selves.

On the left hand page, there's the girl who's constantly looking to someone else for the answers.  Then there's the girl who's always looking back on the past with regret (although I do love that artwork, she looks so melancholy).  And at the bottom, the girl who's always longing for what she can't have (Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth...one of my absolute favorite pieces ever).  On the right page, there's the girl who's constantly finding something else to do so that she can ignore what needs to be done.  And then the little girl hiding herself away because she's afraid.  And lastly, there's the girl in the swing...she's got it all figured out: to be exactly who and what she wants to be.

I think sometimes we (or I) make things harder than they have to be...we over-complicate what should be simple.  Like the song alludes to, it takes time and making up our own mind to see things clearly.  

It's not easy...it should be, but it's not.  

For me, I think that's why it takes us being...not brave (or not only brave)...but fed up...to be so sick of something that it's literally a knee-jerk reaction to have to make it change.  And then the challenge is to not let those nagging doubts or bad habits creep back in and push us back into our little holes.

We only get one go round in this life...I don't want to spend any more time shrinking back or covering up.  I am working on being the girl on the swing, boldly being whatever it comes to my mind to be.