Friday, February 23, 2007

Knitting as Therapy or I Knit so I Don't Go Up on the Roof with an Uzi

It's been a rough couple o'months. Thank God for needles & string, that's all I can say. I know all of us joke about knitting being our sanity & salvation*** but in my case it's true. The rhythmic clicking of the needles, the soothing feeling of pulling one loop through another, the meditativeness of yards & yards of stockinette .... it's kept me from going postal (please no letters from the US Mail Carriers Association offended by the phrase). Cases in point:

1. In June 2006, my Simba died. Now, before you go all "well, it's really just a cat" keep in mind that he was actually a person in cat hair. We communicated with just little touches, he with a paw & me with my hand. He squeaked & I sang. I felt lost without him. Still do some days if truth be known. The day I went to pay his final vet bill was a tough one, just as bad as the day my Dad died and I'm so not kidding about that. To make me feel better, John took me to my LYS. I bought a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Glitter Alpaca (which I still have, by the way) and signed up for a sock class. To date, I've made 14 pairs of socks, am good friends with the LYS owner and now work part time at the shop just for the yarn. That day I wanted to die. Knitting saved me. (On a side note, this was also the day I discovered the Lime n'Violet podcast. I laughed for the 1st time since he died because of them).

2. Later on in the summer of 2006 hubby & I had the children discussion. You know the one every newly married couple has ....let's get started on this whole baby making thing. I knew there would be obstacles (hubby had a bit of surgery to prevent that whole baby making thing 10 years ago but I wouldn't let that stop us). I won't bore you with the details but just go to the bottom line ... we're not having any children. I want them, he doesn't. Can you say "where's the Xanax?" I cried, I begged, I bargained ... no budging. He had 4 children, didn't want anymore & that was that. Oh, I was free to be with someone else to have children because he didn't want me to give up what I wanted ...oh, sure, like I'd do that. Took me this long to find him. Men are lining up around the block to have children with a 40 year old overweight bitchy knitting fool. Let me run right out & find me one of those. Yeah. Once again, knitting saved me.

3. My happy vibrant don't let any grass grow under her feet sister (that's her up there on my header, looking at the crazy one shoving Cracker Jack in her face - ain't she cute?) has MS. Now, we've known about it for a few years & have watched as she's gotten a bit worse every day. I spent a week with her in NY this past November visiting relatives and am with her 24-7 for a week. I can now see close up how hard every single day is. How she struggles to just go pee sometimes. How her feet & legs burn and tingle every minute of every hour of every day. And I see how she doesn't let on. I knit that entire vacation. I kept knitting when we came back and her doctor told her she either had to learn to use hand controls in her car or give up driving. And I knit even more when the doctor told her it was time to think about a wheelchair. Yup, knitting again.

4. We won't be moving from the hell that is this house anytime soon. Why is that you say? Well that would be because the tax refund we talked about using as a down payment is gone. The bills we were going to pay with it remain unpaid. So I'm destined to spend another year in this fucking dump. Shit, with this one I was now working on a sweater (for my sister, of course).

I could go on & on about how knitting is keeping me off of Zoloft. The list could go on for pages but I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that if I didn't have the pointy sticks I would be in a padded room , drooling down the front of my straight jacket.

Just keep knitting, knitting, knitting.

***In addition to the knitting, Anne & Sindy are my ever present "keep me grounded & away from the vodka" soul mates. Without them I'd truly be crackers***

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good for people to know.