A Sock Post

Don't you just hate it when people whine on and on on their knit blogs about uncomfortable personal stuff?  How annoying! So boring!
Actually, I'm feeling much better.  Proud of myself even for handling my little crisis. I have amassed an arsenal of tools over the years to deal with my anxiety issues, and I used them to good effect this round.  It was a rough few days but I've come out the other side now.  One of the things that helps is writing about it so thank you dear readers, all three of you, for your indulgence.

Back to knit blogging!  My latest sock project is an old reliable pattern (Hedera from the Spring 2006 Knitty) done in an old reliable yarn (Scheepjeswol Invicta in a gorgeous deep red). This was my second go at Cookie A.'s classic pattern.  It's a great morning commute knit. The four row repeat is easy to memorize yet is interesting enough to keep you motivated. These socks are going to look very cute peeping out the tops of my short boots.

Now I feel like immediately casting on a new sock but I still have a scarf and a cardigan on the needles. What the heck.  You know I will to do it anyway.

Triggered

Trauma is a funny thing.  You can soothe it, throw therapy at it, medicate it.  You can meditate it away. massage it. heal it.  You can get your chakras aligned and chant affirmations.  Ego reinforcements, crayon drawings and power walking.  When the panic comes, you ground those feet firmly to Mother Earth and count the sounds you hear. You do the work, whatever's necessary, and eventually you feel better.  Most days you breathe OK and often you laugh. Sometimes you forget about it altogether.


But it's always there just waiting.  Something happens, years later and it comes right back.  The trigger is pulled.  
Someone was nice to me.  Someone said "I get you", to me yesterday.  A vague feeling of discomfort slowly over 24 hours, turned into abject panic as I realized that I don't want to be "got".  Being so makes me feel vulnerable and that scares the living shit out of me.  I started remembering all sorts of things I've worked really hard to forget and as anyone who's experienced such memories knows, once they start, they don't stop. I cried in public today, something I haven't done in over three years.  I had a hyperventilating anxiety attack on transit and almost had to get off. Thank goodness I had my purple yarn with me and the sun was hitting it just right. Thank goodness there was a good song on the mp3 player to put on repeat.


When I got home, I danced to very loud rock music and cried a whole lot more. After I was tired out, I made and ate three tasty tuna salad sandwiches. Then I wrote an ugly blog entry that I'll not post. Some things are best kept private. I'll  transfer that one to my journal.  Still, today needs expressing so I'm writing this entry instead. Soberly  (yay for sobriety) as I listen over and over to Suzanne Vega sing:


I'll set my house in order now
and wait upon the Will,
It's clear that I need 
better skill at steering.
That line is the horizon.
We watch the wind and set the sails
But save ourselves when all omens
point to fail.


Widow's Walk
Songs in Red and Gray 2001

Went For A Walk Today

Sakura Park
The park admits the wind, the petals lift and scatter like versions of myself I was on the verge of becoming; and ten years on and ten blocks down I still can't tell whether this dispersal resembles a fist unclenching or waving goodbye. But the petals scatter faster, seeking the rose, the cigarette vendor, and at least I've got by pumping heart some rules of conduct: refuse to choose between turning pages and turning heads though the stubborn dine alone. Get over "getting over": dark clouds don't fade but drift with ever deeper colors. Give up on rooted happiness (the stolid trees on fire!) and sweet reprieve (a poor park but my own) will follow. There is still a chance the empty gazebo will draw crowds from the greater world. And meanwhile, meanwhile's far from nothing: the humming moment, the rustle of cherry trees. Rachel Wetzsteon

Sakura Park (Persea, 2006)

An Update

Yes, I did watch some Gray's Anatomy after which I took a long nap.  I also did some vacuuming, had an afternoon workout and even managed a bit of evening knitting.  So, not so bad after all.

Yarn

It's everywhere.

It peeks out of baskets all over my apartment.

It takes the form of three quarters done socks.

It's a barely begun cardigan.

It's in bags and plastic storage tubs and half finished shawls.  There's no seeming end to the possible projects that could be worked on this Saturday, my first day off in a while.  Or I could sort that cupboard I've been meaning to get to.  Or hem that skirt.  Or clean the unpleasantness from the bathroom. Yet I suspect I'll work on none of these things.  Here it is, nearly noon and  here I sit at the computer, still wearing my robe. All I've managed this morning is to take a few stash photos and drink two cups of coffee.   I am deep in a February funk my friends - listless and exhausted. I've just been reading some of your wonderful blogs and pondering with vague jealousy, where anyone finds the energy to accomplish all that?  
So, despite the presence of all this yarn and all these unfinished tasks, I'll probably just watch past episodes of Gray's Anatomy on line and wait for this to pass.

Very Lovely

The internet is truly the gift that keeps on giving
I discovered the Poetry Foundation website a while back and have casually dipped in and out of its archive since,  Yet it's only recently that I've paid serious attention to their podcast "Poetry Off the Shelf"  I download several at a time onto my tiny Creative Zen mp3 player and take them with me onto the oppressively crowded mid-winter streetcars and subways.  Thus it was that I sat, stuck in traffic this morning, knitting a sock, listening to Gertrude Stein's own voice reading in 1934 from Tender Buttons,
"She is sweetly here and I am very near and that is very lovely"
Priceless.

Here I am hanging with Gertrude in Bryant Park NYC in 2006