Knitting to recovery

Working on the beading/knitting project has reminded me how much crafting has helped me in my recovery of depression and self injury.

I learned how to knit at the end of my freshman year of college. I was just realizing that I could get help, that I didn’t need to be the way I was. Something was wrong and I could take steps to fix it. My very close friend came over to keep me company the night before I was leaving with her knitting project and extra yarn and needles and taught me how to knit. She doesn’t know it, but it was the best gift she could ever give me.

That summer I started a blanket of garter stitch squares and whenever I felt sad, or an urge to hurt myself, I picked up the project and knit furiously. I spent most of my free time that summer knitting.

The next year I made the decision to return to counseling on my own and went through it on my own. I was so scared that I brought my knitting with me to keep my hands busy in the waiting room. Keeping my hands busy has always been the best thing for me.

That same year when I was on the borderline between sane and suicidal I started knitting a stuffed loch ness monster. As I was falling towards the suicidal edge of the line I told myself that I couldn’t do anything yet because I was in the middle of a knitting project. I told myself to hold on until the project was done and then reassess the situation.

I never finished. I completed the knitting, seamed it, stuffed it and closed him up (his name is Ernest, by the way) gave him a scarf and hat and waited for the weekend to catch a bus to the mall to get eyes and finish him. He now lives on my bed at home and he is eyeless. I won’t consider him finished until he can see and I never intend on letting that happen. My situation has changed since then; I’m no longer dancing between sanity and suicide. I keep him unfinished because until he’s done, the promise to myself is still in place, another layer of security between me and my very worst.

No one knows this and writing it out is a bit scary for me, but it serves as a reminder to myself and I hope other people can make the same sort of promise or realize that sometimes those urges to harm can be made into something constructive.

I’m still not recovered. I have my setbacks and whenever I feel particularly vulnerable I bake or bring out the knitting. It’s nice to know that my depression can turn to creation.