This is Angela's story...
It's very hard for me to write about the specifics on how knitting changed my life. I had married the wrong person for the wrong reasons. I was not strong enough nor honest enough with myself about what I was getting myself into. Getting out of the marriage caused a great deal of pain to a lot of people. I was young at the time and we all make mistakes, an idea that which only provides the barest of comforts. The fact was that I really wanted to love the man I was marrying, but wanting to love someone and actually loving them were two completely different things.
The choices I made were reflective of rampant low self esteem and perhaps a bit of laziness. Something subconscious felt that if I paired myself with a successful person that I wouldn't have to be successful myself. This is a very cowardly kind of success, to avoid failure by latching onto your partner's accomplishments. I justified it by believing that I was in fact making things easier for myself, never realizing that the easy road has far fewer reward and that someone else's success no matter how supportive you were is never your own.
I was just out of college. All of my friends had moved to LA. I discovered late in the game that I hated film production. After spending 5 years studying film, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I got an office job to make some money and pretended like I was being successful in some way. I was feeling successful, but lonely and unfulfilled. I tried quilting, but didn't feel very good at it and it was hard to find straightforward instructions on how to quilt. I enjoyed cooking, but doing dishes was never a way for me to relieve stress. All this time I felt empty, but couldn't figure out why. On paper, shouldn't I be thrilled. My partner was handsome, and hugely successful, and most importantly, he needed me.
One day, early in our relationship, he said something to me that bothered me enough to leave his house while he was in the shower without so much as a note. Then I wrote him an email saying how I didn't think we were ready for a relationship. I don't remember what the fight was about exactly, but I do know that I felt like he hadn't listened to me and I felt misunderstood and that he had turned my own words against me. I didn't like to fight that way. That night over the phone he told me how immature I was being and that he didn't want to break up. I listened half-heartedly, maybe a little proudly listening to this person try to win me back. But then he said in the most pathetic voice "I need you" and suddenly our relationship had a raison d'etre. I had a part to play in the world and it was to be needed by this person, melting away any needs of my own that I might have.
It was September 2004 and I had just married him. We were deep in the honeymoon phase of the marriage. Dancing around the house to our wedding song when the phone rang. It was the worst news: my husband's brother was in a medically induced coma due to septicemia. Within hours, my brand new husband was on a plane overseas for who-knows-how-long. Not only was there grief and worry for my in laws, but suddenly our marital bliss was stopped cold. I found myself alone during a time when I was expecting to be building a life with someone else. The whole situation was heartbreaking.
Alone in the house I got restless and stuck in a gloomy funk. I was interminably focused on my sadness and anxiously awaited any news over email. I would cry on the phone to my mom, something for which she had no patience. It didn't take her long before she told me to snap out of it, which was a bit of a wake up call. It felt a little wrong to try to do something to make myself feel better when so many people that I cared about were in so much pain. Even then I wasn't quite sure what to do. TV wasn't enough, waiting for news by email was just crazy-making, Facebook didn't exist yet. Something in my head said "When in doubt learn something new". I remembered that a Michael's had just opened nearby and headed over there to buy a learn-to-knit kit.
It wasn't too hard to pick the kit. I wanted something the least offensive looking that looked like it might have been designed in the current decade. Some of the blanket kits looked too difficult. I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing well enough to buy my own yarn and needles. I needed some serious guidance. Fortunately, Lion Brand had their Learn to Knit Kit with a simple looking scarf in a nice enough blue. I went with that and brought it home.
I turned on Entertainment Tonight, poured myself a glass of wine and looked closely at the instructions. Then I went to get another glass of wine. I tried casting on a couple of times, but just ended up with floppy noodles around my needles. I put it down for a little bit and tried again, but this time something clicked. Instead of doing the backwards loop cast on which turned my brain a little upside down, I did the knitted on cast on which was a boon because not only was I learning how to cast on, but I was already learning the knit stitch.
Soon enough I was knitting every row for garter stitch. At first my stitches were very tight and rough on my wrists. I was so afraid of dropping a stitch that I held the yarn for dear life. Soon my grip loosened and knitting became more natural. It was instantly gratifying to see my work in progress. I was teaching myself something that I never thought I'd be able to do. I was teaching myself something that others had tried to show me, but didn't stick and it was all coming naturally to me. I became addicted to watching the rows grow beneath the needles. I couldn't wait to learn how to do this other stitch, the purl stitch. Soon the wine caught up with me and the late hour too and I headed off to bed, feeling a little lighter.
The beginning of my scarf sat on my coffee table over night and it was the first thing I looked at the next morning. Somehow the passage of time has relaxed the stitches, they seemed straighter, the rows smoother as if by magic. I wanted to sit longer and admire my knitting, but I had to go to work... so I put it in my purse. From that moment on, I was a knitter and there have been very few times when I haven't carried a knitting project with me wherever I go.
No comments:
Post a Comment