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i had a small revelation the other evening while out walking with a friend. i was thinking out loud about the different ways i have responded to stress in my life, and the fact that i seem to develop obsessions for dealing with stress and anxiety.
when i was going through my divorce, for example, i became an obsessive runner. in the space of 3 months i went from a mainly recreational runner to a high mileage runner training for a marathon (which i completed). at the moment, in dealing with the stressors of the last couple of years, i have turned to knitting--those of you who know me IRL know that i have done a prodigious amount of knitting since october/november. i've completed a bunch of hats and scarves, a pair of felted slippers for a friend, and i'm about to complete the 5th sweater that i've worked on in that time period. (by comparison, i completed only 4 sweaters in the time period from when i learned how to knit in 1986, to last october. put another way, out of the 9 sweaters that i have ever knit, i have completed 5 in the last 4-5 months. the only reason i didn't complete the current one sooner is that i was sick with the flu for a week. (i'm going to have to slow down soon, though, since i'll be teaching 2 classes next quarter.)
i summed it up like this: running and knitting are very much material(ized) metaphors for the kinds of stress i have experienced, and how i have dealt with it. during my divorce, i was running off my grief. whenever i ran, i would imagine the grief wearing off my psyche like the rubber flaking off the bottoms of my shoes, step by step. at first, i was running to hurt myself, to physiologically materialize the emotional pain i was experiencing. but then, that grief accompanied a highly self-affirming act: the decision to leave my ex-husband and the resolve to not go back and instead to make it on my own. ultimately, running became self-care. over the last couple of years, i have experienced a cluster of different kinds of stress and loss/grief that in the aggregate has been profoundly self-fragmenting. so now it's more like i'm knitting myself back together, stitch by stitch, and finding self-affirmation in that process. with each sweater or hat that i complete--whether it's the ones knit for myself that look good on me and that i enjoy wearing, or the ones knit for others that truly please the recipient--i feel more...coherent or whole, somehow. more substantial, more capable/competent/efficacious, more sure of who i am, and more self-reliant. gaining confidence with this skill, this hobby, is restoring some of the confidence i have lost elsewhere. each new finished object embodies new skills, and shows how much i have improved since finishing the last object...and since finishing the first object. these items give me material evidence of my presence in the world, of my passage through it and my ability to exert an influence on it, even if in just these small ways.
when i was going through my divorce, for example, i became an obsessive runner. in the space of 3 months i went from a mainly recreational runner to a high mileage runner training for a marathon (which i completed). at the moment, in dealing with the stressors of the last couple of years, i have turned to knitting--those of you who know me IRL know that i have done a prodigious amount of knitting since october/november. i've completed a bunch of hats and scarves, a pair of felted slippers for a friend, and i'm about to complete the 5th sweater that i've worked on in that time period. (by comparison, i completed only 4 sweaters in the time period from when i learned how to knit in 1986, to last october. put another way, out of the 9 sweaters that i have ever knit, i have completed 5 in the last 4-5 months. the only reason i didn't complete the current one sooner is that i was sick with the flu for a week. (i'm going to have to slow down soon, though, since i'll be teaching 2 classes next quarter.)
i summed it up like this: running and knitting are very much material(ized) metaphors for the kinds of stress i have experienced, and how i have dealt with it. during my divorce, i was running off my grief. whenever i ran, i would imagine the grief wearing off my psyche like the rubber flaking off the bottoms of my shoes, step by step. at first, i was running to hurt myself, to physiologically materialize the emotional pain i was experiencing. but then, that grief accompanied a highly self-affirming act: the decision to leave my ex-husband and the resolve to not go back and instead to make it on my own. ultimately, running became self-care. over the last couple of years, i have experienced a cluster of different kinds of stress and loss/grief that in the aggregate has been profoundly self-fragmenting. so now it's more like i'm knitting myself back together, stitch by stitch, and finding self-affirmation in that process. with each sweater or hat that i complete--whether it's the ones knit for myself that look good on me and that i enjoy wearing, or the ones knit for others that truly please the recipient--i feel more...coherent or whole, somehow. more substantial, more capable/competent/efficacious, more sure of who i am, and more self-reliant. gaining confidence with this skill, this hobby, is restoring some of the confidence i have lost elsewhere. each new finished object embodies new skills, and shows how much i have improved since finishing the last object...and since finishing the first object. these items give me material evidence of my presence in the world, of my passage through it and my ability to exert an influence on it, even if in just these small ways.
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