I can make it better than what you could buy.

You can ask anyone who knows me personally.  I am a craftswoman at heart.  I crochet, knit, sew.  I can throw clay for ceramics and have a basic understanding of basket making.  I craft things with my hands because its my addiction that keeps me sane and a measure of freedom from my issues.

About two years ago roughly I think, I picked the crochet hooks back up, hardcore and serious like.  At the same time, I was picking up the bottle.  Alcohol was providing the same time of numbness that finishing projects was.  Only it didn't take as long with the booze as it did the yarn.  I don't honestly think anyone noticed I was drinking more for any reason outside of just because it was something to do.  Working at a dive bar for a couple of months, did help curb it.

2011 saw me drinking a lot.  I don't think anybody really noticed enough to say anything, as no one mentioned it to me.  That was before I admitted to the PTSD.  I just wanted to be numb.   I didn't want to deal with people and I was trying to gain weight to join the National Guard. I needed yarn though too, and was spending money on beer that I didn't have to spend.  So I hit a friend who I knew had access to a large stash of yarn that he had instructions to make shrink and go away.  

Huge haul of yarn later, and I was too busy crocheting to drink much.  It was yarn or the bottom of a bottle.  Since late 2011, when I moved to the middle of nowhere, I've not drunk much.  Just enough to feel the buzz and compliment a dinner I had made sometimes.  It was skeins of yarn instead six packs of hoppy goodness.

Yeah, I hide it pretty well because I kept pulling away from people.  People that were reminding me of what happens when you trust too many or the wrong kind of people. I don't think anyone really knows still, even after this, how much I drank because I hid it. 

It'll be good to with my fiance, because he drinks in moderation and I know that'll rub off.  I also know I'm going to keep crocheting or knitting or quilting or whatever the hell I feel like making.  Only its more now.  It's not just the numb inducing high from finishing a project now that results in a sweet deep sleep.  It's the satisfaction of knowing I've made something that will be last decades longer than that shit you could buy in the stores.  

It's the feeling of being just a little bit more alive.  Just a bit more back to being centered, reworked into a stronger woman.  I mean hell, I can even crochet or knit, an Ace bandage for wrapping sprains and twisted joints, etc.  Yes, you read that right.  Gauze bandages are woven threads.  Guess who knows how to weave?  Yeap, me.

With every passing day in 2011, I felt myself die.  I lost so many pieces of my humanity it seemed like.  I honestly stopped caring about most people save my closest friends.  And they can tell you, it showed.  As 2011 came to a close and 2012 started, it was still a black hole.  But each tiny piece I made, it felt like I was forging new pieces of myself.  You get a lot of time to let your mind wander when you've memorized patterns.  In thus, my mind wandered a lot.

I craft because it helps me feel alive.  I work yarn in patterns of color, not the level of perfection like a painter, but yarn is my paint.  It is the threads of myself and a level of self-correction.  Every piece I make has a few tiny flaws.  But every piece is a level of order, from chaos that I have wielded into a form that many can recognize.  It is my addiction that keeps the PTSD from getting the best of me.  

No attempted title witty today

It's been a very rough last two weeks.  I've lost track of how many days I'm going on now of little to no sleep.  Roughly two weeks ago, I walked past my younger sister who reeked of cigarette smoke.  And I mean reeked.  Guess whose PTSD triggered at the scent?

They smoked.  Heavily.  They reeked.

A week of nightmares and little sleep.

Past few days, I can blame on nerves partly over my upcoming move. But the nightmares are still there.  I've been having to keep my distance from my dad.

One of my more... feminist minded female friends has been in a tirade lately over the military mismanagement of punishing rapists within the ranks.  I've been trying to get it across to her, that the same people wearing the uniform violating folks...are the same fucking people as the civilian pieces of shit that do the same things.  Mindset is the same.  Just because someone is wearing a uniform, doesn't mean they aren't human anymore and not prone to the same problems and types of behavior that a civilian is.  Is just more pronounced, because the uniforms (military, police etc) place them within a very highly visible portion of the population.

That being said, I'd still trust someone from the military before I would a fucking civilian.  Why?  Hate to tell ya this cupcake, but they've always been the most honest.  At least with me.  There have been a couple that were absolute worthless Neanderthals, but they didn't stick around after getting things figured out.  See, down side of being a Witch... you get louder signals if something is wrong than most people.

The nightmares make it hard though.  The number of people who smoke is still rather disgusting to me.  Though, very rarely anymore do I let contact with a smoker happen.

My fiancé quit smoking.  Before I had told him what the scent does.  Like, two months before I knew the scent could trigger.   (Yeah, you could say I love the man.)

I'll be honest.  I don't want to find out what other triggers might be.  But I know I'm going to.  :-/

Yippee skippy.