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.
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