knitting | Sleep is for the Weak

Contentment

Posted by Josie on Jun 4, 2011 in Knitting, Me, Moments | 13 comments

I have had two days full of peace.

It started with an out-of-the-blue phone call from someone very special to me sharing good news, which is probably the best kind of out-of-the-blue phone call you can get, followed by a long, lazy day sat in the sunshine, once the smallest one had been waved off to enjoy a day of paddling pools at his Dad’s. I sat, I giggled at the irony of knitting a thermal winter hat for my friend in Oz on what felt like one of the hottest days of the year, and I lay on my back watching the clouds, thinking they looked like islands in a Pacific Sea, and imagining that it was me drifting above them, suspended in orbit. I could feel sun easing the deep aches and pain that seem determined to dog me at the moment, and as I started to doze off, I retreated inside, taking off my thin sun dress to crawl under cold white sheets to sleep and sleep.

Writing Workshop: Have, Am, Will

Posted by Josie on Feb 10, 2011 in Creative Writing, Me, Writing, Writing Workshop | 35 comments

There have been four times in my life when I genuinely thought I was going to break. I don’t mean just bad days, I have talked about getting through them before, I mean when you feel like you are actually going to die, or want to, when just the thought of keeping going one more minute seems physically impossible. It feels like your heart will stop, your brain will shut down, just through sheer, overwhelming emotional pain. If you’re lucky, you get through it. If you’re not, well, I guess you probably have a breakdown. I don’t know. Lucky enough I’ve always got through.

Three of those times have been in the last year, and Tuesday was one of them.

I could write in great detail about why, but I won’t. All you need to know is that after a really, really difficult couple of days, walking Kai back from nursery, it was like something snapped. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t hear. It was like my ears had filled with water, or I was standing in a wind tunnel. I’m honestly not entirely sure how I stayed upright.

All I could say to myself was “Just get home. Just get home” over and over, trying to make my body breathe and put one foot in front of the other. And get home I did. And then I let myself cry.

Do we have an emotional limit? I think we do. At least, I think we have a point at which we can be taken TO, but not over. I felt like I was there.

It did not go, that feeling. It stayed with me all day, rising and falling with the demands of my afternoon. Because I’m a mother, aren’t I? And that doesn’t stop. An automatic pilot making sandwiches and building train tracks as I tried to breathe. I couldn’t remember how to breathe. I couldn’t remember who I was. Oh no. That’s right. I do know these things. And so another minute passed. An another. I was still alive. I wasn’t quite sure how, wrapped in this huge, ice cold, weighty shadow, that seemed to have attached itself to my bones and my skin.

At some point, when Kai was playing, I picked up a tangle of wool from a bag at the side of sofa. Now, I’m usually a good knitter and ball my wool when it arrives, but here I had been too eager, knitting straight from the skein, leaving it, inevitably, when I’d finished, a tangled bird’s nest of knotted yarn. And with the wind still strong in my ears and my hands shaking and shaking, I found the loose end and began to untangle it, winding it into a neat ball. I don’t remember why.

I chased each loop and knot with my fingers, passing the bright yarn up and over and round, through each tangled tunnel and hole, round and round and round, breaking off to wipe Kai’s nose, or try and sooth his temper, or fetch a snack, but over and over I returned to my mess.

For a while there were no thought, but after a while it became like a set of rosary beads. Each turn and twist a new thought, a new internal cry. I chased my paralysing worry about Kai through knotted loops; I chased my crushing guilt at wanting to be happy and how that seems, in itself, determined to cause pain; I chased my exhausted effort to do the right thing, over and over, and internally screamed at the fact that it still seems to never be good enough, to hurt and rebound ineffectively, however hard I try. Turn and unloop and unknot and pull and wind and wind some more. Please let me cope. I am not coping. I have to cope. Pull and unknot and wind again.

And somehow the day passed.

I put a tired and fragile boy to bed. I remembered to eat. I talked quietly on the phone and was made to smile. And I wound my ball of wool until, at last, hours and hours after I had begun, I came to the end of it, at which point I put it down, without looking at it, and went to bed.

Coming down in the morning, it was the first thing I saw. Wound tight, and neatly; it’s strands criss-crossing in rainbow stripes. And nothing had magically changed, and nothing suddenly made sense, but I realised I was still here, I was still together, and I hadn’t broken. So I went to put the kettle on and had a better day.

I have coped. I am coping. I will cope.

Now it’s your turn. What triplet did you use to look back, look at where you are, and look forward?

Leave your name and the URL to your post in the Linky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) If you have the time it would be great if you could try and show your support to other participants by reading and commenting on at least two other entries.

If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve got another whole week to take part and enter your link so there’s plenty of time. Don’t forget that anyone can take part! Our next workshop will be in two week’s time, so I hope to see you back soon.

(I’ve used a free linky thingy today while I sort out my subscription to McLinky tools – grr. Don’t panic that old Writing Workshop McLinkys have disappeared – they shall be back soon)