For the longest time, I thought knitting was for little old ladies in nursing homes. But for some reason or another I wanted to try it. After I graduated high school in 2013, I was determined to learn how to knit. I had a whole summer ahead of me with three months of everything and nothing all at once. It was the perfect time to take up this new hobby. In true God fashion, He ignited my passion for knitting in the most unlikely of places. My family and I were on summer vacation in Boston, Massachusetts visiting my very pregnant cousin. While we were walking back from lunch near Harvard, I stumbled upon a grocery bag full of yarn and a pair of knitting needles. What were the odds of that? I began learning but lost interest as my first semester of college year grew nearer and nearer. I left my needles and yarn at home, forgetting about them while I focused on college.
2015 was the worst year of my life. I tragically lost four family members that year. It was a hard year for everyone in my family. The icing on the cake was when I found a dead body at work.
Yes, you read that correctly.
I. Found. A. Dead. Body.
I had to do a wellness check on a resident, who turned out to have been dead for about eighteen hours. I was fine when it happened. Someone had to be calm. After all, I was surrounded by the resident’s friend and girlfriend, who were running around like a chicken with their heads cut off. After the whole ordeal, I was cold and couldn't stop having nightmares about what I saw. I pushed those nightmares aside and kept my head high. I thought that class and work came before my health.
As the days went by, I felt myself becoming more drained and depressed. I was falling behind in school and slacking off at work. I felt there was nothing I could do. The nightmares were getting worse, and I began to take it out on my face by picking at invisible acne. One day, while I was slacking off at work, I looked up the symptoms of PTSD, and they all matched up. I was numb, destructive to myself, and I couldn't stop reliving that horrible moment. So what did I do?
Nothing.
I had no time to go to a therapist between work and school. I was taking fifteen hours that semester, with an irritatingly difficult advertising class to boot, and was working about thirty hours at the apartment complex. At the time, I was too afraid to ask my manager for time off because of my crippling anxiety that told me I would let everyone down if I didn't work hard.
I had to be strong.
But how could I be strong when I felt so weak?
A couple of weeks after the incident, I went home to Dallas for the fair. I hoped that drowning myself in fried Oreo's would help me forget what I was going through back in The Hub City. Before I left, I noticed the wicker basket filled with my treasure trove of street yarn. I went over to it and picked up a ball of yarn.
"Can I take this?" I asked my mom, who was in the kitchen at the time.
"Sure. No one's using it here." With that, I loaded the basket into my car and drove back to the real world.
I started learning as soon as I got in my apartment. No one had told me how excruciatingly frustrating knitting was. When I thought I got the basic knit down, it turned out to be completely wrong. But surprisingly, I kept trying and didn't give up.
Knitting became my medicine and my coping mechanism. When I would have a nightmare, I would wake up and start knitting. When I had the urge to pick at my face, I would go to my couch and start knitting. The repetitive movements of the needles calmed me down from many panic attacks and nightmares.
My first project was atrocious. It was full of holes and wider at the end than it was when I cast on. But words cannot describe how much that one project led to another project and eventually helped me manage my PTSD. I got back on track with classes and eventually got the nerve to ask my boss for fewer hours at work. Knitting has become my stress reliever, and I've even gotten some of my friends into it too. My PTSD will never go away and I'll never be able to forget what I saw, but whenever I work on a project, no matter how frustrating it may be, I'm able to forget the world for awhile and not worry.
