Kids are a reflection of their parents (good and bad), especially younger ones, and it’s also hard to see how my mood effects them. My kids have often been my rocks through this recent wave of depression and anxiety. They have been careful and gentle with me, and give lots of hugs. But sometimes I need space, physical, emotional, and I try to ask for it in the kindest ways possible, but I know it hurts. I know it hurts because I see them process it, I see how their behavior changes in response to my own behavior. They take so much in stride, you know, but it’s exhausting for them, too. My youngest has so many more tantrums when I’m having bad days. She tries so hard and then just can’t anymore and explodes. My oldest is more withdrawn and weepy. She has always been a clingy child and when I’m having bad days she clings even harder. Which makes my need for space especially hard for her to bear and for me to ask for.
The worst morning of my most recent wave of depression I woke up with a panic attack. I had been awake for hours, ruminating on what I was trying to convince myself was just a really bad day -- but was really the day that kicked me over the edge from functional depression to, well, not functional depression. I felt utterly powerless, devoid of energy, emotional and physical. I hurt in every possible way, I couldn’t breathe, I was crying, it was one of the most intensely bad feelings I’ve ever had. I felt like movement was literally impossible. I recognized in almost an out-of-body observation that it was a panic attack. That realization made it slightly more manageable. Sometimes when I’m feeling out of control, the ability to recognize that I’m out of control makes me feel a little more in control. That rational voice is the one I try to listen to when things get bad. When the voice says, “This is a panic attack. You can move, you can do this.” I try to listen. So with Josh’s encouragement, and tremendous effort I managed to get out of bed, make some lunches and get the girls in the car to drive them to school.
On the way, I wanted to explain to them how I was feeling because I knew that they knew something was going on, and I wanted them to know it had absolutely nothing to do with them. It’s amazing how in touch with their feelings they can be. They are used to big emotions, and so I could tell them that a panic attack is kind of like a tantrum, and it’s like when they feel angry but they don’t know what they’re angry about and they can’t stop it. Only I’m not angry, I’m scared. They both were like, “Oh, cool, moving on.” It was like they got it, kissed me and went to school.
One of the many manifestations of my anxiety is guilt. I feel guilty about having anxiety, about how much the people in my life have to work around it. I feel guilty that I can’t be the person I want to be without so much work. The guilt has a way of spiralling - like any anxious thinking. Parenting and guilt are just like best friends, though, aren’t they? You feel guilty for all the things you can’t do, that you can’t fix, that you can’t make happen for them. The mistakes we make as parents haunt us, or at least they haunt me. I also have the guilt that I am passing on this stupid disease to them. When I see my kids displaying behaviors that I recognize it’s so heartbreaking for me. It can be so exhausting to live like this that the last thing I want is to share it with them.
On my better days I know that I’m mostly modeling good behavior. When I stumble and fall, I can, and do, pick myself up. I’m not just ignoring the anxiety, I’m actively seeking help and doing the work. If there is anything to be said in the positive about this most recent wave is that I’m showing them how to live with mental illness. I’m showing them that even when life is incredibly overwhelming that there is hope, help, and a way forward. I can only hope that they internalize some of what I’ve learned and it will make their journey easier.
Even at a young age, I struggled with anxiety. I didn’t have the words to describe the feelings that I was having at the time, but I recognize now that the strength of some of my memories come from an anxious reaction to events. Anxious people have a tendency to highlight the things that make us anxious, they stand out in our minds. We tend to ruminate endlessly on the events of our days, and let me tell you, it’s not generally the highlights, it’s the stuff that didn’t go as we’d planned, the ways that we wished we had spoken or acted differently. When I started anti-anxiety medication the first thing that disappeared was that endless cyclic thinking. To say that it was freeing is not strong enough, I finally realized what happiness looked like free from the blanket of anxiety and it was amazing.
That’s not to say that I had an unhappy childhood. There were specific challenges that I recognize as negative factors looking back as an adult -- we were poor, my parents divorced perhaps later than would have been healthy, we moved when I was 6 to a place that may as well have been the moon it was so different from what I was accustomed. These things shaped the narratives of my childhood, but I don’t remember being unhappy. I remember the isolation that I felt when we moved, and how hard my transition was from a suburban southern place to a rural northern place. I remember those first feelings of not fitting in, the trauma of my adolescence as always being an ‘other’. As isolated as I felt with the people I went to school with, my family always felt like home -- at least my mom and my brothers, and especially after my father moved out. I remember us being happy, or crying until we were laughing at what made us sad in the first place. I remember that love and feeling of safety.
I have snippets of memories from even earlier where I recognize patterns of thought that I now associate with my anxiety. I remember feeling terrible for years for that one time my Mee-maw yelled at me. Or the stress I felt in pre-school when I fell in a puddle and had to wear spare clothes. I was so embarrassed, mortified as a 3 year old. But no one used terms like anxiety or stress then. My dad was literally the only person I knew who had EVER been to therapy and he was considered a weirdo. I was experiencing, struggling really, with something that I just thought was something everyone had, they just handled it better than me, or they were braver than me, or stronger than me. I can only hope that by having language to describe what they may be feeling will help my girls deal with whatever they experience in life. That by seeing the benefits of therapy at a young age they will seek out assistance without shame always. Not just later, but now, any moment when they are feeling overwhelmed is an opportunity to ask for and receive help.
The first thing I started knitting when this new wave happened was socks. I think we always go back to our most basic, most secure thing. Of all the crafts, knitting has been with me the longest, and socks were my first project after the ubiquitous scarf -- when I was like 10, learning to knit. I remember the first sock I made was a pattern my mom found that had a seam up the back and I was like, “These are not socks. You need to call Mee-maw.” Mee-maw was my grandmother and true to form, she went to the attic and mailed me a sock pattern older than my own mother. Mom and I went to Shirley’s yarns and crafts, and got some proper sock yarn, and some double pointed needles, and I made myself socks. They were green and amazing and far more complicated than these socks are.
Socks have been my knitting best friend forever. Socks are what I make for Josh (since he’s too warm for anything besides socks and hats) Socks are my default, knit without a pattern, sit down and knit while having coffee project. I can make them in my sleep. I’ve made dozens of pairs, but I hadn’t knit a pair in years. Knitting had been tough for me after I closed my yarn shop. There was just too much pain there. I’d gotten my creative outlet in other crafts during the past two years. Don’t get me wrong, I had knit, but mostly patterns written by other people, and sweaters for myself and the girls. I hadn’t felt particularly creative about knitting, just that I was making things that I wanted to have.
As my mind churned I needed something that didn’t require too much thought. I have lots of projects on the needles, always, but I’d put most of them aside for the holiday crafting extravaganza that happens in November and December. I started this sock after Thanksgiving dinner. They were originally for my youngest, Zoë, but she saw them and told me she hated socks and didn’t want them and since the girls have very similar foot sizes I asked Clara if she would like them and she said yes.
I was about halfway through the sock when I spiralled out of control, so I picked it up and knit the rest of it very quickly. I started the second sock in the waiting room at my first appointment with my new therapist. It provided a good conversation starter, which was nice. Dr. B knew already the power of projects, and keeping my hands busy, and it was reassuring to me that he was a good fit when he saw it for the coping strategy it was.
Clara loved the socks so much. So much. So much that I grabbed the other skein of that yarn out of my stash and knit her a second pair immediately. I kept thinking that if nothing else, this sock shows her how much I love her. How much her comfort and warmth mean to me. How much I wish I could be there for her every second, every last one, and I know I can’t. When I’m not there these things on her feet are a representation of that love. Like a stand-in for my good parenting when I can’t be the parent I want to be.
It’s a lot for a little pair of socks to hold. But they hold it. They hold us both, in the knitting and in the wearing, they center us both. These socks were a beginning for me, an unfolding of something inside me, a thread of control, and they led me to this project of words and stitches which has come to mean so much to my recovery. They gave me something healthy to focus on when so much of my mind was spiralling out of control. And they’re really warm, and soft, and cozy, and everything I want my love for my girls to be.
You can purchase the pattern, I Hope You Know I Love You, at this link.
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-Auntie Lo
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