New Wave

I’d like to say that this new wave of depression all started with a really bad day.  This isn’t my first dance with depression, and I have struggled with anxiety my entire life, but sometime in mid December I had a really really bad day.  I kept running the events over in my head, breaking more each time, and telling myself I shouldn’t be so broken about just a bad day.  In truth it was more than a bad day.  I’d been having more bad days for a long time, and this was just the tipping point.

It’s such a slow and slippery slope sometimes.  Bad habits in thought, diet, exercise, combined with my natural anxiety can combine into perfect storms of depression.  I mean, I medicate myself daily to manage just the static in my head, so it’s not unbelievable that I would react badly to a series of bad times.  I do a pretty good job, and I care a lot about my mental health.  I know the anxiety exists and I try to manage it, so I can be there for my family, so I can enjoy my life.  But I had been barely holding on for a while, and that day all my triggers all fired all at once.  This just snapped me in half, but I was already cracked in so many places that snapping me didn’t take that much effort.  It was a day tailor made to break me.

So, laying in my bed, paralyzed with anxiety, sadness, anger, fear, I drew a line in the sand.  I did not want to live like this, and so I needed help.

A friend of mine had seen through some of my facebook posts into the lurking darkness and had low-key messaged me months ago recommending a therapist that had helped her a lot when she went through some tough times, so I called that practice to see if I could get an appointment. Of course they couldn’t see me, which was a huge blow.  Before you get mad on my behalf for the practice turning me down, they only treat menopausal and postpartum women, of which I’m neither, and the receptionist tried really hard to figure out a way I could come and when we finally realized that it wouldn’t work recommended other practices, but still my first cry for help didn’t even work.  

But when I draw a line in the sand, I draw a line in the sand.  So I poled my friends on facebook and all of their recs either didn’t take my insurance or were an inconveniently far drive.  I looked at what my health insurance list said and almost chose a person whose last name was Swerengen, just because I loved the show Deadwood.  But I couldn’t make the call.

Realizing my resolve was wavering, and I was finding every reason I could to not to call someone, I decided to just call the practice we used for the girls after our car accident left them unhinged.  (hell, it left me unhinged, that’s why I ended up starting anti-anxiety meds, but that’s a story for another day)  I knew they took my insurance, I knew how to get there, and I was doing my best to remove barriers to therapy.  I used the logic that even if it was a terrible fit, and an annoying drive, it existed and I was already in their system and familiar with their intake procedures.

Luckily, they had appointments available, unluckily they were right in the middle of the school run.  I called Josh and told him my disappointment and he said he’d stay home so I could get therapy started.  

I felt an overwhelming sense of pride at getting myself there.  I filled out my intake documents, made sure I had my insurance information, a check for the copay (since the last time I was there they only took checks), I had a mug of coffee and my knitting and I was ready to do it.  Imagine my further joy when Dr. B was such a good fit.  At that point I had forgotten basically all of my skills.  All of my strategies for coping with my anxiety were just covered by a dusty tarp locked up in some summer house no one had visited in years.  Over the course of that session he started pulling off the tarps one by one, throwing open the curtains and reminding me of all of these things that I could do to help myself.  Things that I knew but hadn’t needed in so long that I had forgotten they were there.  He doesn’t like to take any credit, since I do all the work.  But I do credit him for providing me the space to work out my plan for getting better, and for being a solid person to bounce ideas off of, who calls out my guilt and anxiety when it’s managed to fool me into listening to it.

I often visualize my depression and anxiety like waves at the beach.  I can stand there, knee deep in water and watch the waves roll in.  Some are larger than others, but they just keep rolling in.  Some come up to my knees, some to my waist, and others are over my head and knock me down and roll me on the ocean floor before I can regain my footing.  I have no more more power to stop the waves of depression than I can stop the waves on the shore.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t swim.  They don’t have to drag me under.  Therapy is reminding me I can swim, teaching me a few new strokes, maybe finding a path for me to leave the beach.  

This wave metaphor has been a powerful image for me when I feel like I can’t manage.  First, it reminds me of going to the beach with my girls.  We go quite a bit during the summer and it’s usually amazing.  It’s one of the few things we can all agree on consistently and the best way to spend a day when we’ve been arguing and on each other’s nerves.  Also, we get ice cream on the way home, so bonus.  Second, it reminds me that as overwhelming as it feels to be rolled by a wave, it’s also finite.  It ends and I can stand up again.  Sometimes all I need is the patience to wait for it to move past me.  Third, it’s a really powerful sense memory.  I can close my eyes and see the beach we go to during the summer.  I try to time my breaths to the waves as I calm myself down.  It’s such a clear picture that I can pick out tiny fragments to focus on to recenter myself.  The sounds, the smells, the feelings of the sun, or water, or sand, all of these can ground me in a moment when I feel myself spiralling.

The visual helps me deal with whatever I’m struggling with in the moment, but the metaphor also helps me forgive myself for the struggle.  Being angry at myself for having anxiety is like being angry at the ocean for making waves.  Do I feel guilty about “letting” an ocean wave knock me down?  No.  Why should I feel so guilty when a wave of anxiety knocks me down?  I can ride out the wave, and try to make better decisions in the future to make the wave less intense, but this guilt about the waves existing is pointless.     

Being such a powerful image I started having all of these ideas for knit waves, and I wanted to explore how it would look.  I love the idea of the waves decreasing in strength, and I wanted to knit something to bring that metaphor to life.  To remind myself that my recovery isn’t a straight line and that’s okay.  Even though these waves will keep coming they will become more manageable.  My life is full of stressful events -- some good stress, some bad stress, but full of events.  But I will learn to manage them (and I will recover when I don’t manage them).

The New Wave cowl is an exploration of waves made out of wedges of short rows.  You decrease at the end of each wedge so they shrink organically as the project goes on.  You will end up with a long triangular piece of knitted fabric that you could wear as a short scarf, or a cowl.  Wearing it like a cowl makes me feel a bit like if Queen Elizabeth I had a baby who was a steampunk pirate princess, which is kind of awesome and maybe my next cosplay.  Using a tonal, variegated, or striping yarn makes the wedges stand out more.  The wedges are repetitive and pretty easy to master once you make a couple.  If you are intimidated by the concept of the wedge, knit Whatever you Need Me to Do first.  The only difference between those wedges and these is the decrease on the last row so it’s a good way to get used to the stitch in a low commitment project.