Let's be frank.

I want to be frank with you for a moment. I have Anxiety. I was officially diagnosed by a therapist I saw while in graduate school. I am not on medication. For the most part, you would never know. If I trace it back far enough, I've likely had coping mechanisms in place since I was in middle school, certainly since high school. I am good at hiding it. I am good at putting a smile on my face, putting one foot in front of the other, and going about my day. Some days, it takes all my energy just to make it out of bed, other days, I have energy to spare.

I taught myself to knit roughly a year before I got any official sort of diagnosis. Initially, it was because at the time, I was commuting 40+ minutes via bus from home to work; I cannot read on buses (or in cars, for that matter). I needed something to do to pass the time, and to help ensure no one else on the bus tried to talk to me. I found a book on how-to-knit in a bargain bin, and it came with a skein of yarn. My first project was the most horrible misshapen scarf. But in the process of teaching myself how to knit, via this book and the internet, I realized it helped to calm me. The act of needing to concentrate on the stitches, of needing to count my rows, helped to focus my attention on this single one thing. I got into lace knitting, taught myself more advanced stitches.

At the same time, when the Anxiety gets truly bad, on the days it is everything I have to get out of bed, I cannot even pick up the needles. On those days, even knitting seems to be too daunting of a task.

2016 was a bad year for a number of reasons. I had signed up for a Mystery Knit-A-Long, due to start in March. Well, cue February/March, and I had one of my worse bouts on Anxiety. None of my normal coping mechanisms worked. Knitting was too much. The idea of even needing to wind my skeins was too much. I did not start it. By May/June, I was mostly back to normal. But already three months behind with it, the idea of trying to catch up was not something I could deal with just yet. I knit a gigantic shawl instead. I knit a hat. Two pillow covers. All the while, the months for this thing I could not knit kept arriving.

In September, things took an unexpected turn. And I realized, as bad as everything was, I was ok. And If I did not keep knitting, I would lose months again. So I did. I knit that hat. I moved to Pittsburgh. I knit those pillow covers. And with the new year, I finally finally pulled out that first month of the Mystery Knit-A-Long, and I started knitting. It is a blanket, I found out. Knit in separate squares. I have (so far) knit three. It is, I think, 50 squares. I expect it to take a while. I expect I may knit other smaller, less intensive projects in between.

But the thing is. I am finally knitting it. And that right there? That is something.