I got some bad news yesterday.
What used to happen when I got upset, was that I would sit down with my good friends Ben & Jerry, or perhaps my foreign (sounding) buddy Haagen Daz, and freeze the feelings out.
Then I went to therapy and learned that I was supposed to feel those feelings in order to allow them to go away. Ben, Jerry and Haagen were just enablers in my grand scheme of avoidance. So, in between spoonfuls, I wrote about what was wrong.
Then I went to school and learned how to figure out when I was hungry and when I was looking to food to satisfy something else. In fact, I learned a whole lot about food, and nourishment, and which was what at any given moment. I learned to stop and ask myself a few questions before reaching for the bowl and the spoon, or anything else.
Yesterday I decided that that was all very well, but I was too upset to care. I had all kinds of fantasies during the day about what I was going to indulge in when I got home. And then I got home. I poured myself a glass of wine, and then proceeded to break the glass and spill the wine. I took it as a sign.
I had knit on the train home, and I was soothed by the repetition and the click-click of the needles. I took it out again, sat on the couch, and spent the next couple of hours click-clicking to my heart's, well, to my heart's ease. I wasn't putting chemicals in my body (sugar and alcohol are, after all, highly addictive chemicals), I was creating something. I watched it get longer and more beautiful. I was captivated by the slowly revealed pattern. I felt the soft, supple yarn slip through my fingers, and I started to feel better. And I finally felt, and knew, what I had intellectually understood since graduating. Sometimes nourishment isn't about food.
Here's what I'm making:
