Yarn Saves My Life Every Day

TW for this article: mental illness, suicide, self-harm mention

I'm a lucky person. I get to play with string, and sometimes people pay me to do it.

The story of how I got to do that doesn't make me sound lucky at all. I went through more than my share of abuse as a child. Trauma - capital T Trauma - seemed to follow me for a few years. It didn't help that I was already an anxious child, prone to depression; if nothing had happened to me, I'd still be mentally ill.

All that trauma caught up to me in the worst way. Panic attacks, self-harm, suicidal thoughts have all plagued me from the time I was a preteen. I've been hospitalized in psychiatric wards upwards of 30 times in my adult life. I've lost count of how many times were because I'd actually attempted suicide.

Up until a year ago, if you asked me my chances of surviving it all, I would have just laughed. There was no way. The human mind can't handle that much for that long, right?

In 2012, in an attempt to find something - anything - that could ease my mental pain, I found myself at a residential treatment center. I would live there for a few weeks, undergoing extensive therapy, and hopefully I would come out cured. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, but what did happen would change the course of my entire life.

I walked into the lodge I'd be living in and everyone was crocheting. Everyone. To the point where I was, for a split second, worried I'd walked into some sort of cult where they taught women to be more domestic and submissive. "Don't worry," my tour guide laughed. She must have seen the look on my face. "You'll be doing it soon, too."

Yeah, right, I thought. I'm not domestic like all of you. I haven't done a craft since kindergarten. You'll never get me.

Three days later I was working on my first blanket. A friend taught me to chain and single crochet, and I was (don't say hooked, don't say hooked) obsessed. I called home, asked my parents to send me yarn of my own. And boy did they deliver. A whole box of Red Heart Super Saver that the nurses had to keep because it was simply too much. I was in heaven, crocheting to control my anxiety while processing my feelings in group therapy.

Of course, the blanket was a mess, just like I was. I made all the beginner mistakes. I didn’t know how to attach new yarn, so there’s knots all over the place. I missed stitches at the end of rows and added stitches in strange places, so the edges look like a winding river. I mixed fibers and used a hook much too small, so the fabric is dense and not very comfortable.

But it was my blanket. I made it. With my own hands. Amazing.

From then on, you couldn’t pry the yarn from my hands. I went home and crocheted my ass off. A year later, I taught myself (well, Youtube taught me) to knit. I tried everything: dolls, jewelry, baskets, bookmarks. Knitting and crochet became the one constant in between all of the treatment for my mental illness. Hospitals, therapists, ECT and meds, they all came and went. But my craft helped me through it all.

Suddenly, I had a hobby. Not just a hobby - a purpose. A lifeline. When I was at my lowest, when I wanted it all to end, I would think I can’t die now. I have a hat to finish for my sibling. I have to see what this shawl looks like when it’s done. I want to feel this yarn from my favorite indie dyer. I want to work with a fiber I’ve never worked with before. Suddenly, I had reasons to hold on. Of course, I had my family and friends, as well, the support of whom I could write a whole other article on. But when you’re that depressed, any reason you can find is a good reason.

In addition to the work itself, there’s another thing that I’m grateful for: the community. I’ve met so many beautiful, wonderful people through this hobby. I stay in contact with them through social media, through Discord, sometimes in person. They give me so much encouragement in my work, and make me feel like it’s appreciated. I can share my love with other people and receive love in return.

Yarn saved my life, more than once. And it continues to do so.

Things are more stable now. I started a new medication, esketamine, that acts as an emergency treatment for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD. I haven’t self-harmed in years, and recently celebrated staying out of the hospital for a year straight (the first time I’ve done so in 13 years). And through it all, yarn was there. I couldn’t be more thankful.