Want, Need, Will

I just spent 3 hours alone with myself in a car yesterday.  Alone with the thoughts in my head and an iPod that only had enough juice in it to last a podcast.  Not a great place to be for one who is clinically depressed.  I suppose, though, it gave me time to sort some shit out.  About what I want, about where I need to be.

I have been spending the past week trying to pull myself together.  I was attempting to gather strength, video-game style.  My weapons were unsheathed and ready to slash those big dark baddies with one elegant button smash.  It never happened though...somehow I just fizzled out. Poof!  Power drain.

What I really thought I could do this week was knit.  I thought I could start a small, simple project.  Something I was sure to finish. I wanted to do it so badly I could taste it.  I rifled through my yarn stash.  I looked at my knitting books.  I dug out magazines and even logged onto ravelry.  I made big plans, in my head so many things were already complete.  Beautiful works of lace, squishy scarves, socks galore, all knit in handspun.

I wanted this.  I wanted it badly.

There seems to be a block that stops me from pulling out those warm and slender bamboo beauties...the thought of actually casting on, of holding yarn in my hands again...for some reason it is so daunting.  I think I want to...I have walked to the vase that holds my needles (bouquet-style) and poised my hand there countless times. Just before my fingers meet the smooth wood I halt, no--I retract--repulsed?  I wonder why, every single time.  I get this odd feeling, as if by unsheathing these weapons I will be starting something I can't stop.  I am the Psyche that chose not to open Pandora's box.

It takes a certain amount of will to release your demons--be it into the world or into a object.  There is a power in creation--I wrote about it before.  The objects that spill out of our heads into tangibility take on memory, an essence of there own.  By taking those needles into my hand again, I am embarking on something that I am not sure I am ready for.

It seems easy-- "just do it!" -- but I simply can't.   I need to, and I should do it.  But I can't.

Allow me to deviate for a minute from all this talk about creation.  Instead, I want to examine the word "will".  I typed the word "will" out a few times before choosing different words.  I suppose the word "will" has such inevitability in it that again it seems like opening a verbal can of worms, and again I find myself a failed Psyche.  "I will one day" or "It will happen" are frightening and resolute phrases.  So much future in that word, so much surety. Two things I fear the most.

This brings me to the German phrase "Ich will".  So much like my native English "will", but oh what a different meaning.  It translates not to future occurrences, but to "I want".  I marvel at the fact that they have the same root.  These two meanings have never been congruent for me personally, and now as my life teeters between moments of sadness and less sadness...I wonder if they ever will be.

Once it was in my grasp and I didn't hesitate.  I opened the lid on that box and what spilled out was light.  It snapped shut all too quickly, however.  Too briefly was that radiant warmth in my life.  I ache for it again.

But what I also want is to knit again. What I want is to feel happiness and contentment.  I want to be free of the mental net I am tangled up in. What I want is to be at ease in my own skin.  I want. I want. I want.

There just needs to be a Will.