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.

A Star Without A Name

A Star Without a Name

Seeds feed awhile on ground,

then lift up into the sun.

So you should taste the filtered light

and work your way toward wisdom

with no personal covering.

That's how you came here, like a star

without a name.  
Move across the night sky

with those anonymous lights.

                (Mathnawi III, 1284-1288)

The Things That Spin Betzi

Hello, dear Reader. It has been far too long. So much has happened in my life lately I am not sure that I would ever be able to catch you up all in one post. I won't even bother trying. Rest assured, it will trickle down to you bit by bit. Such a gentle stream of facts will never be able to reflect the tempest that has been my life lately, but I don't want to leave you in the dark either. So many of you were not just readers to me, but friends, and I have woefully under-appreciated the solidity that is your presence.

I am re-introducing Betzi Spins to the world, not as a spinning and knitting blog, but as a 'what's up with Betzi' blog. I assumed that when I started writing for this blog again, I would change the name of the blog to something more appropriate, less craft-related, because frankly dear reader, that will no longer be the focus. I hope to eventually provide you with more reviews, tutorials, etc., but for now other things take precedence.  I hope you will all stay with me however, as without you, my readers and friends, a blog is simply a journal.  I have enough private journals.  I am tired of hiding.

Lately I have spent a lot of time with more time with my old friend Music, and spin in a different way.  I have 2 weekly indie music streams, which I will give you more details about later, complete with links, times, how-to's.  Music has become an anchor for me, as it has been so many other times in the course of my life.  One thing is for certain:  regardless of the inconsistancies and fluctuations that may come along, music is always a constant. Music is something I can always land on softly, firmly.

 I spin my proverbial wheels in an attempt to regain all that I lost, including myself.  I have struggled to free myself from whatever it is I am mired in for so long that I have forgotten that the slick surface beneath my wheels has a name.  Perhaps the most prevalent spinning motion comes from those damn internal cogs, however,  the ones that have produced nothing lately but anxiety, fear, and self-criticisms.

Somewhere within me is a restful soul, one that knows what it is to be serene.  I know it is there, it is the normal state of me.  It is the me that lies beneath my persistent depression, the depression that seems to resurface when terrible and traumatic things happen, each time with greater severity.  And something did happen, friends--someone so very dear to me is suffering in a terrible and silent way, and I am unable to do anything to help.  For reasons I can't really divulge right now, I am unable to be at his side, to offer him my presence as comfort.

It isn't just that, though, that landed me in the Behavioral Health urgent care.  It is a culmination of things that have been slowly eroding me, and for years.  As is common for depression, though, there is generally a trigger and this was it.  The sudden disappearance of someone you love who also has a recurrent history of depression is so terrifying.  I am at this moment suffering from mild to severe depression and high anxiety with a sprinkling of codependency.  Not fun, but totally treatable.  And that, dear reader, is where I am:  getting help and support, finding that lost Betzi, attempting to get a foothold on life again.

I want to spin straw into gold.  I think this time, I will be able to.