Hello, reader. How are you doing? I have a new motto, developed while trying to teach myself how to crochet. Just because you’re crying doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
disability
Most everything I do, I do in my own way. It’s custom for the disabled person. Lots of trial and error!
I can go up and down stairs, but I need to go slow and turn sideways for the down part. I can be friends with people– I just have to txt every day probably, to keep a rhythm and feel safe. Making zines, I use scissors and glue stick like it’s 1991. Cool! No problem.
Happy-happy is the goal, but crying can be a way to get from here to there. A step across the stream.
Sometimes we need to cry before we can laugh, or my favorite is to do both at the same time. Sometimes crying is a form of happy! It’s deeply satisfying to feel how I actually feel and tell the truth about my sorrow.
So I’m happy to be sad. Feeling how I actually feel is what I’m here for.
buncha knots
What does it mean, to crochet? My mom crocheted for decades–she loved to have a project. It was something to do with her hands while she watched movies, but it was also an act of love, to make blankets, scarves, and hats for relatives and coworkers’ baby showers.
I wouldn’t let her teach me because I didn’t want to hoard yarn like she did. So that’s part of why I was crying.
“I don’t have to do it the right way– I can do it my own way,” I told myself. “It’s just putting a buncha knots together to make something. I can make the knots however I feel like it.”
Once I saw people on a social media site who did anarchy crochet with no pattern. They made shapes and then outlined the shapes and formed blankets like that. Weird shaped blankets that were free from. That’s when I said, hmm, maybe I could do that.
family
Watching my mom strain to comprehend patterns from pattern books turned me off. Sometimes she made me read the instructions to her as she struggled. I said strange things I didn’t understand about chains and pearls.
“I don’t understand this,” I said.
“Just read it, Marie,” she said.
She told me what to do a lot. You know I miss her more than anything, and my heart is broken. I look for her in the strangest places these days: crafty strangers at a May Day booth, traumatized autistic nonbinary genius artists, an Indigenous elder at a meeting, sunshine, fiber.
Or I look for family in the strangest places. But that kind of love she gave me was irreplaceable. I’m sorry if you were never loved like that. You seriously missed out.
My mom is part of me, and that’s some comfort. I can still talk with her, but the hugs are lacking.
feeling is my job
Just because you’re crying doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Moms are supposed to die, like grandparents. You are supposed to outlive them, if there’s a “supposed to” in all of this.
To grieve is part of the human experience. I’m sorry we made a culture that’s about making money, so we’re supposed to feel better in a snap so we can get back to work.
I’m working hard on my survival as a disabled person. I called in crazy— I’m never going back to a job, is the plan. Or feeling is my job now. Somebody’s got to do it!
