On Lockdowns and lost knitting stitches
A theme this year has been loss. I have felt at times both angry and sad and recently it has tumbled out into my day to day life. I have felt such grief this first half of the year and I am still attempting to weather the losses that I have personally suffered. I lost three years of knitting, due to lockdowns and lost confidence. I have begun the process of reclaiming the lost confidence in knitting and it has been hard. The knitting has represented the wider landscape of the locked down years, which we as a society don’t appear to want to talk about anymore. And yet I feel it is a conversation that hasn’t really been resolved and probably has affected people more than anyone would admit. I know for me it has been lost confidence in a craft that I loved, and yet for others it can be so much more than that. I talk in metaphors and yet the metaphors relate to the wider picture of a world that was closed off for so long. My knitting teacher has retired, and I have been lost. The lace pattern of my knitting goes wrong and I flounder around, losing stitches and feeling frustrated. What was once a pleasure, is now a feeling of stress and being unsupported. I felt like this during the forced lockdowns, and it has taken me along time to reach a more balanced state again. I felt stressed and suffocated and confined, much like a bottle of pop with the lid about to explode. I thrive with support, and during lockdown I felt lost and abandoned. My normal routines were gone and I was not in a good place. Have we talked about this as a society? The impact that the legacy of isolation has had on a country, on a world? I think not.
I realised that support is very important to me. Structure is very important to me, community is very important to me. And during those lockdown days it felt like structure crumbled, communities were torn apart. And in the aftermath, how are we all faring? To me, it feels like the last three years are methodically being swept under a carpet, and to me that does not respect the hardships that I have suffered and others suffered. To be able to discuss the hardships and the losses is a cathartic recovery and it is one that I encourage myself to reflect on. Yes, loss and sadness and anger have been present these past few years and yet I am still here and I am still thriving. And I honour the me that is willing to talk about those ‘years of loss’.