Textile Therapy

Embellished Purse

I've come to the conclusion that sewing is therapy for me. My mother talks about how my grandmother, when upset, would set up her sewing machine on the kitchen table and work for hours. Generally, this had something to do with my grandfather. Fortunately, I've inherited this trait. My mother can't sew unless she is relaxed and calm. Me? I sew best when I'm angry or upset. There is something quite nice about jabbing pins into fabric, slicing them apart, or ripping chiffon to shreds. Then you pin them all together and stitch them to within a 5/8 inch of their lives. It usually takes me somewhere around an hour to lose the full heat of my anger, when I work it off. I still simmer after that, but I no longer want to cause grievous bodily harm to one individual in particular. Funnily enough, people generally leave me alone while I'm in this phase. Maybe it has something to do with all the sharp pointy objects surrounding me.

The drawback to sewing is that, while your hands are busy, your mind is often free to wander. There are enough paths in my head to satisfy the most wandery of wanderlust, but does it follow many different ones? Of course not. It likes to stick to the tried and true paths that are full of ruts and holes, bumps and stones. The path that hurts to walk down, unless you're wearing shoes. This is where audiobooks and movies become necessary to life. If I pop one of them in, I'll have some small chance of getting through the day in relative sanity. Frequent breaks are necessary, not only to handle business emails, but to just stop a destructive pattern in my head, when audio distraction isn't enough. Sewing is hard, for that reason alone. It is both therapy and a reason to need therapy.