Last Night was Not for Knitting

Andie and Sally and I went to a movie last night (Rachel Getting Married - I loved it but Sally had to leave because the hand-held camera aspect of it made her feel sick. Just a warning). Because I am not a girl who can knit cables without a cable needle in the dark I dug out the 2/3 finished Clapotis the Second. There was just a teeny bit of yarn left from the current ball so I found the final ball of yarn... apparently the kitties (Sammie) found it first. It wasn't completely demolished, but it was very tangled.

I spent the first 45 minutes we were there trying to untangle the yarn. In the dark.
Then I gave up and thought I'd just knit until I ran out of yarn and then stop. But I dropped a stitch - which you can do in the Clapotis... but only in scheduled increments. Because I didn't notice the dropped stitch until the next row it was further down than I could pick up in the dark.

On the way home I realized that Rachel Getting Married was the first serious movie I've seen in more than a year that I have actually liked. We saw Smart People and I hated it... but I know that lots of people thought is was great. I think that's the last "film" I saw. Lately I have been drawn to high-energy action or toilet-humor comedy, but serious nomination-worthy movies? Not so much. And don't get me started on the schlocky romance-comedies that I used to love... I think it's similar to my earlier inability to knit anything more complicated than garter stitch. For a long time my brain just didn't have room for thinking about anything else. The stimulation was too much and it just left me numb.
Now I'm cabling without a cable needle. (This may not seem like a big deal to you, but naked, unsecured stitches are scary!)

Yes, Virginia, it does get better.

Slowly.

This week has been high anxiety, low in rationality. Funny how those things are rarely present at the same time. By Thursday I had myself worked up into a frenzy of doubt and angst and irrational negative self-talk.
The irony is that I also spent this week writing a final paper for class that talks about three different treatment modalities for mental illnesses that are characterized by rigid negative self-talk. Hmmmmmmmm.

I used Bartleby as a case study again. I had to work up a complete assessment and his problems are so dynamic... and I know them well enough to answer for him. It's the assessment that I wish he had gotten. Often for class purposes we use movies, assessing the characters as though we could change the ending by intervening earlier in the narrative. I complete these assessments on him as though this history could be rewritten.

It reminds me that there is no assessment, no intervention, no treatment plan that will save someone who doesn't want to be saved. No amount of love or commitment or fierceness can change what wouldn't change anyway.
Which is sad, and also comforting. It also means that if someone wants to be saved that there is hope, and it means that if the thing that won't be changed is a positive thing that you don't want changed there is security.

And aren't hope and security all we really want anyway?