Thoughts on a Decade

  

Illustration of Stella, November 2006

Trigger warning: violence, suicide, sexual assault.

Today is my 28th birthday. Although 30 seems the logical choice, as far as milestones go, it is 28 that feels meaningful to me today. Ten years ago today, I was on the razor's edge of adulthood - and although I didn't know it then, I was also standing at the threshold of the hardest year of my life.

I entered my eighteenth year with a best friend, a new hole punched in my ear, and a grand plan to become a writer, a world traveler, a try-anything apprentice of my own bright future. When my eighteenth year closed, I was on medical leave from college to recover from near-suicidal depression.

I had been slut-shamed and forcibly ejected from my closest friendship, less than two weeks after being raped.

I had stopped eating and sleeping properly because of post-traumatic stress, and failed three college exams in a single day because of it.

And finally, I had left my dreams as a writer and student behind when my rapist and my former landlord were killed in a murder-suicide, set off by untreated mental health issues and an unpaid electricity bill.

At the end of my eighteenth year, I was shaky and self-loathing, grief-stricken and furious and alone. I had walked into the adult world with confidence in my abilities, my sexuality, my relationships, and myself. But in the course of that year, I heard the message that I could lie about my body and my sexuality simply by existing. That my rape was inflicted by my own selfishness. That by passing the threshold into eighteen, I had become community property for the world to judge, mock, or consume at its choosing.

And shortly after, that I was not allowed to have complicated feelings about the violent death of someone who had hurt me deeply.

It has taken years to repair the effect of those messages on my identity, and I remain convinced that they serve only to hurt and silence those who are most vulnerable.

 

 But there is a happy ending to all of this, I think.

Because at the same time that all of this happened, I learned to knit. Such a simple thing, and yet one that has given me access to so much comfort and community over the last ten years. (Short version: I walked into the yarn shop in Oberlin one day, and didn't leave until I graduated. Thanks and sorry, Smith's.)

And though it was hard to see it at the time, this was also the moment at which I began to make art in response to the world around me. I gave up on writing because it was too hard, but I began to channel my energy in making and doing. I drew almost every day. I learned to knit socks. I volunteered with animals and learned how to build hiking trails. And from that foundation, over the next year I began to build something of a life for myself, too.

In the absence of my best friend and the group that surrounded her, I formed new relationships, with students and teachers and the people I met in the knitting community, many of whom I still keep in touch with.

I learned the value of surrounding myself with people who see me, who do not need to make me feel small in order to love me - a lesson that guided me then, and has continued to guide me through many relationships as an adult.

And I learned that for me, openness about my past is both a choice and a gift. When I was eighteen, I felt that my voice was not my own, that I was not worthy of love or companionship, and that my story belonged in the dark. Today, at twenty-eight, I feel exactly the opposite.

And that is the best gift I could ask for.

Very much love,

Cory

P.S. If you or a loved one is struggling with violence or abuse, sexual assault, or suicidal thoughts, please, please reach out to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) or the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.

Ballgown: Day 16-18 (Or, Skirts & Rest)

  

Yesterday it rained: a slow, light mist over the city. The sky was bright, and every droplet of rain lit up in the glow of the mid-morning. I stood at the top of the fire escape for a moment, and the smell of wet dirt and dead grass and rain blew in the open door behind me.

Two days ago, I had eight huge pieces of skirt muslin and a misthreaded machine and too many days without rest. I cried pinning a godet to a perfectly reasonable piece of skirt. I cried to my mom on the phone. I went home and slept for twelve hours. Then I went to school and emptied my garbage cans and said hi to the director, and I hugged my dress, and I went home again.

I've always known that rest is important for me. All the knots that tighten in my head as the week progresses are gently pulled apart in the hours between work. I know this, and I was still fighting it, thinking I could beat it back. I should know better.

So finally, Saturday, instead of sewing a skirt, I rested: I vacuumed the living room, and did laundry, and decimated some morning glories that had taken over the front yard. I drank a beer in the middle of the afternoon and sat on the couch in the sun.

It felt weird, remembering the world outside of ballgown. It was as if, for a day, that my little room didn't exist - which made me a little sad, to be honest. I already know that someday in the future, I'll live and relive these moments over again: this feeling of purpose and triumph, and even these moments of failure. There's something in this process that reaches deep, that challenges your strength and skills and willpower. It forces you to look in the mirror and know yourself. To push through when it's important; to walk away when it isn't. And that clarity is...sort of amazing.

So Saturday I rested, and yesterday - with renewed energy, with a pastry from the market and the rain at my back - I sewed my skirt together. And it was easy.

Imagine that.

Happy Monday.

<3

Cory

Ballgown: Day 14 (Or, Mental Health is Important, and So Are Friends)

Yesterday was rough from the beginning; I got to school and immediately had to rip out and fix some of my work from the day before. Then, bleary with fatigue and frustration, I accidentally cut a thread I shouldn't have, and hours of hard work began their unravelling before my eyes: where no machine could possible reach, where little threads of georgette happily shimmied out of their weave. I stood there for over an hour, sweating and painstakingly hand-sewing over the damaged area to fix it, praying with every stab that this would be the one that would make it right.

At the end, with the crisis under control and the binding safely tacked back in place, a wave of anxiety and nausea washed over me, and I had to stop for lunch and a walk around the block with the director to calm down.

Letting go is hard for me. It's both my strength and my weakness. It makes me meticulous; makes my work better. It also causes a lot of stress and anguish over things that may or may not matter. Sometimes the overwhelming fear of failure can actually paralyze me in my tracks, and I often struggle with the choice between executing something imperfectly and not executing something at all.

I think maybe the difference is in the motivation: the work that inches towards greatness is the work motivated by joy; the work that falls flat is, ironically, motivated by fear. It's a funny thing, to have to learn how to temper my need for control. It constantly pushes me forward if I put it in a reasonable gear, but left to accelerate of its own accord, it can destroy me and everything in its path. And I was in full self-immolation mode for most of yesterday, which felt pretty fucking crappy.

So it was a nice change of pace to go visit with a new friend after such a terrible day. We chatted about things we care about - feminism, tv shows, yarn, pets - and I left feeling like my heart had been filled back up. It probably sounds weird, but I feel like the universe sensed I was in a bad place, and sent me this gift - a feeling of connection, of gratitude - to knock me back into orbit and remind me of things that matter way more than a sleeve cuff.

And hopefully, today will be better.

Happy Thursday.
<3
Cory

Light & Dark

  

In Darkness

We've had a weird week here in Seattle so far. Yesterday morning, I was drinking my coffee when I heard the news that there was a helicopter crash near the Space Needle. Sometimes I forget how small Seattle feels as a place and a community, but yesterday it really hit home. The pilot and photographer who died in the crash were both from our local news channel, so the newscasters reporting on the story were visibly shaken. I can only imagine how that must feel, to lose two colleagues in a split-second tragedy and then to have to walk in front of a camera and talk about it. How heartbreaking.

The thing is: yesterday was beautiful. Sometime in the night, thousands of tiny green shoots emerged from dormancy, and as I walked out of work, the street in the afternoon sun held a strange, blue-green glow of spring. When I got home, the trellis in our neighbor's front yard was covered in new blossoms, and I was able to snap some photos as the light faded.

And it was strange for it to be so beautiful, because all day, I was distracted by darkness. The color of the street that my housemate crosses to work every day, covered in foam and ash and kerosene. The black slant of shadow as the metal belly and blade of the helicopter fell through the sun to the ground. The faces of the photographer and the pilot in the cockpit, the soft morning shadows sketching across their faces, not realizing that these were their last moments. That crushing dark, in the middle of the bright morning.

So it seemed bittersweet that the day should be so lovely, as the whole city shuddered with loss.

 

In Light

I love the work I've been doing lately. I'm working on my tailored jacket; knitting samples and sketching new things; measuring and calculating and organizing my thoughts. I worked at Vogue Knitting Live last weekend, then I helped reorganize the shop yesterday, and at the end of the day, it was immensely satisfying to see the result of all our hard work - the bright stacks of older yarn shuffled and neatened, the samples shaken out and re-hung, the new yarns all tucked away.

And I've been taking joy in objects: a leather notebook with removable inserts; a new issue of Interweave Crochet with romantic garments and beautiful shapes; laser-cut wood coasters with cherry blossoms and fir cones on them. The days are starting earlier and ending later, and along with the light, the spring is bringing newness and possibility.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

Spinning!

  

For the last two Fridays, my friend Sooz and I took a spinning class at The Weaving Works in the University District. We took the Beginning Spinning class with Shirley Shaw, and dipped our toes in the basics of spinning, from drafting and carding to different wheels, tools, and sheep breeds. I had taken the class a few years ago with my mom and brother while on break from Oberlin and enjoyed it, but wasn't quite ready to take the plunge on a wheel. In the years since, I've started to appreciate handspun more and more, and when I was almost irresistibly drawn to roving and spinning wheels at Madrona this year, I decided it was time to give it another shot.

This time, it clicked, and I found myself happily lost in the process. The first day of class, I looked up after almost three hours and felt as if no time had passed at all. During the week between, I rented a Lendrum double treadle wheel and practiced at home. One night, I sat down at 10 pm to spin and came back to reality somewhere around midnight, my eyes bleary and my bobbin suddenly full of impossibly, wonderfully fine single ply yarn.

It was magic, and I can't stop thinking about it doing it. I returned the wheel last Friday, but it's been in my daydreams ever since.

It's made me wonder why spinning has suddenly become appealing to me, especially because I've been exposed to it for years but never had a particular urge to pick it up. It makes sense on paper that I would like spinning. I like yarn, and I like making things with my hands; ergo, I should make yarn with my hands. But for some reason, it wasn't until a few weeks ago that my brain made that leap from "I should try to make yarn I guess" to "I need to try to make yarn right now".

When I really think about it, though, the reason is pretty simple. Since my weight loss and illness, I've felt very disconnected from my body; before this, I felt I had a firm intuitive sense of how my physical self existed and interacted with the world, and it's been really challenging to suddenly lose that. I think I connected with spinning this time because that link between movement and creation is so solid. Something about the physical immediacy, the tangibility of it, is just wonderful: the pull of each individual fiber on the next to create something larger; the little tornado between your fingers; the curl and motion of the hand as you draft. The way small decisions of time and movement are directly translated into being, spun into a length of yarn.

And I think that's a huge comfort: that even though I don't know how I'm going to feel tonight or tomorrow or next week, I know that with a wheel and some wool and my two hands and feet, I can make something of today.

Thoughts on Spring

  

-------------------------------------------------

Look: the first day of spring

Wearing my wedding rings and no scarf

Throat bare,

I peer up as the drawbridge opens to meet the sky.

Surrounded by new growth;

grey wool and soft wet moss on a slab of rock,

greeting the sun

My skin warms as a boat passes through the channel,

two Canada geese on its

tail, honking.

Good news:

wet earth and strong bones

are unfolding and crackling after a long winter

I memorize this moment as if frozen:

the first breeze

the first breath

the first stretch of waking

after a long, dark night.

-------------------------------------------------

My health is slowly getting better, and as a consequence I've been using my free time to pick up projects that have been on the back burner for a long time. My foothold on life is feeling firmer every day, and it feels really good. Hopefully I will be back with slightly less esoteric content in the coming weeks, but in the meantime I'm staying focused on moving forward and enjoying happiness when and where it comes.

Which right now is reworking an older unreleased pattern in buttery soft alpaca. Pretty sweet deal, eh?

<3

Cory

Rest in Peace, Darling Mackie: February 2011 - November 14th, 2013

 

Yesterday, our world lost a small but strong little light.



Two and a half weeks ago, we learned that Mr. Mackie only had a little while left to live.  Since then, he has eaten grandly, spent hours on our bed hanging out with us, and been showered with love, attention, and visits from friends.  A few days ago, I started noticing that he was cuddling a lot more than he usually did, and exhibiting signs of pain.  We took him to the vet to weigh him and found out that he had already lost 30 grams of body weight - a sign of rapid decline in small furry ones like him - so he was prescribed an opioid painkiller.  I pretty much knew then that we needed to start saying goodbye.

It's been pretty horrible watching such a sweet, energetic, and inquisitive little dude get so sick, so fast - only a week ago, he was bouncing around and snatching treats straight from the bag, but by Tuesday he seemed to have lost a lot of energy.  Wednesday night was spent with him curled up in our arms, and around 2 am we decided that it was time.  Blake was up every hour checking on him while I slept, and we took him into the vet's office the next afternoon.

It's going to be hard to come home and not immediately say hello to him, or to get ready for bed without him poking around in the pillows.  He's followed us through so much growth and change in the last two years, and he has been a constant source of solace, entertainment, and companionship.  It's amazing how such a small presence could bring so much joy into our lives.

So to celebrate Mackie, here are a few of my favorite photos of him.

His favorite places: our bed, any couch or interesting piece of furniture (including people), and his various nests of blankets, tissue paper, and cardboard.

Mackie enjoying a boop, in our first apartment in Seattle.



Always up to something.

Rest in peace, my handsome little buddy.  You are so loved, and so missed already.  <:3O~