My Therapy
“Well, if you really feel like you’re depressed, maybe we should put you in counseling.” My mom didn’t like the idea of counseling and neither did I, not because I don’t like telling people how I feel, or because I am not an open person, but because for so long I have been the one helping others and not helping myself so I didn’t really know how to start, and the idea of just sitting down in front of someone and praying to god that she gives me worthy advice, laying my thoughts and fears in the middle of anyone else’s hands but my own wasn’t the way I wanted to handle this.
I was 15 years young, sitting cross legged in a chair at the kitchen table watching my best friend as she threaded hemp in and out of her fingers making this beautiful design within this simple yarn like creation. I watched her fingers closely as the knots turned into swirls that turned into a lovely piece of jewelry of her choice. Making something so beautiful out of nothing was what I have been trying to do with my life since the 8th grade. In and out of counseling the past few years that didn’t seem to be helping, going back to a strange lady in a chair every other Thursday reopening the wounds I’ve been trying to close and re-hatching the thoughts I’ve been trying to get rid of wasn’t “fixing me” per say, but more so just killing me more and more every time.
I walked into a local head shop and looked around at these beads they had displayed in a small glass case, next to them were rolled up balls of hemp, just like the kind I watched my friend braid a few months before. I decided I would buy some and give it a try, I took it home and began to unravel it. I sat down, cross legged at the kitchen table and began making something beautiful. As the design was pouring out of my finger-tips, I couldn’t help but feel a feeling of comfort and happiness and more than anything hope.
It sounds silly when I put it down on paper, when I say it out loud, or even when I think about it too much, so basically it sounds silly all of the time, but that isn’t the point, the point is that sitting down with my thoughts, fears, and demons that I have inside of me, and letting them all go on something as simple as a piece of hemp, is magical. I look at the hemp and take a deep breath and braid until I feel like all of my problems have been cleansed, I think of the hemp as whatever issue or thought I may be having, and right in that moment, the hemp is nothing but four pieces of plain string, but when I am done thinking and done braiding, it will be this beautiful swirl design that I can always carry with me as a reminder, no, as a reward, of something I have overcome, something I have let go, something that is getting me closer to being the person I exactly want be.
It started when I was 15 years young, sitting cross legged at my best friends kitchen table, and I wanted to be something that became beautiful out of nothing and that’s what I am.
