Today I had to fight very hard to get past Can’t.
My primary goal this morning was to spend some time with my mother in her sewing room. Her primary goal was to teach me a clever new way to make a pillowcase.
In the past, I have been quick to pick up new sewing techniques and ideas. I have a great history of transferring learning, of picking up an idea from one project and adapting it to fit another. Lately, say the last three or four years, during this most recent bout of depression, learning has been very difficult for me. Because I am so used to being able to learn, this sudden inability to learn easily feels like an unforgivable sin that I am committing against myself.
This morning’s pattern came with diagrams that I didn’t understand, and instructions that did nothing to illuminate the diagrams. I read it. I read it again. And then I got angry, and the voice in my head said, “I can’t do this.” And because I felt frustration that bordered on humiliation, the voice went on to say, ”I won’t do this. I’m not even going to try.”
I seriously considered hiding in the bathroom and crying. And then asking to go home.
I did neither of those things.
Instead, I recognized that the pillowcase pattern was not suited to the fabric that I wanted to use; the shape of the fabric was wrong, and the print on the fabric was running in the wrong direction.
I had two options: follow the pillowcase pattern as it was, and let the print run in the wrong direction, or force the fabric into the shape I needed in order to be able to follow the pattern. I started cutting to force the fabric into the right shape; the BPD would never in a million years allow me to make a pillowcase featuring gravity-defying frogs on vertical lily pads.
The process was not intuitive to me. I have heard over the years that using this method you can make a pillowcase in ten minutes. It took me three hours, and at one point it looked like this:
At this point I just had to trust the process. And that was hard for me, because I could not picture the outcome.
This was where the next wave of fear came in: what if I got it wrong? Worse, what if I got it wrong and my mother laughed at me?
I didn’t get it wrong, and she didn’t laugh. And now I have a new beautiful pillowcase.
So what have I learned?
Can’t is a lie, at least in this case.
Won’t is a coward’s answer, at least when the only thing at stake is a yard of fabric, when you’re in an environment where it’s safe to make mistakes, and when the rewards are greater than the risks.
You will find your own answers to Can’t and Won’t, and I suspect they will vary depending on the situation. As for me, I think I need to push myself a little bit harder.
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