Knitting as lifesaver

My granny was a great knitter and taught me some basics when I was little, but I was never that interested and had forgotten everything when about eighteen months ago, out of the blue, I got the urge to knit. There's a little haberdashers just down the road from me, so I went in and bought a pair of 8mm needles and a couple of balls of chunky black wool and produced a basic garter-stockinette-mix scarf, which I proceeded to wear ALL winter and which, I'm surprised to say, garnered quite a lot of compliments.

The knitting bug had bitten, but things just pottered along gradually with a scarf here and a scarf there, until the bad times hit in late November and I found myself spending a lot of time sitting at home, feeling deeply unhappy and struggling to chase away bad thoughts. I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that knitting kept me sane this winter (at the very least it stopped me veering totally off course and into a ditch).

Lots of repetitive, don't-think-about-anything-but-stitches work (I knitted a ginormous and ridiculous K1P1 scarf of fingering yarn that must have about a hundred hours of work in it and will be frogged as soon as I resign myself to doing it) slowly turned into slightly more complicated projects, like bags and hats and bootees, as I picked up courage both in life and in my ability to knit. Last weekend, I turned a corner and decided I was ready for socks. And yesterday, I finished my first one. I'm not quite back to normal yet, but I'm getting there. I wonder what the knitting sign for "normal, properly ready to rejoin life again" will turn out to be?