Hard to Be Cute Right Now
It’s been a short year.
And somehow it’s already been too much.
I usually come here to be lighthearted. To joke about yarn shortages, lost hooks, feral WIPs, the absurd comfort of repetition. Crochet has always been my way of smoothing the edges of the world—loop by loop, breath by breath.
But lately, the stitches aren’t doing that.
I find myself unable to think about much of anything except how many people I’ve known my whole life are… fine. Fine with things that are not fine. Fine with cruelty dressed up as policy. Fine with silence where outrage should live. Fine with “that’s just how it is now.”
Or worse—actively defending it.
And I don’t understand how we got here.
The movements that usually calm my nervous system—counting, repeating, building something soft and useful—aren’t chasing away the unease. The yarn still runs through my hands, but the weight in my chest stays put. Crochet can soothe a lot of things, but it can’t make injustice disappear. It can’t make indifference hurt less.
What I do know—what I know deep in my bones—is that we cannot become okay with this.
We can’t let ourselves soften into resignation.
We can’t let the people around us stay comfortable with harm.
We can’t let silence pass for neutrality.
Because if we do, it doesn’t stop. It never has.
Being “cute” feels wrong right now. Being light feels dishonest. This moment doesn’t call for polished optimism or carefully curated calm. It calls for staying feral—staying alert, uncomfortable, unwilling to normalize what should never be normal.
Feral doesn’t mean loud all the time.
It doesn’t mean burning everything down.
Sometimes it just means refusing to look away.
Refusing to nod along.
Refusing to pretend this is fine.
It is hard to believe this is our life.
Harder still to believe how quickly people adapt to things they once swore they’d never accept.
So for now, the stitches may not bring peace—but they keep my hands busy while my heart stays awake. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe staying awake is the point.
I’m still here. Still stitching. Still watching.
Still not okay—and determined not to be.
And honestly? I think that matters.