The Zombie Who Learned to Breathe

The alarm screamed at 4:15 AM, and I honestly felt like a **zombie** rising from the dead. Again.

"You coming to **swimming** practice?" Maya texted, while I was still mentally calculating how many hours of sleep I'd gotten. (Spoiler: not enough.)

Competitive swim team was supposed to be impressive—a whole thing for college applications, according to my mom. Instead, it was just me, staring at the bottom of a pool at dawn while my **hair** slowly dissolved into chlorine-scented straw.

"Your hair looks kinda fried," Tyler said at lunch, not even looking up from his phone.

"Thanks, Tyler. Really needed that today."

"I'm just saying. Maybe lay off the pool?"

"Maybe lay off commenting on people's hair?" Maya shot back, giving me that solidarity head-nod that said, I got your back.

The real problem wasn't even my hair anymore. It was that I was living in **zombie mode**—going through motions, grades slipping, friends hanging out without me because I was always either at practice or recovering from practice like some exhausted undead creature.

Then my grandma noticed. "You look like you need something that's NOT water," she said, pressing a pair of knitting needles into my hand. "Try this."

"Knitting? Seriously?"

"It's meditative. Better than scrolling."

She taught me **cable** stitches—these complicated twisted patterns that looked impossible but somehow made sense once I stopped overthinking. And weirdly? It worked. My hands moved, my brain quieted down, and for the first time in months, I wasn't thinking about lap times or how terrible my hair looked.

"Whoa," Maya said when I showed her the cable-knit scarf I'd made. "This is actually cute? Like, not gonna lie."

"Right? It's surprisingly chill."

"Maybe you're not a zombie anymore," she said. "Just... differently alive."

And maybe she was right. I was still swimming, still exhausted, but now I had something that was just for me—not for college apps, not for my parents, not for a team. Just me, some yarn, and the satisfaction of making something real.

Even my parents started respecting it when I knitted them cable-knit socks for Christmas. (Though my dad did ask if I could make him a "manly" color, so, you know. Progress, not perfection.)