spring...again

Today was the first really warm, springlike day here this year. The first "really springlike" day is always hard.

It was on the first "really springlike" day of 2021 that my spouse and I decided to take advantage of the weather and ride his motorcycle for a couple hours before dinner.

I didn't come home for a month, and when I did, it was in a wheelchair with only one load-bearing limb. I spent the next six months relearning how to walk.

He came home in an urn.

I love spring, because I love weather and cool bugs and flowers and gardening, and spring is all those things. But my survival brain has also learned that spring is That Season When You (Nearly) Die. So I can't shake this low-grade, intense anxiety, like death is going to get me around any corner.

I don't blame my survival brain for this. Its job is to survive, and I very nearly didn't in 2021. But it assumes that everything it remembers from that event is now a threat. Not only does the first "really springlike" day make me nervous, but I also cannot wear black leather jackets anymore. (shrug emoji)

(The sight of a white SUV waiting to turn left as I pass still freaks me out, but at least that one makes sense.)

I took the anniversary of the crash off from work, as I always do. I plan to spend it hand-splitting logs in preparation for terracing the backyard - something we planned to do together four years ago.

If you're looking for some neat lesson on grief here, I can't help you. It sucks. Everything is wrong, everything is terrible, there's a hole in the world that Should Not Be Here, and nothing makes sense. And at the same time, and equally true, is the fact that the world goes on being full of beautiful and interesting things. Those two states cannot possibly co-exist, yet they do, every single moment. And you have to live in both at the same time. Somehow.

And it sucks. But I have to try. Or there's going to be a very peeved ghost waiting to kick my ass.