A year ago, I broke my foot.
On Monday, February 15, 2021 at 1045am, I left the ground with a whole left 5th metatarsal and came down with one in 4 pieces.
A few weeks ago, I started to feel a looming sense of foreboding. I was tender and weepy, crying at everything. Inexplicably and amorphously afraid.
It seemed odd but I started to wonder if it was the approaching anniversary (or rather string of anniversaries: the accident, the x-ray, the surgery, the cast, the panic attacks) that was at the root of this encroaching and intensifying vulnerability.
Does some part of me think I’m going to break my foot again? Does my brain believe all those painful, difficult things are going to happen this year, too? Intellectually, I know that’s highly unlikely. So what was causing the creeping feelings of dread?
Awake in the middle of the night with these bubbling sensations of apprehension and hypersensitivity, I sat with all the feeling. What is it, exactly, that’s happening?
After sitting in the dark for a while, the image that came was me walking along a narrow and precarious path.
On one side is the utterly fragile, ephemeral nature of living. If my foot (and my life as I know it) can be shattered in a second, then anything could happen. Any sense of stability or permanence is an illusion.
On the other side, is the overwhelming sense of wonder and gratitude for, well, everything. For my body, for my doctors, for the ability to unload the dishwasher and stand in the shower. But not just that, also for grapefruits and fleece shirts and the taste of chocolate and the squirrel who is building a nest outside my studio window. I am teetering between the excruciating reality of perilous uncertainty and the excruciating wonder of the world.
This teetering, as it turns out, is a thing. Psychologists call it the “anniversary effect” or an “anniversary reaction.” The American Psychological Association reports that,
Anniversary dates of traumatic events can reactivate thoughts and feelings from the actual event, and survivors may experience peaks of anxiety and depression.
Around the anniversary of a traumatic event, people are likely to remember events clearly and many will feel emotions more intensely than usual.
While I’ve experienced a version of this for big world events like 9/11 and August 17 and January 6, I’ve never had a personal trauma circle back to me. I’ve had the experience of memories of “what I was doing when” but never so personally, never so intensely.
Instead of imagining teetering on the razor’s edge, I picture standing in a boat as it enters a place where the rivers of grief and pain and anxiety and fear and gratitude and wonder all swirl together. It’s wobbly and uncertain but I trust my boat. All I need to do is stay with it. Plant my feet. Relax my shoulders. And breathe.
All on their own, my body and mind and heart are processing and clearing another layer of the physical injury and the medical trauma. I can’t make it go any particular way. All I have to do is be with the shifting currents and ride whatever comes up. I can’t decide how it’s going to go, just navigate it as best I can.
Maybe you have a tender anniversary in your life. Maybe you have a day or a month or a season that is a string of memories that you find yourself swirling in. Maybe we can remind each other to stay in the boat, don’t try to push the river and ride it through.