PTSD

This year, as August began to pinwheel toward autumn, I was aware of a low throb of dread in my stomach.  It was almost subconscious, but it was there.  I then entered a stressful sprint at work which is now ebbing, and the dread is back.  It’s taken me a while to realize that I have some deep-seated PTSD about the fall, since for three years the autumn months brought loss and fear.

In 2016 Matt sustained a serious injury that necessitated surgery and a difficult recovery.  I shared on Instagram an image of three years ago late August when I was thinking about how that day marked the beginning of a difficult season.  In 2017, both of our fathers died and Grace left for boarding school.  Saturday marks two years since Matt’s dad died.  His death, while knew he was sick and ailing, was very quick at the end.  Of course only two months later my father redefined what a “quick” death was.  In 2018, we faced a significant health scare.  It was a scary fall but everything is ok, and I apologize for the vagueness but want to keep it private.  Everyone is healthy.

When I write that down, I guess it doesn’t surprise me that I have some powerful anxiety about this time of year, that something deep and inchoate echoes inside of me.  Truthfully, it’s as much about loss of control than it is about loss in general.  More than anything, these last years have shown me in vivid, visceral terms that I am not in charge of the big picture of life’s unfolding.  They’ve also reminded me that all we have is today.

I think all the time of Stanley Kunitz’s question, “How shall the heart be reconciled/to its feast of losses?”  That these words are dear to me is not new since my personal feast of losses in the last years.  I wrote about them in 2011.  But I think I understand this question in a new way now, and my heart is growing reconciled.  Slowly, imperfectly, absolutely.  But I do feel that there’s a peace settling into the space between the new holes in my life.

To me, that reconciliation is just about acceptance.  And some of this, I’m sure, are standard midlife learnings.  Nothing that happened in our family in the last 3 years is extraordinary; it was just a little more than I expected in a short space of time.  Everyone grapples with losses and fears.  That’s life.  I know that now.  And even in the darkest seasons, there can be light, love, and laughter.  I’ve learned that too.

Onward.  There’s nothing I can do but honor the quaking inside, which at least I think I understand now.  This morning there was a ladybug on my arm, which I’m taking as a good luck omen (did I make that up?)?  Maybe this fall will unfold without any trauma.  I can hope.