Difficult days

This weekend was weird.

There are a couple of contributing factors to why the weekend has been weird. 26 January is a hard day to sit with for me. It’s currently the official national day of Australia, but there are many who believe the day the European settlers landed and started their systematic destruction of the Indigenous population is perhaps not an appropriate day for celebration. It’s a public holiday, so I had the day off work, which was nice, but I didn’t really do anything because, well… it’s not a day for revelry.

The weekend was also hard because 27 January is the anniversary of the day I was hit by a car. Back in 2020 my life was completely changed when a driver failed to stop at an intersection and instead drove into me while I was cycling. I spent four weeks in hospital, had three surgeries, and of course had to negotiate recover in the context of COVID and the long lock downs that happened in Victoria.

Four years on, I have daily pain from my injuries, and there are many things I’ll never be able to do again. It’s been a rough journey and while my pain has been better in the last couple of months, I am still coming to terms with the day my life changed.

So I’ve been a bit down, I suppose despite having come a long way, there are still a lot of emotions attached to the end of January. It doesn’t seem like that will ever change, though perhaps it will reduce intensity as time goes by. I’ve been pretty busy lately, chipping away at various projects. I think I have a pretty good set-up with my life at the moment. It doesn’t mean I don’t get bummed out whenever I have to cancel something or miss out on something because of the accident.

I don’t have a pithy or uplifting ending to this post. Maybe I will for the next one.