It's May and I'm Terrified

I'm terrified of May. I'm terrified of the 28th. 

I'm terrified of spending the entire month being terrified of May 28th. 

I have plenty of distractions between now and then (finals, Cape Cod, my sister's graduation), but when I give myself even a second to pause between planning for any of those three things, May 28th pours down on me from a dark cloud.

May 28th. 

May 28th. 

May 28th. 

I'm drenched in May 28th. Soaked to the bone in its significance.

I've been told that the days leading up to an anniversary are often harder than the date itself. The waiting, anticipating, and dreading build up and turn a harmless number on the calendar into a black hole. The line that separates the 27th and 28th somehow becomes a cliff. Reaching the end of one day means stepping off into...

Nothing.

Nothing horrible will happen on May 28th.

I'm making May 28th into the black hole I thought September 21st (his birthday) would be or that I thought November 23rd (our anniversary) would be. But on each of those days I crossed from one number on the calendar to the next the same way I did every other day of the year. There was no black hole waiting for me on the other side of the line.

But even knowing this doesn't stop me from being terrified.
I'm terrified of May. I'm terrified of the 28th.