The Time I Put an Axe in my Foot: A Cautionary Tale
(I wrote the following over several weeks in an effort to process my accident, so it’s quite rambling and long-winded. Also, there are a few mentions of blood, for the squeamish.)
Several times now I’ve tried to write about my accident (or axe-ident, as I’ve come to call it) in detail, but it’s been hard. It’s been difficult to re-play what happened in my mind’s eye; those seconds in particular I spent processing exactly what I’d done — home alone, panic, disbelief — the image of my brown leather boot sliced down the front singed in my mind forever.
Two interesting things happened before the accident. First: I had said to B. earlier that day, out of nowhere, “I really like chopping wood. It makes me feel strong — empowered!” She agreed she gets the same feeling from weed whacking, and we carried on with our day.
Second: I can’t recall if it was the exact morning of, or a day or two prior, but I was laying in bed in that strange awake-but-still-dreaming state and saw, in my mind’s eye, a vision of our cat, Moo, sitting on the round we use to cut wood, and me taking a great big swing with my axe. The dream/vision/whatever-you-call-it startled me into consciousness, and I struggled immediately to understand it. It didn’t feel violent — I never brought the axe towards him — and so I wondered if it had to do…
