Why are anniversaries of bad things so... bad?

I've been in such a funk the last couple of days. The weather in winter gets me down, but this felt like more than that, but I don't know why. But I think I figured it out.

Today is 2 years since my house was broken into. Hard to believe it's been 2 years. In some ways it feels like it was maybe 2 months ago, not 2 years ago. It still makes me paranoid sometimes. It still makes me sad. Some days it still makes me hate where I live. Especially in winter when I don't have gardening and landscape and nature to distract and appease me.

When I left for work this morning, I checked twice that I set my home alarm correctly. Part of me wanted to stay home. All of my stuff that I left out, or put away, I did so specifically thinking about how accessible (or inaccessible, hidden) I wanted it to be were someone to break into my house again. I do that a lot though, not just today. Still, it made me sad to do that today.

And it makes me angry that I have to wonder whether New Year's eve day will ever be a happy day for me ever again. It is definitely hard to focus on work today.

On a more positive note, I was recently able to replace some of the sentimental-value jewelry that was stolen that day. I will never be able to replace the items I got from both of my grandmothers since they are no longer living. Sadly this past summer my aunt Devona died of ovarian cancer. My cousins (her daughters) were not sure what to do with all of her jewelry, so they brought it to our family Thanksgiving gathering and let my aunt's siblings, sisters-in-law, nieces, etc. look through it and pick what they wanted. I took one ring and one necklace at first. Then after everyone had a chance to get what they wanted, and there was still a lot left, my cousins encouraged people to take more items if they wanted to, because they were not really sure what they were going to do with the leftovers anyway. It was a nice way to replenish some of what I lost in a more meaningful way than just buying stuff to replace it "just because." I'm sure my aunt would be happy that it turned into a positive thing for me.