The Best Thing About Mondays

The best thing about Mondays is the anxiety that floods into my body, starting at my feet and slowly rising up into my guts, my chest, my throat. It drowns me.

I wake up when it's still dark outside, and I rub the troubled sleep from my eyes with tired hands. I leave the warmth of my bed to face the cold day ahead of me.

The best thing about Mondays is waiting for my eyes to adjust to the morning gloom as they focus on old scrapbooks and half-finished novels I've lost interest in reading. I'm slowly removing myself from my own life.

I get dressed in the dark, hair falling in messy tangles down my back. As I sling my bag over my shoulder, my glasses fall down the bridge of my nose, but I can't bring myself to care.

The best thing about Mondays is when I step outside my building and the chill in the air is enough for my breath to be seen and for goosebumps to rise in waves over my skin. My mind tells me it's cold, but I feel no difference in my bones.

The best thing about Mondays is climbing into the passenger seat of the car and pulling the rusted door shut, my father doing the same beside me as we fall into the same tense silence as last week. This quiescence wasn't here when he'd driven my mother to work an hour earlier.

I can feel each word, each syllable of the fight they'd had settle like dust around me. I distantly wonder if Dad threatened to crash the car like Mom said he did on that rainy night in June.

The best thing about Mondays is walking away after a long drive, the sun finally catching up with me. Suddenly the day has begun and I have a myriad of distractions to pull my attention away from everything that muddled my mind.

I smile as my worries drain out of me. I am no longer drowning.