Monday Blues

I just ate 5 packages of fruit snacks…at my work desk. Yeah, it’s one of those kinds of days.

I hate being emotionally influenced by people around me, but today I’ve felt really off and I think it’s because my boss is having some sort of emotional turmoil and I can’t quite figure it out, but it’s coming out in passive aggressive comments and energy that I feel directed toward me but know it shouldn’t be. I’m doing my work, not shirking responsibilities, and hate that he made light of me offering to switch offices for an hour this afternoon so our case manager could have a student use a working computer. His response was, “well all you do is facebook all day anyway,” which might be true on some days, but certainly not today. I dunno, the passive aggressive educational system bullshit is getting to me, though I know that it’s not about me…I can’t help but internalize the swirling dark emotions around my office and think “it must be about me.”

Maybe it’s just the Monday blues, but things aren’t rolling off my back like they should be. I’m feeling sensitive, vulnerable, like I might cry at any moment and an attempt to stave off those tears might lead me to lash out in anger (my more usual MO). Maybe therapy is working and I’m starting to feel and tears might begin leaking out in inappropriate places. Or maybe my boss was just being a jerk and I should let it roll off my back.

 

Monday Blues

Driving slowly through the fog on 405 I notice the almost-bare trees. It’s mid-October and already fall has settled into Seattle’s bones. And Mondays seem to come so fast these days. When it’s still dark and my brain is half in dream-land and half in reality I find myself feeling melancholy and musing about why I can’t seem to muster the energy to be excited anymore. Are the pills not working? Is the happy light not working? Am I not getting enough sleep? (well, the answer is clear on the last one, surely).

As both a kid, and teenager, I hated waking up. It’s not that I wasn’t rested, it’s that I preferred dreaming to being awake. I sometimes wonder if my soul picked a difficult body to live in, and whether my obsession with dreaming is an obsession, a longing, for the other world of souls, where flying and walking through walls really does exist. Now that I’ve been at work for a few minutes I feel the real world settling back into my skin and I know that I’ll have an action packed day, week even, and that I’ll forget all about the hazy Monday morning transition until it comes around again.

And I know I write cliches, because Monday mornings are bitched about across the world. I think it’s hard going from time off to being chained back to work-week reality. It’s even hard for Potamus, who cried a little at daycare drop off. He was moving slow. Seemed hesitant. Just wanted to stay snuggled up on daddy’s chest watching morning cartoons. It’s dark and I try to keep a soft smile on my face so that he won’t realize how hard I’m struggling to convince him that I want him in daycare and that I want to go to school. Because really I just want to be snuggled up in bed with him, sleeping, like we did yesterday, and the day before that. Dreaming, with his warm little body next to me.

On Mondays I have to look ahead only hour by hour, because the week in it’s entirety begins to be daunting. Therapy. Yoga. Houseguests. Yoga. Husband gone working. Work. Teaching. Grocery shopping? Cleaning. Making endless dinners. Traffic. It all swirls around in my mind and these mornings my emotions feel raw and unable to handle any surprises or changes. I write this to remember, because, in an hour, I will be fully in the swing at work and will forget that every week I have this difficulty…