My Plague Year: The Slump

Everything hits a rhythm. What feels like the prison of routine is actually a safety net. You’re in a moment where you wake up every morning, and despite all you’re learning in this new career, the variables are within the confines of walls. Bells ring at precise moments, and things move. There is always support, a dozen people to speak to, and the stairs lead where they always do. There’s always a cup of tea.

Then you come home and the bells don’t ring for a week and you think to yourself, what promise. The books piled up by the bed, the watchlist on the television. All those walks to places, the beep and tap of a gym entry, and all those unformed words in your head you were so desperate to get down when the universe ran at the pace of a weekday. Except the stretch before you is now unstructured, and the burden of peace rears towards you.

You wake up not bursting with the idea of freedom, but intimidated by the empty stretch of road. Those lists you crafted float away from you. The books are untouched. Your head hurts. Your heart rolls around in your ribcage and your mood is a bad one for no reason. The effort is great, and everything is in its place. You spend an hour just folding clothes and wiping counter tops. You scroll Twitter for another hour. The day escapes you, and that feels worse.

Will peace ever come? You think of drastic action. Of hiding from everything. Closing down every account and muting every contact. The weight of new albums and new books and new headlines and breaking news and looming plagues, fires, and thunder. Wouldn’t a beach with your husband and some dogs and a bottle of something with a book written in the 1800s suit you so much better? All this newness is exhausting. You want a manual on stopping time. But time goes on regardless. You hope at least for the week ahead, you don’t come to Monday more exhausted than when you left it.

There’s always tomorrow.