Sunday felt cozy, like wrapping a down-filled comforter around me after a hot shower. Sunday was sleepy. Sunday was a day of rest, replenishing all the energy that was drained from me during the busy workweek. Sunday was the day I spent with him. He would watch football, commenting on the teams, criticizing the calls and complaining about the players on his fantasy team. I would watch him, commenting on teams’ uniforms, criticizing the complexity of the calls, and complaining about the fact that he has so many fantasy teams. Sunday smelled and tasted like pizza. Half mushrooms and olives, half pepperoni and sausage. Sunday meant togetherness.
Then Sunday changed. I was alone a lot on Sunday. My heart felt like a deflated balloon left in the corner of the gym after a high school dance, useless and forgotten. My body felt drained like something had sucked all of the feeling out of me with a vacuum cleaner, leaving me void of all emotion except emptiness. I tried to go through the motions of what Sunday was supposed to be but it felt like I was outside of myself looking in, wondering if the fragile shell that I was walking around in would shatter and leave me as a pile of dust that would blow away as if I never existed. Sunday suddenly felt like a heavy weight, a pile of bricks that someone had placed on my shoulders, crushing me little by little until I crumbled into a mound of hopeless human flesh. Sunday blended with Monday and Thursday and Tuesday and Saturday and Friday and Wednesday. Sunday was not special anymore; it was as painful as the rest of the days. Sunday felt like it was a week long because, in a way, it was.
Sunday is changing again, like summer is changing into fall. With the return of football is the return of togetherness. But just as the teams are slightly different this season in football, so has the togetherness been altered.
This was originally written six years ago.
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