Sunday Evenings

Days like this seem to contain all that same vast emptiness of fall Sundays before school would begin again on the Monday. That loneliness – the hollow, aching sickness of knowing that no matter how beautiful and calm things were just then, something bad was coming. And of course things weren’t beautiful and calm – not really. Sunday evenings were torture in my house, and even if he wasn’t home, or hadn’t started drinking yet, we knew what lay in wait for us. I think now that he must have had the same sickness of knowing that I have on Sundays. That he passed it on to me in lieu of a love of drinking. That he dreaded the work day, the week to come and he drank and destroyed us inadvertently. Just the collateral damage caused by the way we make ourselves live in the world. He was a victim, and we were double victims, and now I victimize myself by falling prey to the doldrums on these beautiful days. The beauty only passing, the week coming sure and slow and steady, creeping up to sink its teeth into my soul.

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