Disonnecting Flights
an excerpt

The way I look and feel as I awaken is of having been trapped under a ton of blankets all night. I’m as tired as I was when I went to bed yet I want nothing more than to go back under.

Still, I throw the duvet back and force myself to stand. I don’t need to be reminded what day today is.

Look at me getting up. Uggh. Sometimes I catch myself off guard looking like that in the bathroom mirror, though the image normally fades quickly. Part of me usually does an erase and replaces it with something I can live with. After all, how can I ever be sure of what I really look like, to others. Do I look more like my best, when I’m dressed to kill, my face a mask for an evening out, or is the real me more like this, a creature rising from the murky depths? And if I were to find out I look more like the latter, could I live with the knowledge? Thankfully the worst visions of me are fleeting. Days will go by without my catching a glimpse of myself in a mirror. Good days.

First thing I do now is crawl into the kitchen to get the coffee going. My eyes don’t adjust fast enough, they stay scrunched like I’m mad or something. Am I? Am I mad/angry, or mad/crazy? Or both?

I hope I get my act together fast. I need to put on my happy face for the kids' sake, on this, my last morning with them before I go away to the Cappleton Health and Well-Being Center. We want them to believ everything is fine, or will be, soon enough. A month is not all that long to be motherless. Richard will find a way to make the month pass quickly enough.

It’s me I worried about: I catch myself wincing as I let myself think it through: long pointless days, chains of wasted hours and drawn out minutes. Heck, from the beginning I’ll be ticking off the seconds to get them moving faster. It will be a small price to pay for the privilege of my continued presence afterwards. And who knows? Maybe I will come back refreshed, a whole new person, ready and able to assume all of my responsibilities as a mother, Who knows? Maybe it will put an end to those spells of mine.
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The whirring sound coming from the den tells me that Richard’s already up, furiously whipping his body into shape on the rowing machine. He does like his work-out, would rather spend a day without food than exercise. He’s been at it for years. He should have made his way around the globe several times over by now. Yet there he is, Same place, another day.I do envy him, I’m jealous even. He’s got the same chiselled body today he had the day we met.

Me? I’ll be just as happy when they cover all the mirrors in the house.