Can't Escape This Monday Feeling

Every week. I wake up on Monday morning with that feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's the feeling that goes with my alarm waking me up earlier than normal because there is an Important Reason to be awake, like the first day of school, or catching a 6-a.m. train to a ten o'clock plane across the Atlantic. It's the way I woke up every day for a month one summer when I was paying over $500 a month for rent to live in this city but I couldn't find a job. It's the reverberating anxiety you feel all day, for a week, or a month, that goes with a bad breakup. It nullifies your hunger.

But my alarm didn't go off. It's not an important day. I'm not that guilty about my expenses versus income. No breakup. I should be hungry, I had crackers for dinner.

Sometimes, it used to start Sunday night. An aversion to starting another empty week of work. A failure to readjust to being home after being gone Friday-Saturday-most-of-Sunday. Transitioning between one city and another, real boyfriend to phone-boyfriend, leisure to labor—I've often had a hard time with that. It's one of the problems with long-distance relationships. But last time, I had plans with a friend, and I was eager to be home. The train being late makes you want to be home even more, and knowing that I have only a few more weeks in this spacious, breezy, but also cozy apartment makes me want to enjoy every moment of it.

I spent last night on the armchair in the little living room, feet up on the footrest, apple juice within reach, a good book on my lap. After I got ready for bed, I turned off the overhead light and moved to the couch, so I could read in the glow of the floor lamp, surrounded by darkness, perfectly supported by three pillows. I got sleepy and went to bed, somewhat early, and the cats joined me, one at the foot of the bed, one in the window over my head. It was a good night.

And now it's Monday morning, and I can't get that feeling back. All I ever know to do is suffer through it until I leave for work, work 'til five in the office, move on to the restaurant. Somewhere between the two, I forget all about Monday. But I'd rather not just wait for it to disappear; I'd rather not have this feeling at all. How do you beat Monday?