Another Sunday

Another Sunday. It started with hope but the hope was crushed by crankiness. Had planned yesterday to go to the book fair with my sister and my mother. It is ruined. Plans were cancelled. I sat with that disappointment longer than I expected with not the dramatic kind, not tears, not slammed doors, but just a dull, nagging weight, like a bookmark pressed into the wrong page. I had already imagined the smell of new paper, the smell of old books, random inscriptions on those books and imagining their stories, the quiet thrill of browsing without urgency taking all the time, the small debates over which book was “worth it.” I laughed a bit because it is funny how the mind travels ahead and furnishes a future that reality later evicts without notice. The house felt louder after the plan died with the deafening silence of presence. Everyone moved around with their own irritation, bumping into each other’s moods like badly parked cars. I tried to be mature about it with Sunday wisdom and all of that but crankiness is contagious and it spreads faster than optimism ever does. I told myself: this is trivial. People have worse Sundays. People have no Sundays at all. And yet, the heart doesn’t respond to logic memos. It sulks. It wanted that book fair. So I did what I always do when plans collapse: I shrank the day with no grand expectations, no big emotions, no big plans, nothing. I drank tea and scrolled aimlessly. I read a few pages of a book I already own, one I keep postponing like an uncomfortable conversation. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Haha again. By evening, the disappointment softened, not healed though just… less sharp. I realized the day wasn’t ruined, only different. That’s a distinction experience teaches you, usually after many badly handled Sundays. The usual rosy glasses tradition says Sundays are for family and plans and lightness. My familial reality says Sundays are mirrors where they show you how you deal when nothing goes your way. And, today, I dealt imperfectly. I was sulky, irritable, withdrawn, a little dramatic in my head. But I stayed. I didn’t explode or run away [can I even at this point?]. That has to count for something, right? Tomorrow will come, as it always does, aggressively punctual, very Monday-like. The book fair will exist without me today. Maybe another time. For now, I’ll close this Sunday the way it deserves to be closed with no triumph, no despair, just neutrality towards hitting rock-bottom like a ricochet every time life hits me with known uncertainty. And maybe that’s enough. I hope.

- Oizys.