Morning

Option 1: You wake up. It is relatively early, but you wake up anyhow because you aren’t sleeping deeply. That is because you had been doing very little work, and your brain is far from tired. You will say, “But why don’t I have any energy left if my brain is so wide awake?” You may not know it, but forced oversleeping saps energy content, reduces appetite, and slows metabolic activities.

Finally, when you do drag yourself out of bed, it’s late enough, but you don’t care. You don’t want to go to office. You want to keep the curtains drawn, and stay home. You are not ready to go out and face the world again, not so soon. And you keep thinking how that good morning kiss went out of the system, and got replaced by the constant bickering.

Option 2: Since you are awake, you might as well go for a walk. You don’t like your neighbourhood, and you can’t stand it ever since the fat, middle-aged, kindly, matron next door has been trying to sympathise with you about your ‘tragedy’. You had better give up being the tragic hero if you want that to stop. Put on your shoes, and walk out. It may be an awful smoggy morning, and the garbage bags would be stinking at the road corners. But the point is that you are alive. You have survived your divorce, and you have woken up on your own without an alarm clock. So from tomorrow, why not use a clock and wake up to see what it feels like to go out alone in the morning.

Once you are back home, you can bathe, get ready for office and make yourself some breakfast. Cooking and staying clean helps. It‘s a kind of therapy. So even if the toast gets slightly burnt and the eggs are overdone, don’t stop from telling yourself that you like living with this person – you.

Noon Option 1: There are leftovers for lunch. You don’t feel like cleaning the place, though the laundry has been piling up, and everything’s messy. So you eat the leftovers of last night’s dinner as they are, straight out of the fridge. You are beginning to feel awful because no one cares for you, and she is somewhere out there, enjoying herself, eating with other people, and probably not thinking of you even for a second. You are happy that you had given away the dog, so you don’t have anything else to bother you. You can spend time in looking through that vacation video again on the computer. You both looked so happy…

Option 2: You have a nice normal lunch at the office cafeteria. You like the coffee. And it’s cool how the guys have stopped talking about your ‘problem’ now that you are talking normally too. In fact, it is beginning to feel almost like a life again. You know there is no point in being guilty about that, she is happy too, and you both deserve to go on in life. Besides, there is still so much left to do at work, now that your ’divorce leave’ is over…

Evening

Option 1: You are watching television. You hate TV, but what else is there to do? Maybe a sip of beer might be less boring, and before you know it, you have drunk quite a bit. It is not helping, and you are feeling even more depressed than before. You wonder what she is doing now, you know it is not like this for her, and you can’t see why God is being unfair to you alone.

Option 2: You come home after a hard day’s work. You are actually a bit tired, but it feels good. You do up the place a bit, because you don’t want it to feel gloomy anymore in the evenings. Maybe you can watch a movie on television tonight. Meanwhile, let’s get dinner ordered.

Night

Option 1: You are asleep on the couch, because going to the bed is such an effort.

Option 2: You turn in to sleep. Yes, you are alone. But it was a good day, and there will be a whole new day again tomorrow.