I push off, and the conditions are fast, but my body is not responding. I try for a while, become frustrated, and then relent, realizing that it's not fair to expect it to perform after last night. Stress and half of a sleeping pill. I rarely resort to medication. This is a pharmaceutical hangover.

And then, after I stop trying, something shifts and the cobwebs disappear.

The conditions are scary fast. My lungs open up to take in the cold mountain air, and tears freeze the corners of my eyes together. The forest is flying by. I need to slow down; nobody knows where I am; nobody is waiting for me. This is my new reality.

I didn't leave this morning. I wasn't ready to drive on winter highways. I wanted a day at home.

I realize my mistake later in the afternoon.

"It's so hard to watch him. I want to comfort him," I tell Josh, my office mate.

"You can't. If you do that, then it's confusing for him. I had an ex girlfriend that would call me, and the calls made things harder. You need to think about who really benefits if you comfort him..."

"So, in other words, it's selfish for me to comfort him. Which means that it's selfish for me to be here at all."

I run into people that I know all day. On the sidewalk in town, in the office, at the ski hill. Bright smiles and Where Have You Beens.

On a telecon, I am invited to chair another committee. I want to accept. It's a perfect role for me. But taking things on right now is probably a bad idea. How do these things come towards me so easily? When others struggle for any kind of win.

Home. I own this house, but it's no longer my home. I look at the smashed bathroom door. I look at all of the places that I've cried. I lay in bed and experience flashbacks of him yanking the covers off of me after I retreated from his yelling.