My Salvation is in a Book

A week of daily guilt trips from my mother has taken my mood into a deep down sing. Between loathing myself for not having that human trait that weeps in death, and drowning in every tortured childhood memory conjured by my mother’s constant attacks on my lack of empathy; I am treading the waters of my little universe with my nose barely above the thrashing waves. For my husband and child, I get up in the morning, I shower and dress, I even eat; but my soul is not in one moment of it. The sour childhood I so desperately evaded, has found my diminutive hiding place; and now lurks at my doorstep, preparing to expose all that I am not. My only repose, a book, a novel set in another time, in another place, free from all that rummages through my tattered mind. Thank the holy one for the literary accomplishments of so many, for without them; I would die.