For the first time in days, no snow fell overnight. Outside looks like a school day, a work day--clear streets and shoveled driveways and cars not disguised as hippos with wooly blankets. T will be back to work, and I will be back to solitude--also working, but I worked yesterday too, so there'll be no "back" about it.

I had a very unpleasant dream last night: about being in a house full of people and trying to find a bed to sleep in, but nobody wanted to share a room with me because everyone disliked me and took the opportunity to tell me so in detail. It was a very high school sort of situation, but that didn't make it any less painful in the dreaming.

It's odd how the malaise of dreams lingers, even as the specifics fade and vanish. I woke up a pariah, and now, even among my familiar everyday comforts, that dream-self resists erasure. I remain unlikeable, unbearable, unwelcome.