Technically, it’s still the weekend, but as you squirm in the sheets, making your 89th attempt to find a sleeping position that is comfortable enough to subdue your seething insomnia, you realize that technicalities, much like Sunday nights, are bullshit.
Your morning begins innocently and even pleasantly, as Sundays often do. There’s the sleeping in, the overpriced coffee, the avoidance of chores, and the indulgence in phone-scrolling and episode-binging. By the time you remember your to-do list, half the day is gone, but this does not disturb you. Wrapped in the celestial breeziness of a Sunday afternoon, you languidly reach for the lowest-hanging fruit on your list.
It’s not until hours later that you begin to acknowledge the passage of time, and consequently, the existence of an immediate threat.
Fuck. It’s Sunday night again.
You quiet this initial panic with the belief that you can, through some calculated planning, outmaneuver the inevitable. A strategy takes shape almost instantly, and you initiate phase one by brewing a mug of chamomile tea. In phase two, you sip this sure-to-be-sleep-inducing elixir while reading twenty-seven pages of a nonfiction book.
You put your phone out of reach in phase three, closing your eyes to meditate and cleanse your system of the toxic blue light you have been absorbing all day. Having prepared your body and mind for an effortless trip into dreamland, you smugly tuck yourself in an hour ahead of your usual schedule. You’ve arrived at phase four, and you are certain that a REM cycle is just around the corner.
Unfortunately, it’s not. You failed to factor into the equation that you are up against Sunday fucking night. Sunday night, the same trash bastard who laughs in the face of basic human needs, will not be deterred by hot plant water and early bedtimes.
Sleeplessness and shame immobilize you. You’re in Sunday night’s clutches now. The Sunday Scaries have come for you once again, laid claim to your soul.
Your mind grows increasingly vulnerable with each passing second. The self-deprecation that charmed your colleagues at happy hour on Friday has devolved into a self-loathing so potent that your heart is pulsating and you’ve broken into a swampy sweat. You have not accomplished anything noteworthy in your time here on earth, especially compared to your peers, who have been alive for the same number of decades as you but have managed to accomplish at least twice as much.
This existential crisis, which is always skulking beneath the surface, has been dredged up to the forefront of your consciousness and magnified 1,000 times. You examine missed opportunities, minor blunders, and crushing regrets in microscopic detail, searching for a sign that all these missteps are leading up to something big and important. Surely, you can do better than what you’re doing right now.
But can you? It’s somehow already Sunday night again: another work week is hours away. You won’t have the time or energy to make progress on yourself because it will take everything you’ve got just to make it to Friday afternoon in one piece. You’ll be too busy answering emails, engaging in elevator smalltalk, and sighing your way through copy room snafus to make something of yourself. In fact, you’ll be so mired in mundanity that you’ll forget that you even want to make something of yourself.
Feeling raw and fragile and rattled, you roll toward the nightstand to reach for your phone. Opening social media will sabotage the good night’s sleep you so desperately yearn for, but it will provide you with something that has become far more precious: an escape from the minefield of misgivings that have manifested on Sunday night’s behalf.
The phone screen blinks on, and you wilt into the sheets as another nightmarish truth hits home.
Fuck. It’s Monday morning again.
