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The Sunday Scaries is the anxiety and feeling of dread that sets in on Sunday nights with the impending return to the office, school, or work. Read Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.
Suddenly, you wake up.
“What time is it?” you think as SportsCenter plays on an endless loop on your bedroom television. You’re unsure if you’re hot or cold, but the sweat on your brow signals that something about your body temperature just isn’t right.
You peer over to the clock on the cable box — 2:32 a.m.
“Ugh, thank God,” you mumble to yourself as you adjust your sheets and comforter. “I still have another 4 hours of sleep before I have to get up for work.”
After all, the weekend is over and Monday is staring you straight in the face. You know it too. You begin to think about all the loose ends from Friday that you never took care of and all of the sudden there’s a rush of blood to your head; a blanket of anxiety. Lying there in bed, you lethargically plot your life out while neither being totally awake or totally asleep.
“Did I ever email her about that error message she received after lunch on Friday? Shit, I can’t help her this morning because I have a block of meetings from 10 until lunch.”
You find yourself in a wormhole that you need to snap out of before you lie awake until your alarm goes off and the work week officially begins. “Think about something else,” you demand as you default to thoughts about how great the weekend was.
“Hell of a Saturday night,” runs through your head before thoughts of lost credit cards and open tabs replace thoughts of out-of-town girls and margarita pitchers. You wonder if you left your card at Saturday’s final destination, but you’re too devastated to entertain the idea of going over to your closet and checking your wallet for it.
“I totally grabbed it, right?”
“…right?”
Rolling over to check your phone, the screen’s brightness blinds you as you scramble to lower it. You ponder checking your bank account before telling yourself to wait until Tuesday when your body is back to normal.
“I should text someone right now,” runs through your head, but you conclude he’s probably asleep. You turn the television volume down to the bare minimum and roll over so the screen’s illumination is rendered useless.
It’s now almost four o’clock and you still haven’t gotten any sleep since originally waking up. Bruce Springstein’s “I’m On Fire” echoes through your thoughts.
“At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet, and a freight train running through the middle of my head.”
You wonder if you’ll ever fall asleep as you hear the highlights for the Sunday Night Football game run their course for the third time. “Man, this is what the Sunday Scaries feel like,” you think for a few minutes.
Suddenly, it’s somehow five o’clock and you’ve still yet to go to bed. Do you get up and start your day? Do you go into work late and try to capture an extra hour of rest? Or do you endure?
Then, silence.
Marimba begins to play and you roll over realizing that you somehow got that extra 90 minutes of sleep that you’d begged yourself for. The monotony of your morning routine fast forwards you to your morning commute where you wonder what the hell you’re doing.
You walk into work and sit down at your desk; you feel dead. Setting your phone on your desk, it light’s up.
“Man, I slept like shit last night,” your buddy texts you. “I almost texted you at like 2:45 when I had some Scaries.”
And that’s when you realize that you weren’t alone. You’re never alone.
Alright, I get it, that was a lot. Here’s a chaser to keep the Scaries at bay: a puppy swimming in a pool taken by an Australian swimsuit model.
And a baby wolf playing at the San Diego Zoo.
And a shameless Margot Robbie gif because, well, you need it. .
Image via Shutterstock
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Will
Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.
@willdefries
@willdefries
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will@grandex.co
The inner debate at 1:30 on whether you should just try to chug some Nyquil though
When you weigh and balance whether it’s worth it to robotrip through the first two hours of work or not.
Or you wake up still so out of it from the NyQuill that you justify calling in sick
bring back hookup horror stories!
Gabby Epstein now has a new follower
Blondestar with an Aussie accent to boot? Sign. Me. Up.