The Sunday Evening Dread

6:47pm. I’m standing in my kitchen, fridge door open, staring at leftover rice and kimchi like it owes me something. It doesn’t. Nothing in this fridge has answers.

I close it. Walk to the couch. Sit down. Pick up my phone. Put it down. Pick it up again. The work group chat is already lighting up — someone just posted a Google Doc titled “Q3 OKR Recap — Monday Sync Agenda.” I throw my phone into the other cushion.

That’s when I feel it. Right under my ribs. That thing.

This is the sunday evening dread. And I know it’s coming every single week, but somehow it still gets me like the first time.

Let me back up. I woke up at 11:30 today. Felt decent. Made coffee in my chipped mug. Stood at the window and watched a guy walk his corgi. Drank the whole cup while scrolling TikTok. Somewhere around 1pm I thought, “this is nice, I should do this more often.”

Yeah. That lasted.

By 2:30 the light in the apartment started doing that thing. That low, slanted, almost-orange light that means the day is already leaving. I looked at the clock and did the math. Less than 70 hours until the next Friday.

Less than 70 hours. That’s not a number, that’s a prison sentence.

My girlfriend called around 3. I let it ring twice. She picked up before the third. “Hey, you okay? You sound weird.”

“I’m fine.”

“Ryan. You always say that and then you don’t talk for forty minutes.”

I laughed but it came out kind of broken. She knows. She always knows.

“What time are you going to bed?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. I just looked at the dark window and the reflection of my own face staring back at me, looking tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix.

It’s not that I hate my job. I mean, I don’t love it, but I don’t wake up wanting to drive into traffic either. It’s a job. It pays rent. It gives me something to do. The people are mostly fine. My manager is fine. The work is fine. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. Everything is fine.

That’s the worst part — everything is fine and I still feel like I’m being slowly crushed by a wet blanket. I still feel that thing in my chest like someone parked a truck on it. I still feel like the next five days are going to take a year to get through.

What do you even do with that?

I tried to fix it once. Last year, I told my therapist I was dreading Sundays. She said, “have you tried planning something fun for Sunday evening?”

Fun. For Sunday evening. What does that even look like? Going to a bar on a Sunday? Watching a movie I won’t remember? Eating a $28 plate of pasta and pretending it makes everything better?

I tried. I booked a table for two at that Italian place in Bushwick. Got there at 7. The waiter asked if we wanted still or sparkling. I said sparkling. He brought it. It was fine. The pasta was fine. My date was fine. I kept looking at the clock over the bar. 7:15. 7:30. 7:45. Each minute was a small funeral for the rest of my weekend.

I went home early. Took off my shoes. Sat on the edge of the bed in the dark. The dread didn’t leave. It just sat with me, like a cat that doesn’t like you but won’t leave either.

What is it, really? I’ve been trying to name it for years.

It’s not anxiety. Anxiety has a shape. It’s more like… a hum. A low, constant hum that gets louder as the night goes on. By 9pm I’m checking Slack “just in case.” By 10pm I’m drafting a to-do list in my Notes app even though I know I’ll never look at it. By 11pm I’m in bed but my brain is running a Slack channel of its own.

Inbox: 47 unread.

Inbox: my mom asking if I’m eating enough.

Inbox: that email I didn’t reply to on Thursday.

Inbox: monday.

I told my friend Marcus about it once. He just shrugged and said, “yeah man, everybody gets that.”

But do they? Do they really? Or do they just say they do so the rest of us feel less alone in it?

I see people posting their sunday scaries memes. Little cartoon characters looking tired. Hahaha, relatable, like, share. I used to share them too. Now they make me feel worse. Because at least those people can laugh about it. I can’t even do that. I just stare at the meme and feel my stomach drop another inch.

I remember one Sunday in particular. February, I think. It was snowing and I had just gotten back from a weekend trip to visit my brother. I was sitting in a cab on the Belt Parkway, watching the snow fall onto the Brooklyn skyline, and I just started crying. Quietly. The driver didn’t notice, or pretended not to. I wiped my face with my sleeve and thought — this is it. This is the rest of my life. Sunday after Sunday. The dread. The cab. The work. The cab home. Repeat.

I got home, put my bag down, and lay on the floor for forty-five minutes. Staring at the ceiling. Counting the popcorn texture bumps. Forty-seven across, twenty-two down. I don’t know why I counted. I just needed to do something that wasn’t thinking about tomorrow.

My dad doesn’t get it. He worked forty-one years at the same company. Loved it. Retired at sixty-five. Goes to the diner every morning at 6am to this day. He called me last Sunday and asked what I was up to.

“Nothing, dad.”

“You should come over. Your mother made brisket.”

“Maybe next week.”

“Ryan, next week is next week. Today is today.”

He’s right. I know he’s right. But “today” is also the day before the day I’m dreading. So today doesn’t really feel like today. It feels like the long hallway before the long hallway.

I went over. Ate the brisket. It was good. My mom kept asking if I was eating enough. My dad kept asking if I was saving money. I kept saying yes to both. At one point my dad looked at me over his reading glasses and said, “you know, when I was your age, I was tired too.”

“But you liked your job.”

“Doesn’t matter. You do it anyway.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said nothing and ate another piece of brisket.

I think the worst part is the silence of it. I’m not depressed. I don’t want to disappear. I’m not having a crisis. I just have this thing that shows up every Sunday like an uninvited relative, sits in my living room, and refuses to leave until Monday morning.

And I can’t even complain about it properly because what would I say? “I’m sad that the weekend is ending”? That’s the most basic sentence in the world. It sounds like a country song. It sounds fake. But it’s real. It’s so real my body is reacting to it right now. My jaw is tight. My shoulders are up near my ears. I haven’t unclenched my hands in an hour. My palms feel weird and damp. There’s a knot in my stomach the size of a fist.

9:11pm. The apartment is quiet. My girlfriend is in the other room reading. I can hear her turning pages. The fridge is humming. The neighbor’s dog is barking somewhere. I’m still on the couch. I haven’t moved in a while.

I should shower. I should pick out my clothes for tomorrow. I should make lunch. I should do literally anything to feel prepared.

I do none of it. I just sit here, in this low light, watching the seconds tick by like they’re personal enemies.

10:02pm. I open the Notes app. Type: “monday.” Stare at it. Delete it. Type: “things that are fine.” Stare at that. Close the app.

10:14pm. I open Slack. There’s a new message from a coworker: “hey, you free for a quick call tomorrow morning to go over the deck?” I close Slack. I don’t reply. I’ll reply in the morning. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just pretend I didn’t see it until 9:15.

10:23pm. I open Instagram. Someone I went to high school with just bought a house. Someone else just got engaged. Someone else is on a beach. I close Instagram. Open it again. Close it again. I want to throw my phone into the ocean.

10:41pm. I brush my teeth. The mirror is too bright. I look like a man who’s already at work.

This is the sunday evening dread. I’m writing this on a Sunday, by the way. Right now. The thing I’m describing is happening to me as I type. That’s either very brave or very stupid. I haven’t decided which.

I’m 34. I’ve had maybe 1,500 Sundays in my adult life. At least 1,400 of them ended like this. That’s a lot of dread. That’s a lot of staring at fridges. That’s a lot of throwing phones onto cushions. That’s a lot of clenched jaws.

And I don’t have a fix. I wish I did. I wish I could tell you I started doing breathwork or I got a new hobby or I quit my job to become a woodworker in Vermont. I didn’t. I’m still here, in the same apartment, with the same chipped mug, dreading the same Monday.

I think the only thing I have is naming it. Saying it out loud. Telling you, whoever is reading this at 11pm on a Sunday with your jaw clenched, that yeah. I get it. I get it so much it lives in my body. I get it so much I had to write it down just to feel like I was doing something about it, even though I’m not really doing anything about it.

I’m going to go to bed now. I’m going to lie there for an hour, maybe two. I’m going to check the clock at 12:30 and think “six hours.” Check it at 3 and think “three and a half.” Check it at 5:15 and think “less than two.” I’m going to hit snooze twice. I’m going to take a shower that’s too hot. I’m going to stand in the kitchen eating cereal over the sink, watching the morning light come in, feeling that same tight thing under my ribs.

And then I’m going to do it anyway.

Not because I’m brave. Not because I love Mondays. Just because that’s the only option on the menu.

Okay I’m going to bed. I don’t want to think about the deck.

Tags: [“Sunday Dread”, “Weekend Anxiety”, “Work Stress”, “Mental Load”, “Late 20s Adulting”]