The Sunday Night Insomnia
It’s 11:47 PM on a Sunday and I’m lying on my back, staring at a tiny crack in the ceiling I didn’t even know existed until three Sundays ago. My phone is on my chest, screen down, because I made a promise to myself that I’d stop scrolling at midnight. It’s 11:47. That promise is already half broken, because I went on Twitter for “just a minute” at 11:30 and now my chest feels tight in a way I can’t explain.
Sunday night insomnia is its own animal. It’s not the “I drank too much coffee at 4pm” insomnia, and it’s not the “I’m excited about vacation” insomnia either. It’s this slow-building dread that shows up right after you finish the dishes, right after you brush your teeth, right when you get into bed at a reasonable hour and your brain goes, “Oh, you thought you were going to sleep? Adorable.”
I used to think I was broken. Like, genuinely broken. Why can I fall asleep on a friend’s couch at 3pm on a Saturday but the moment Sunday hits, suddenly my body forgets how to shut down?
My mom called me at 9 PM. “Are you sleeping early tonight?” She asked it the way moms do, half-concerned, half-accusatory. “I’m trying,” I told her. “You need to put the phone away two hours before bed,” she said. And I just, I didn’t have the energy to explain that the phone isn’t the problem. The phone is just where I hide from the problem. The problem is that Monday is coming and I haven’t done enough, and I’m already replaying every email I might have to send.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about Sunday night insomnia. It’s not about being tired. It’s about being scared of being tired. Of the whole week stretching out ahead of you like a hallway you have to walk down alone. Of that first meeting at 9am with someone you don’t really like. Of the inbox that’s going to be a disaster. Of all the things you told yourself you’d do over the weekend and didn’t.
Last week I tried to fix it. Bought melatonin gummies from CVS, the strawberry kind, $14.99. They tasted like candy and did absolutely nothing. I lay there at 1:30 AM with a fake-fruit aftertaste in my mouth and the same crack in the ceiling mocking me.
Then I tried the meditation app. You know the one. The one with the calm voice that tells you to imagine a warm beach. I made it to “imagine your toes relaxing” before my brain went, “Wait, did I remember to reply to that Slack from Friday?” and that was the end of that.
Then I tried the “no screens after 10pm” thing. Read a physical book. A novel someone at work recommended about a woman who quits her corporate job to open a bakery in Vermont. I read14 pages before I had to put it down, because the bakery sounded so peaceful and my job sounded so loud by comparison that my stomach actually hurt.
My roommate is asleep by 10:30 every single night. Just lights out, breathing steady, gone. I’ve watched her do it. It’s like a superpower I will never possess. Last Tuesday she padded into the kitchen at 7am and said, “Did you sleep okay? You look tired.” And I wanted to scream, “DO I LOOK TIRED? I HAVE BEEN TIRED SINCE 2014, JESSICA.” But I just said “yeah, kinda rough night” and drank my coffee.
I started keeping a sleep journal. Not because I thought it would help, but because I thought if I could see a pattern, I could game it. Could I game my own anxiety into submission? The journal said: Sunday — 4.5 hours of sleep, felt like a ghost at work Monday. Sunday before that — 5 hours. Sunday before that — 3 hours. The pattern is the pattern. My body knows what day it is before I do.
Okay so here’s the part I don’t tell people. Sometimes, around 3 AM, when I’ve given up on sleep entirely, I get this weird moment of peace. Not peace exactly. More like… surrender? Like, the week is coming whether I sleep or not, so I might as well stop fighting it. I get up. Make toast. Stare out the window at the apartment across the street where someone is also awake, scrolling on their phone, lit blue by their own dread. We don’t know each other. We’re both just awake on a Sunday night, waiting for Monday to come get us.
I started going to the24-hour diner down the block when it gets really bad. The one on the corner of 9th and Main, the one with the broken neon sign that says “Ope _24 HRS.” I order pancakes. It’s 2 AM on a Monday morning and I’m eating pancakes at a diner booth, and the waitress calls me “hon,” and nobody asks why I’m there. She doesn’t need to ask. She sees me come in every Sunday. She’s asked me once if I’m okay and I said “yeah just hungry” and she nodded like she’d heard that one before.
Is this just what being an adult is? Every Sunday night, lying awake, dreading the thing you chose to do with your life? I didn’t sign up for this. Nobody signs up for this. They sign up for the job, or the apartment, or the relationship, and then Sunday night insomnia shows up like a surprise subscription box you never ordered.
I told my therapist about it last month. She said, “What does Monday represent to you?” I said, “Money. Bills. Survival.” She said, “And what does Sunday represent?” I said, “The last day I’m allowed to be a person.” She wrote something in her notebook. I don’t know what. Probably something smart. Probably something like “client experiences anticipatory dread related to weekday encroachment on weekend autonomy.” I pay her $150 a session for that.
But honestly? I think she was kind of right. I think Sunday night insomnia isn’t about Sunday or Monday. It’s about the gap between who I am on Saturday at 2 PM, when I’m at the farmers market in sweatpants eating a free sample of cheese, and who I am at 9 AM Monday, when I’m sitting in a fluorescent-lit meeting room pretending I have thoughts about Q3 projections.
Those two people hate each other. And I’m the bridge between them. And the bridge is on fire every Sunday night.
I tried one more thing last week. I left my phone in the kitchen and went to bed at 10. Made chamomile tea, the kind my grandma used to drink. I lay there in the dark and waited for sleep like waiting for a bus that never comes. After an hour, I started crying. Not sobbing, just leaking. The kind of crying where tears just fall and you don’t really know why. My dog came up and put his head on my chest. I pet him and whispered, “Buddy, why is this so hard?” He didn’t answer. He’s a14-pound bichon frise. He doesn’t have answers. But he was there.
That’s the part they don’t put on the wellness apps. The1 AM crying-in-the-dark-with-your-dog part. The “I have a job and a home and I’m fine, why am I crying” part.
I don’t have a fix for this. I wish I did. I’ve read the articles. I’ve tried the lavender spray, the white noise, the blackout curtains, the breathwork, the gratitude journal, the “no caffeine after noon” rule. Some of it helps for like a night or two, and then the dread comes back smarter. It adapts. My Sunday night insomnia is evolving. It’s probably going to start showing up on Saturday nights soon.
So I guess this is just where I am. Sunday, 11:58 PM, ceiling crack in sight, dog asleep at my feet, $14.99 melatonin gummies doing nothing, and the slow realization that this is just my life now. Maybe forever. Maybe until I quit the job, or move to Vermont, or open the bakery. Until then, I have the diner. I have the waitress who calls me hon. I have the dog. I have the crack in the ceiling that’s becoming a friend.
It’s 12:04 AM. Monday starts in seven hours. I should try to sleep. I probably won’t. But I’m going to try.
Tags: [“Insomnia”, “Sleep Issues”, “Sunday Night Dread”, “Mental Health”, “Late Night”]