The Sunday Night Insomnia
It’s 11:47 PM on a Sunday and my eyes are open. Again.
The TV is off. My phone is on the nightstand, screen dimmed to 5%, and I’m lying in bed like a corpse — but my brain? My brain is hosting a TED Talk I didn’t sign up for. Tomorrow’s meeting at 9 AM. The email I forgot to reply to. Whether my boss thinks I’m slacking. Whether I ate too much at dinner and now I’m going to feel bloated in the morning.
And the worst part? I know exactly what’s happening. I know this is the Sunday night insomnia thing. I’ve known it for years. Doesn’t help one bit.
I rolled over and looked at my partner. He’s asleep. Like, fully unconscious, mouth slightly open, the kind of sleep that costs nothing. I wanted to nudge him. I wanted to say something like “how do you just… sleep?” But I didn’t. Because what would he even say? It’s11:47 on a Sunday. Of course I can’t sleep.
I got up.
Walked to the kitchen. Stood there in the dark for a while. The fridge was humming — that low electric drone that only sounds loud when everything else is quiet. I drank a glass of water. Then another. Then I opened the fridge again, even though I wasn’t hungry. Looked at the leftover pasta from Sunday lunch. Closed it.
Back to bed. 11:58 PM.
This wasn’t new.
This has been happening for, I don’t know, six years now? Maybe more. I lost count. It started sometime in college — that creeping feeling on Sunday nights that the weekend was ending and Monday was a freight train I couldn’t dodge. I just had to lie there and wait for it to hit.
The weird thing is, my job isn’t even that bad.
Like, I don’t hate it. I don’t dread going in. There’s no toxic boss, no nightmare project, no horrible commute (I work from home three days a week now). On paper, there’s nothing to lose sleep over. So why am I awake at midnight counting ceiling tiles?
I don’t have an answer. That’s the part that kills me.
Let me describe what it actually feels like, since “I can’t sleep” sounds so small when you type it out.
It starts around9 PM. Subtle. I’m brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed, and there’s this little tension in my chest. Not pain. Just… awareness. Like my body knows something my brain hasn’t caught up to yet. I tell myself I’m fine. I scroll TikTok for 20 minutes, watch some guy rank fast food fries, laugh at a cat falling off a table. Normal.
By 10 PM, the scrolling isn’t working. I put the phone down. The silence is louder now.
10:30 — I check the clock. I do math. If I fall asleep right now, I get… six and a half hours. That’s not enough. That’s so not enough. My eye starts twitching.
10:45 — I rearrange the pillows. Then I rearrange them again. The bedroom feels too warm. Too cold. Too something.
11:15 — I get up to pee even though I don’t have to pee. Just need to move.
11:30 — back in bed. Now I’m angry. Why am I like this? Why can’t I just sleep like a normal human being? My partner is BREATHING in that slow, deep, I-trust-the-universe kind of way, and I’m over here negotiating with my own brain.
11:47 — the time I started writing this. Eyes wide. Staring at the ceiling fan spinning slow. Counting the rotations.
Midnight.12:15. 12:30. Now I’m starting to feel sick about it. Not physically sick — that hollow, anxious sick. The “tomorrow is going to be hell and it’s my fault for not sleeping” sick.
1 AM — I give up pretending. I get my phone back. Read random articles. Wikipedia rabbit hole about the Mariana Trench. Who cares. At least it’s something.
1:47 AM — finally drowsy. Eyes heavy. I think okay, this is it. This is the turn.
2:12 AM — eyes snap open. Heart racing. I had a micro-dream about forgetting to wear pants to work. Realistic dream. Now I’m fully awake again.
2:45 AM — finally, finally falling.
3 AM — out.
6:45 AM — alarm.
That math doesn’t math. Three hours of sleep. Maybe three and a half.
And then Monday happens.
I drag myself to the kitchen. Coffee. Black. Hot. I sit at the table and scroll my phone like a zombie, trying to remember what day it is, what meetings I have, whether I replied to that email (I didn’t). My partner walks by, fully rested, and says “good morning!” in that chipper voice, and I want to throw a mug at him. I don’t. I just grunt.
By10 AM I’ve had two more coffees. My heart is doing something weird. I’m typing emails and misspelling words. I send a Slack message with “thnak you” and don’t notice until 2 PM.
By3 PM the crash hits. That post-caffeine, sleep-deprived wall. My eyes are burning. I’m rereading the same paragraph of a doc four times.
By 6 PM I’m useless. Go home. Eat. Stare at nothing.
And then… it’s Sunday again.
Wait. No. It’s only Tuesday. We’ve got five more days of this. Five more days until the next Sunday night insomnia episode.
Cool. Great. Love that for me.
I talked to a therapist about this once. Twice, actually. She called it “anticipatory anxiety” — the Sunday scaries, she said. Super common. Brains do this when they’re transitioning from rest mode back to “you have to perform” mode. She gave me tips. Breathing exercises. No screens after10. Journaling. Magnesium.
I tried the magnesium. Tasted like chalky dirt. Didn’t help.
I tried the journaling. Wrote “I am anxious about Monday” in a notebook at 10:30 PM. Then closed the notebook. Then stared at the ceiling. The journal didn’t do anything except give me proof I was awake and writing instead of sleeping.
The breathing exercises — I did those.4-7-8 or whatever. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. I made it through maybe three rounds before my brain went “okay but what about that thing you said in the meeting three weeks ago that was kind of weird” and I lost the breath count.
She also said avoid caffeine after noon. I work from home and my coffee machine is RIGHT THERE. I cut back. Went from four cups a day to two. Didn’t sleep better. Just felt more tired and anxious, which is a fun combo.
I know she meant well. I’m not blaming her. But none of the tips touched the actual problem, which is — and I don’t know how to say this without sounding dramatic — that I think I’m just bad at being a person who works.
Maybe that’s it.
Maybe the Sunday night insomnia isn’t about Monday at all. Maybe Monday is just the shape my dread takes. Like, my actual job is fine, my actual life is fine, but the structure of having to show up and do things for eight hours a day, five days a week, forever, until I die or retire — that part? That part my brain can’t accept.
I think about people who say they “live for the weekend.” I used to think that was corny. Now I get it. I get it so hard. The weekend is the only time my nervous system stands down. And Sunday night is when it knows it has to brace again.
My friend told me she feels the same way. We were on the phone last week — also a Sunday night, also late, also because neither of us could sleep — and she said, “I think I’ve been recovering from Friday all weekend.”
I laughed so hard I almost cried.
She also said: “I just want one weekend where I don’t spend half of Sunday dreading Monday.”
I want that too. I want that so bad. I want a Sunday where I wake up and feel neutral about tomorrow. Where I don’t feel my chest tighten at 9 PM. Where I fall asleep at a normal hour and wake up rested like a person who isn’t held together by caffeine and denial.
But I don’t know how to get there.
It’s2:30 AM now.
I just checked. My partner is still asleep. The fridge is still humming. Outside, I can hear a car pass — some late-night driver going somewhere. I wonder where. I wonder if they’re tired too.
I’m going to try sleeping again. Maybe this time it’ll take. Maybe tonight is the night my brain finally shuts up and lets me rest. Maybe I’ll fall asleep in ten minutes and wake up at 7 feeling like a real human.
Or maybe I’ll be back here next Sunday, writing another version of this, at the same time, in the same dark kitchen, drinking water I don’t need.
I don’t know which one it’ll be.
I just know my chest is doing that thing again. That tight, hot, hollow thing. And my brain is still talking. Still hosting its dumb little TED Talk about Monday, about emails, about whether I’m doing life right.
And the ceiling fan is still spinning.
And I’m still awake.
Tags: [“Sleep”, “Anxiety”, “Sunday”, “Mental Health”, “Insomnia”]