The Sunday Night Insomnia

It’s 11:47 PM on a Sunday and I’m staring at my ceiling fan like it owes me money. The blades spin slow, hypnotic, almost mocking. My phone screen says I have 7 hours and 13 minutes before my alarm goes off. I do the math: if I fall asleep right now, I get about 6 hours. If I fall asleep in 20 minutes, I get 5 hours and 53 minutes. If I fall asleep in an hour like I probably will, I get maybe 5. And 5 hours on a Sunday night before a Monday is just enough to make me hate everything.

I rolled over. Checked the time again. 11:49. Two minutes. Two whole minutes and I haven’t even closed my eyes. My chest felt tight in that weird way it does when I’m not actually anxious about anything specific — I’m just anxious about the idea of being anxious.

This is the thing nobody warns you about as a kid.

When I was little, Sunday night meant my mom making pancakes the next morning. It meant new cartoons. It meant absolutely nothing. Somewhere between age 13 and age 29, Sunday night became this slow suffocating thing I couldn’t name. I didn’t even realize it was happening until I was 26, lying in bed at 1 AM, Googling “why do I feel dread on Sunday night” like some kind of unhinged detective.

The internet said burnout. The internet said work anxiety. The internet said “you’re not alone, friend!” in that cheerful font that made me want to throw my laptop across the room.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So my name’s Jess. I’m 31. I work in marketing at a mid-size SaaS company in Chicago. My job isn’t even that bad, on paper. I sit at a desk. I drink too much cold brew. I have a Slack channel called #random where people post dog pictures. By every measurable metric, my life is fine. Sunday nights just don’t seem to care about metrics.

Last Sunday — August 10th, 2025, I remember because the Cubs lost — I was lying in bed at 11:30 PM and I felt my heart rate spike for absolutely no reason. Not because of anything happening in my life. Not because of an email or a fight or a bill. Just because my body knew Monday was coming. Like a dog that hears thunder before the sky even darkens.

I tried the breathing thing. The 4-7-8 thing. In for 4, hold for 7, out for 8. Did it twice. My exhale sounded like a tea kettle releasing pressure. Did it four more times. Started wondering if I was doing it right. Started wondering if doing it wrong would give me a heart attack. Started wondering why I was thinking about heart attacks at 11:35 PM on a Sunday. You see the problem.

I got up. Walked to the kitchen. Stood in front of the open fridge like the leftover Thai food was going to give me some kind of answer. Ate three forkfuls of pad see ew straight from the container. Drank water from the Brita pitcher because I’m not an animal. Walked back to bed.

12:03 AM. Monday. Technically.

The moment the clock flipped from Sunday to Monday I felt something shift in my chest. Not dramatic. Just this quiet click. Like a jail cell door I didn’t even see closing. And I thought: okay, this is it. This is the week. Another one. Forty-something more of these until I get two days off again. Wait, even those two days off are just leading into the next Sunday night, so.

I closed my eyes. Opened them. Closed them again. Pulled the blanket up to my chin even though it was 74 degrees in the apartment. Pulled it back down because I was overheating. Pulled it up again. Pulled it down. I was playing a losing game of blanket ping-pong with my own body temperature.

My brain did the thing it always does.

It ran through every email I might have to send Monday. Every meeting on my calendar. The standup at 9:30 where I’d have to pretend I was well-rested and engaged. The 1:1 with my manager where I’d have to perform “career interest” while sounding like I meant it. The 4 PM cross-functional sync where someone always says “let’s take this offline” and you never hear about it again.

I rehearsed conversations in my head that wouldn’t happen for 13 hours. I worried about a Slack thread I hadn’t even opened yet.

This is what Sunday night insomnia actually is, by the way. It’s not the cute “I stayed up too late scrolling” kind. It’s not the “I had too much coffee” kind. It’s the kind where your body decides Sunday is a war zone and Monday is the siege. The kind where you know — rationally, factually, in the daylight part of your brain — that Monday is just Monday. That you did Monday last week. That you will do Monday next week. That nothing catastrophically new is going to happen. And none of that knowing helps at all.

I think the worst part is the loneliness of it.

I can’t call my mom. She’s asleep in Plano and she’d panic if I called at 1 AM. I can’t text my best friend Meg because she’s also doing this same exact thing in her apartment in Denver, but on a different timezone, and even if I reached out, what would I say? “Hey girl, are you also lying awake wondering if your life is actually okay?” Like that’s a text anybody wants to receive.

So you just lie there.

I remember the specific moment a few weeks ago when I really broke. It was 2:14 AM on a Sunday in July. I had been lying there since 11. I had tried melatonin (5mg, the gummies that taste like fake cherry). I had tried magnesium glycinate. I had tried the meditation app. I had tried stretching. I had tried lying on my left side, my right side, my back, my stomach. I had tried the couch. I had tried the guest bedroom because “maybe a change of scenery.”

None of it.

And I just started crying. Not sobbing, not dramatic. Just this quiet leak out of my eyes onto my pillow. The pillow was already kind of cold from being flipped earlier. I cried because I was tired. I cried because I knew I’d be more tired. I cried because I knew I’d go into work and drink another cold brew and pretend to be fine and no one would ever ask “hey Jess, are you sleeping?” because the world has decided that being exhausted is a personality trait and not a medical condition.

I dried my face with the corner of my sheet. Took a shaky breath. Checked the time: 2:18 AM. Five hours and twelve minutes until my alarm. I closed my eyes. They opened again. I stared at the ceiling fan. The blades spun slow.

Hypnotic. Mocking.

I finally fell asleep around 3:15. I know because I have a sleep tracker on my watch and it cheerfully reported back at 6:45 AM that I’d gotten 3 hours and 27 minutes of “restorative sleep” which sounds like a sick joke. The watch, by the way, also had the audacity to suggest I “try a wind-down routine” as if I hadn’t already tried every wind-down routine invented by the entire wellness industrial complex.

That Monday I was a ghost.

I sat in standup. I nodded. I said “good morning” to people who said “good morning” to me. I unmuted on Zoom to ask a question about a deliverable and my own voice sounded foreign to me. My eyes burned. My lower back ached because I’d slept in some weird pretzel position. I typed an email with two typos I didn’t notice until 11 AM. At lunch I sat in my car in the parking garage and ate a sandwich and didn’t turn the engine on because I just needed five minutes of nobody needing anything from me.

This is the part that gets me.

I have a pretty normal life. I’m not a frontline healthcare worker. I’m not raising four kids alone. I’m not fighting a war or a disease or anything actually terrible. I just have a job and an apartment and a Sunday night problem. And somehow that Sunday night problem eats more of my life than anything else.

I read once that Sunday night insomnia has a name in clinical literature — it’s sometimes called “the Sunday scaries” or, in older texts, “anticipatory anxiety.” Reading that made me feel both seen and somehow worse, because knowing the name doesn’t make the ceiling fan spin slower. It doesn’t reset my nervous system. It doesn’t give me the three hours back.

I’ve tried everything, by the way. And I mean everything.

I’ve tried going to bed earlier. (Counterproductive. Lying in bed awake for two hours is worse than lying in bed awake for one hour.) I’ve tried going to bed later. (Sure, I’d fall asleep faster, but I’d also only get four hours.) I’ve tried a strict no-screen rule after 9 PM. (Lasted four days.) I’ve tried the no-caffeine-after-noon thing. (Same.) I’ve tried running before bed, after work, in the morning. (Helped a little. Made me too wired on leg days.) I’ve tried the “no Sunday emails” rule. (Boss once texted me at 8 PM Sunday and I just didn’t reply. He brought it up Tuesday like it was a federal crime.)

I even tried the thing where you don’t sleep in your bed on Sunday at all — you sleep on the couch, you break the association, you trick your brain. (Just gave me a stiff neck and a Sunday night AND a Sunday morning problem.)

Nothing fixed it.

I want to be clear: I’m not writing this because I figured it out. I didn’t figure it out. I figured out nothing. I’m writing this at 12:38 AM on a Monday right now, technically, because I just gave up on sleeping. My laptop is on my stomach and the screen is making my eyes hurt and I’m drinking chamomile tea that I don’t believe in.

Some nights it’s worse than others. Last week was bad. The week before was almost okay — I fell asleep around 12:30 AM and considered it a personal victory. This week is shaping up to be brutal because my manager mentioned a “restructuring conversation” on Friday and I have not been able to stop thinking about it since.

The restructuring conversation might be nothing. It might be a normal one-on-one. It might be her way of telling me I’m doing great. But my brain has decided it means I’m getting fired. Or I’m not getting fired but I’m getting demoted. Or I’m getting fired and then I have to find a new job and the new job will also have Sunday nights and this will never end.

This is what 1 AM does to a person on a Sunday. It turns a vague sentence into a five-alarm fire.

I sat up in bed. Looked around the room. My laundry basket was overflowing with clothes I wore but didn’t wash. A glass of water on the nightstand had a faint ring of toothpaste in it because I brushed my teeth before bed without dumping the water. The blackout curtains weren’t quite blackout enough — I could see the sliver of streetlight leaking through the gap. Somewhere outside, a siren. Somewhere farther outside, a dog barking at the siren.

I had a thought I hate having. I thought: is this just my life now? Is Sunday-night insomnia just… who I am? Am I going to be doing this when I’m 50? When I’m 70? When I’m 90 in some nursing home in Boca Raton, lying in a hospital bed at 11 PM on a Sunday, anxious about the Monday bingo schedule?

I know that sounds dramatic. It is dramatic. 1 AM is dramatic. 2 AM is dramatic. Anything past midnight sounds more cinematic than it feels.

I got up again. Pee break. Walked past the bathroom mirror and didn’t look at myself because I know what I look like at 1 AM. Everyone knows what they look like at 1 AM. Eyes too open, face too pale, hair flattened on one side from the pillow. I look like a haunted Victorian child. Not a vibe.

Back to bed. Phone in hand. I know I’m not supposed to look at the phone. I know the blue light is a problem. But at this point, what’s one more rule I’m breaking? I scrolled through Reddit. r/insomnia. r/anxiety. r/adulting. The posts were familiar: “Anyone else can’t sleep Sunday nights?” “Yes.” “Me too.” “Every single week.” “I thought I was the only one.”

You are never the only one. That’s the sick thing. Millions of us are awake right now, all over the world, doing the exact same ceiling fan staring, the same blanket ping-pong, the same 3 AM crying-if-we’re-being-honest thing. And none of us are talking to each other because what are you gonna do, group text at 2 AM about how none of you can sleep?

My watch buzzed. 2:04 AM. The “wind-down” reminder I’d snoozed four times fired again, gentle buzz on my wrist, like the universe whispering “hey, you still haven’t done the wind-down thing.” I dismissed it. I hate that watch sometimes. I love it other times. Mostly I just resent that it tracks my suffering and reports it back to me with cheerful charts.

I did the math again. If I fall asleep right now, I get 4 hours and 26 minutes of sleep. If I fall asleep in 30 minutes, I get under 4. Under 4 hours of sleep on a Monday is what I call “operating in safe mode.” Everything is slower. Words don’t come. I make typos. I forget what I was saying mid-sentence. I laugh at things that aren’t funny because laughing is faster than responding with words.

I closed my eyes. Opened them. Closed them.

I want to tell you it got better. I want to tell you I found a meditation app that changed my life, or a magnesium stack that worked, or a therapist who gave me the perfect cognitive reframing. I want to write that ending.

I don’t have it.

What I have is: I am tired. I am going to be more tired tomorrow. I will go to work tomorrow and drink cold brew and pretend I am fine. I will nod at standup. I will unmuted on Zoom. I will eat a sandwich in my car at lunch. I will come home. I will eat dinner. I will try to relax. I will brush my teeth. I will get into bed at 10:45 PM Sunday and feel the click in my chest again. And I will do this all over again.

And maybe — maybe — that’s the actual thing. Not a solution. Just naming it. Naming it so it’s not just me and my ceiling fan at 1 AM on a Sunday. Naming it so some other person lying in their own bed in their own apartment in their own city knows that the slow suffocating Sunday night thing is real. That it’s not in their head. That it’s in their head AND in their chest AND in their stomach AND in their legs that won’t stop twitching.

The fan is still spinning. 2:31 AM. I’m going to try to close my eyes again. Maybe tonight is the night I fall asleep before 1 AM. Maybe tonight is the night I get six whole hours. Maybe tonight I wake up feeling human.

Or maybe tonight is another one of those nights.

Either way, the ceiling fan will be there. Spinning slow. Hypnotic. Mocking.

Goodnight. Or good morning. Whatever it is by the time you read this.