When Monday Feels Like Drowning

{ “title”: “When Monday Feels Like Drowning”, “slug”: “when-monday-feels-like-drowning”, “metaDescription”: “A first-person account of Sunday-night dread, the shaking-hands Monday commute, the fake smile at standup, and the 3 PM crash that keeps coming back every week.”, “targetKeyword”: “monday drowning”, “category”: “Emotional”, “tags”: [“Monday Morning”, “Burnout”, “Tech Worker”, “Knowledge Worker”, “Anxiety”], “byteCount”: 7842, “content”: ”# When Monday Feels Like Drowning\n\nIt’s 6:47 AM on a Monday and I’m sitting on the edge of my bed with both feet on the cold floor, not moving. The alarm went off thirteen minutes ago. I’ve hit snooze four times. My phone shows seventeen unread Slack messages and I haven’t even opened the email app yet. Outside my window the sky is that weird grey-blue color that doesn’t commit to anything, and my cat is staring at me like she knows what’s coming.\n\nI text my coworker “I’m going to be late again” before I’ve even brushed my teeth. She replies with a single thumbs up emoji. That’s the whole conversation. That’s been our whole Monday morning conversation for the past two months.\n\nThe kettle clicks off in the kitchen and I still haven’t stood up. My chest is doing that thing where it goes tight but not in a sharp way — more like someone’s slowly sitting on it, leaning back, settling in. I know I have a 9 AM standup. I know there’s a deliverable due. I know I’m supposed to “start the week strong” or whatever the leadership Slack channel keeps saying in those pastel announcement posts.\n\nBut I just can’t. I can’t even explain why. I’m not sick. Nothing bad happened over the weekend. I slept nine hours. I ate dinner with my friend on Saturday and laughed at her jokes about her cat. I went for a walk on Sunday and bought groceries like a functioning person.\n\nSo why does Monday feel like this?\n\n## The Sunday Night Slow Drown\n\nSunday at 11 PM is when it starts. Not all at once — it’s more like the tide coming in.\n\nI’m brushing my teeth and I think “tomorrow is Monday” and my stomach tightens. Not nausea tight. Just this low, humming dread that sits underneath everything. I close the bathroom cabinet a little too hard. The mirror shows me a face I don’t really want to look at.\n\nI open my laptop “just to check” the calendar and there it is — 9 AM meeting, 11 AM sync, 2 PM review, 4 PM retrospective. Just seeing them lined up makes my shoulders pull up toward my ears. I close the laptop. I open it again. I close it. I check my email even though I said I wouldn’t. There’s an email from someone in another time zone that arrived at 3 AM their time, which means 6 PM my time on Sunday, which means someone on this planet worked on a Sunday evening and I already feel like I’m behind.\n\nMy partner is already asleep. The apartment is so quiet I can hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen and the neighbor’s cat scratching at the wall. I stand in the hallway for maybe two minutes, doing nothing, holding my phone like I’m waiting for someone to text me back. Nobody is going to text me back. It’s 11:14 PM on a Sunday and the only person I want to talk to is the version of me from this morning, who didn’t know what was coming.\n\nI get into bed at 11:40 and lay there with my eyes open. The dread doesn’t have a name. It’s not about any one meeting. It’s not about any one person. It’s not even about any one task. It’s about all of it, the whole thing, the entire premise of getting up tomorrow and doing it again, and again, and again, until Friday, and then doing it all over again next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, and the week after that, and on and on until I either quit or just become one of those people who are “fine.”\n\nI eventually fall asleep around 1 AM. I don’t feel rested when the alarm goes off. I feel like I just got back from somewhere very far away and someone is asking me to do it again immediately.\n\n## The First Hour Is The Worst\n\nI used to think I was bad at mornings. I told myself that for years. “I’m just not a morning person.” Like that explained it. Like that was a personality trait, the way someone is tall or likes jazz.\n\nThen one morning in March I was pouring cereal and my hands started shaking. Not a lot. Just enough that the spoon clicked against the bowl with a tiny metal sound that I will not forget for the rest of my life. I put the spoon down and stared at my hand like it belonged to someone else. That’s when I realized — this isn’t about mornings. This isn’t about being a morning person.\n\nThis is about Monday.\n\nAny other morning I can do it. Tuesday through Friday I drag myself out of bed and I’m tired but I’m fine. I make coffee. I read something. I take the subway. I’m a person who exists in the world in a way that mostly works.\n\nBut Monday is different. Monday I’m shaking over cereal. Monday I’m reading the same Slack message four times because my eyes won’t focus. Monday I’m standing in the subway car holding the pole so tight my knuckles go white because if I let go I think I might just sit down on the floor of the train and not get up. My palms are sweating even though it’s38 degrees outside and the platform is crowded and the air conditioning on the train broke last week and nobody has fixed it yet.\n\nLast Monday a woman on the subway looked at me and asked if I was okay. I said “yeah, just tired” and she nodded and went back to her phone. I wanted to say “no, I’m not okay, I haven’t been okay in eight months, I smile at standup and die inside and I don’t know who to tell and I don’t even know if there’s a word for what’s happening to me” but I didn’t. I just stood there holding the pole until my stop, then walked to the office with my headphones in even though nothing was playing, because that’s what people do when they’re trying not to be perceived.\n\n## Pretending At The Office\n\nI work at a mid-size tech company in a glass-walled building that won some architecture award in 2022. There are plants everywhere. Someone on my team has a “happiness jar” on their desk where you put in a folded note every time something good happens. I have not put a note in the jar once. I’ve thought about writing “I woke up” but that felt too honest for a Tuesday in March, and anyway I’m not sure “waking up” counts as a win by the company’s definition.\n\nAt standup I say “happy Monday” and people laugh like it’s a bit. I report my status in calm sentences. “Yesterday I finished the auth refactor. Today I’ll be working on the migration script.” Inside my head I’m screaming. Not loud screaming. The quiet kind. The kind that just goes on and on and on like a smoke detector with a dying battery.\n\nMy manager pulls me aside after standup and says “you’ve seemed off lately, is everything okay?” I tell her yes, just busy, just a lot going on at home, just need a vacation. She says “let me know if you need anything, my door is always open.” I say “thanks, I appreciate it.” I go back to my desk and my chest goes tight again. My door is always open. Mine isn’t even closed. There’s literally a glass wall. So I’m not sure what the open-door policy actually gets me, but okay.\n\nI eat lunch at my desk because the thought of sitting in the lunch room with six other people making small talk about reality TV and which coffee shop has the best oat milk makes me want to crawl under the table and just stay there until Friday. I eat a sandwich I brought from home in a wrapper that crinkles very loudly. I scroll through my phone. I read an article about burnout that says “set boundaries” and I almost laugh out loud. Set boundaries. As if my job is a thing I can fence off. As if my laptop closes at 6 PM and doesn’t follow me home. As if Slack notifications stop at the subway turnstile.\n\n## The 3 PM Crash\n\nBy 3 PM on Mondays I’m basically running on fumes and spite and whatever was left in the office coffee pot at 2:45.\n\nI have a 4 PM retrospective that I’m supposed to “bring energy to.” I’m supposed to “share wins.” I’m supposed to “celebrate the team.” I cannot celebrate anything at 3 PM on a Monday. I can barely type a Slack message. I can barely spell “synergy” without wanting to lie down on the floor of my cubicle and just close my eyes for ten thousand years.\n\nAround 3:20 I go to the bathroom and stand at the sink for a while. I don’t do anything. I just stand there. My face in the mirror looks older than it did on Friday and younger than it will on Wednesday. I wash my hands even though they don’t need washing. I dry them on the paper towel. I throw the paper towel away. I stand there some more. A coworker walks in and says “long line in there?” and I say “yeah, brutal” and she laughs and I laugh and we both go back to our separate little cubicles to stare at our separate little screens.\n\nThen I go back to my desk and I do the meeting. I say “the migration is on track” and “I think we can ship by Wednesday.” People nod. Someone says “great work.” Someone else says “love the energy.” I smile with my mouth. The rest of my face doesn’t move. I look at myself on the Zoom thumbnail and I look like someone who is okay, which is the whole point, which is also the whole problem.\n\nAt 6:15 PM I close my laptop and just sit there for a minute. The office is mostly empty. The plants are still there. The happiness jar is still on my coworker’s desk with the little folded notes that I pretend not to read. There’s still no note from me. I almost write one. I write “made it to Monday” on a Post-it and then I crumple it up and put it in my pocket and it lives there for the rest of the train ride home.\n\nI take the subway home. I don’t listen to music. I don’t read. I don’t even scroll. I just stand there holding the pole again. Same knuckles, same white. A different woman next to me doesn’t ask if I’m okay. I appreciate her for it. I appreciate strangers who don’t ask if I’m okay on Mondays, because the answer is no and I don’t want to lie to one more person in one more fluorescent-lit space.\n\n## I Know Something Is Wrong\n\nI want to be clear about something. I know this isn’t right. I know that dread shouldn’t be the headline of every Sunday night. I know that hands shouldn’t shake over cereal. I know that a commute shouldn’t feel like walking into a wall you can’t see. I know that I’m not “just tired” and I haven’t been for a while.\n\nI’m not writing this for advice. I’m not looking for a “have you tried yoga” comment. I’m not looking for “you should talk to someone.” I know I should talk to someone. I know I should drink water. I know I should sleep earlier. I know I should delete Slack off my phone. I know all of it. That’s not the point.\n\nThe point is — I don’t know what the point is. I’m just sitting here on my couch on a Tuesday evening, the dread already starting to hum for next Monday, writing this out because I think maybe if I write it down it won’t live only inside my chest. I think maybe if I say it out loud, somewhere, to no one in particular, it’ll be a little less heavy to carry into the kitchen in the morning when the kettle clicks off and I still haven’t stood up.\n\nI don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if any of this is true. I just know that I’m a mess on Mondays, and I’m a mess about Mondays, and I’m tired of pretending I’m not.\n\nMy cat just jumped on the couch next to me. She’s purring. I’m not, but she’s purring for both of us.\n\n---\n\n## Verdict\n\nI’m not better. I’m not worse. I’m just writing this on a Tuesday and trying to get to Wednesday without drowning, and that’s about all I’ve got for today.” }