“Girl” he says, lying across the edge of my bed in his boxer shorts, “you will never be normal, just accept it already!” A condescending chuckle escapes his mouth and mocks the dread that lies atop me like a tired, fat ghoul. “This is all just so pathetic,” I respond, despondently. I bring to my mouth the black usb-stick-looking instrument and take a long hit of “mango ice” battery acid. As the vapor leaves my body in an opaque cloud, a voice within echoes: “All of this beauty and chaos is absurd and nonsensical, and so are you. Move the fuck on.”
He’s gone quiet now, probably off in his thoughts about what kind of snack he feels like having or what porn he may or may not jerk it to later. Beads of sweat are starting to form on his forehead and shaven chest. How can someone so grotesque be so right about so many things? I bring my hands above my head, a position which even horizontally slows down my heart rate, priming my mind for any significant reflection. “What time is it?” I ask, without looking at him. It’s 3:38. Ungodly hour for these thoughts. We had just spent a whole hour making a playlist called Sunday Scaries. He had smirked: “It’s not like the scaries are reserved for Sunday nights specifically. You’ve been like this for what, four days now?”
I am aware it’s a school-girl concept, but I know many Actual Adult sufferers. Maybe real adults with real jobs only have the necessary time and distance from the underpinnings of their existence on Sunday nights. On Thursday they are already practically checked out and planning what stupid drunken outing will occupy their weekend, and by Friday it’s all reckless abandon into anything that makes them feel like they are actually a person. But Sundays — Sundays are different.
On Sundays people do things like clean their apartment and sort through old clothes. Sundays are for staying in bed and researching useless questions like the origins of the term “tycoon”. Only once all that is done and they’ve completed their skincare or called their mothers — here comes the dread. It must feel so surprising to them, every time! And as soon as their eyelids give into the sweet relief of slumber, they’ve forgotten it all, like a mother who forgets the pain of childbirth as soon as she holds her baby.
“It’s certainly not like that for me,” I let out. I’m not trying to be special — and in fact the only reasonable explanation is I have far too much time on my hands. This dread is not a weekly occurrence, but a longtime companion. A song ends and morphs into the next item on the playlist. “I fucking hate this song.” He shrugs and marches out of the room. I sigh. The light is still on at the neighbor’s across the street, and shadows of cars passing by wash over my ceiling. Maybe this never goes away. It probably doesn’t.
Do the Actual Adults feel okay every day but Sunday because they spend the majority of their time accomplishing things and doing what is expected of them, or is it just a necessary pass-time to avoid facing the realities of existence? I know — you definitely need to make money to feed yourself. That aside though, we invented the workforce for a reason and it certainly wasn’t to fulfill individual potential. We just needed to find ways to cope with our increasingly counterproductive consciousness.
“Yo, let’s smoke another,” he says, stepping back into the room whilst brandishing a popsicle stolen from my freezer. “I’m too high already. Go to bed.” I roll over to lay on my side. My tank top sticks to my sweaty skin. Maybe next Sunday I’ll figure this out.