Who Made Monday the Villain of all Days?

by Joyce Wachau Chege

At this point, I think Monday is not the problem, we are.

Maybe it’s a habit, something we picked along the way and religiously went with it. For the longest time, if anyone asks me how I’m doing on a Monday morning, I huff and sigh and I tell myself, it is Monday, what do you expect? I take my time to think if I am okay, I regard it with a smug “just because it’s Monday”. We really love to hate on it and for what reason? At what cost? To what end?

I am sure Monday stays up all night wondering what it ever did to always receive the unwarranted hate and the award for the worst day ever. Wondering where it all went wrong and how the roof caved in. It has time allocated to see a therapist from all the trauma dumping, we do on it. It is like being bullied, put in a headlock and it can never understand why. I would not be surprised if Monday listens to sad songs just to feel sadder and justify the sadness. Monday is the embodiment of Sadness from the Inside Out animated movie by Pixar.

If Monday doesn’t seek solace at the bottom of a glass, then it is quite strong. When the days hold a meeting in their group chat, messages from Monday are ignored while Friday is entertained and received with so much pomp, because it’s the life of the party. Monday shows up too soon and ruins a perfect weekend. Someone in charge of the calendar should most probably squeeze a day between Sunday and Monday and maybe, just maybe, the bile towards the poor day might go down.

If depression were a day, it would be Monday. No one understands, they all judge you. The pariah of days, the black sheep of the week family. The kid who gets picked last to do things. The brain has wired itself to sigh and click whenever the Monday alarm goes off, the body feels heavier and clasps to the pillow begging for just a few more minutes of sleep, the outfit you had envisioned turns out wrong when you try it on, the traffic is insane on that same day, people will walk slower, meetings are back to back, for some reason that is the day the laptop decides to be slow as if taunting you and the coffee doesn’t seem to taste like it should.

If Monday was to sue this atrocious smear campaign against it, I think it would have a pretty strong case. The defamation over the years has been insane! Oh, the lumpsum on compensatory damages would have it sorted for life.

Monday is the first pancake, the one that always comes out badly and is set aside. The PR department must be in shambles, meeting after meeting, trying to salvage whatever reputation the day has. I’m sure they hate the job now, only resting whenever a holiday falls on Monday because only then, does everyone change their opinions on how much they detest the day. Must be the case study in Psychology classes.

I mean, its reputation does precede it. The habit has long taken root and coming out of this one might be hard. Maybe we should learn to cut it some slack, give it room to breathe. It never asked to be called Monday; to be in the same category as Friday, it is just a day that wants to be loved so bad and feel the warmth that comes with being appreciated. But sadly, we only know tough love and until we can agree to come to a truce, hear the day out, meet it halfway, the blame and the sacrificial lamb will always be Monday.