Or How I Learned A Small Truth About My Own Depression
It was only a few years ago when I started to notice it.
For most people, life is full of good days and bad days. When you are depressed, it’s hard to understand that the bad days, are just that, days.
My depression is pretty dependable when it comes to serving up cognitive biases (errors in thinking) and its favorite seems to be thinking that the way things are right now, is how things will always be.
It’s a common cognitive bias for those with depression.
So, it was somewhat of a revelation when I started to notice my worst days were almost always Tuesdays.
A lot of days you have to go to a day job are hard, but for some reason, I started to notice, Tuesdays were the worst.
Tuesday afternoon’s are the hardest / time just seems to stand still
– Charlie Parr
Above, the Spotify playlist of this article
The Pain of Existing
Before I made the connection, Tuesdays would hit like a brick.
I would walk from my desk about 100 feet to the break room for some water and just couldn’t bare the thought of interacting with someone. I had no atmosphere, no skin. Every small encounter was an asteroid. Every passing foreign body was painful. Even the obligatory, “hey” as you pass by someone you know in the hall (for the first time in the day, only psychos acknowledge someone twice in one day) would physically make me ache.
And I don’t know where I’m going.
I just want to be left alone…
Tuesday’s gone with the wind.
– Lynyrd Skynyrd
Noticing that some days were worse than others helped. Just the thought “Tuesdays Suck” helped me to put my suffering, however mild to the rest of the world, in perspective.
Tuesday afternoon is never ending
–The Beatles (John Lennon)
Depressed minds, like those of a Sith, tend to think in absolutes:“This type of thinking is characterized by absolute terms like always, never, and forever.”
On my bad (read: Tues) days, I found it almost impossible to feel anything positive, and what was worse, I couldn’t even imagine ever feeling something positive again.
Just the ability to remember, “oh yea, it’s fucking Tuesday and Tuesdays blow” was enough to help me not sink deeper into my negative thoughts. I could never really make myself feel good on my worst days but I could at least stop beating myself down.
And so, it appears I’ve made a small break through in understanding my depression via the phrase “Tuesdays Suck”, and what’s more, pop culture seems to keep agreeing with me.
The Cowboy Junkies
Let’s look at some of the things that happen on a typical Tuesday in the life of The Cowboy Junkies on their track “Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning”.
Sun comes up, it’s Tuesday morning
Hits me straight in the eye
Guess you forgot to close the blind last night
Oh, that’s right, I forgot, it was me
Rough start. Sun hits you, you remember you’re alone.
No milk! God, how I hate that
Guess I’ll go to the corner, get breakfast from Jenny
She’s got a black eye this morning, `Jen how’d ya get it?’
She says, `Last night, Bobby got a little bit out of hand’
This day is not getting better. Especially for Jenny.
Lunchtime. I start to dial your number
Then I remember so I reach for something to smoke
And anyways I’d rather listen to Coltrane
Than go through all that shit again
That’s right. Life’s problems are not going to be dealt with today. They are to be avoided and the subsequent anxiety to be quelled with jazz and nicotine.
There’s something about an afternoon spent doing nothing
Just listening to records and watching the sun falling
There’s those endless Tuesday afternoon’s again.
“Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning” is a great song, more complex than I edited here. The song is more balanced, more thoughtful. More about the good, the bad, and the boredom of being newly single. But editing it this way is funnier. No milk!
Suicide Tuesdays
Why are Tuesdays terrible? Maybe it’s just as simple as the Urban Dictionary says, we’re all doing too much ecstasy:
“‘Suicide Tuesday” is the nickname given to the trend for people who use xtc [sic] all weekend committing suicide when they fully come down from the high on Tuesday.
–Urban Dictionary on “Suicide Tuesdays“
Just the fact that someone else out there named it “Suicide Tuesdays” gives me hope. That’s a morbid sentiment but it’s true.
I might be feeling terrible, but the key to stopping the spiral is remembering it’s a shared, temporary terrible. A shared, temporary terrible is much more palatable then an isolated, unending terrible.
Life is terrible enough without having to experience what you think is an isolated, unending terribleness.
But again, why Tuesdays?
Though it seems like it has always existed (thanks Labor movement), for America, “the weekend” didn’t exist until the early 20th Century:
In 1908, the first five-day workweek in the United States was instituted by a New England cotton mill so that Jewish workers would not have to work on the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend
Since this time, I think our shared consciousness just knows that Tuesdays suck. It’s in our bones. At least on Monday we’re rested from 2 days of not working. Wednesday we know we’re halfway done. Tuesdays are exhausting and the furthest day away from the coming weekend (sans Mondays, which we discussed, are at least coming off 2 non-work days).
Doesn’t just reading this lyric from Counting Crows “Perfect Blue Buildings” make you feel hollow:
It’s four thirty a.m. on a Tuesday
It doesn’t get much worse than this
Well ok, that’s an easy one, Adam Duritz literally says “it doesn’t get much worse than this”.
But the song Perfect Blue Buildings feels like being awake way too late on a weeknight and how completely empty and disconnected from society that can feel. It feels like the isolated kind of depression that doesn’t know to blame a bad day on the fact that it’s Tuesday.
Even the Moody Blues make Tuesday afternoon sound dreary af on their literally titled “Tuesday Afternoon”:
If you’ll just come with me you’ll see the beauty of Tuesday Afternoon
But the Moody Blues kind of make everything sound dreary. It’s basically the name of their band, and the National Emotion of England, the country from which they hail.
Tuesday Ruined David Bowie
The Brilliant Corners have a great song titled “Meet Me On Tuesdays” but no one on the internet knows the lyrics. I tried to look them up.
That’s how bad Tuesdays are. Amnesia bad.
All anyone can seem to make out is “feeling very used and not yet 21”. And “you got me hanging around, my heart’s inside out”.
Touche Brilliant Corners, touche. Or should I say Tues-che? Probably not.
David Bowie made a bad song about Tuesday’s.
Something ruining David Bowie…I didn’t think that was possible.
Okay, I knew it was possible because I heard his cover of “Alabama Song” but that doesn’t mean “Love You Til Tuesday” is not terrible.
Not only is it a truly bad song, in it David Bowie dumps you on a Tuesday, with absolutely no explanation. And he is not upset about it all:
Love, love, love, love you till Tuesday
Love, love, love, love you till Tuesday
Da da da dumb
Da da da dumb
Da da da dumb
Da da da dumb
Tuesday’s Gray
At best, Tuesday is a bland color you don’t care about, as per Robert Smith:
I don’t care if Monday’s blue
Tuesday’s gray and Wednesday too
Love is for the weekends, the hangover is for Tuesdays.
If Tuesday were a woman, as the Rolling Stones pined meaninglessly on “Ruby Tuesday”, she would be the type of wannabe, self-important hack who “would never say where she came from”.
Like, why don’t you just answer the question? You’re not that interesting. I was just being polite by asking, Ruby, get over yourself.
Stevie Wonder wrote a song called “Tuesday Heartbreak”.
I’m not quoting the lyrics because literally nothing about it relates to the day of the week, but still, that title made sense to Stevie Wonder.
The best musician of the 20th Century thought of all of the days of the week that could come before the word “heartbreak” and “Tuesday” made the most sense to him.
And that’s because Tuesday’s suck.
But knowing Tuesday’s suck is divine.
It can be the first step in battling your own distorted thinking, in battling depression.
Club Going Up
So, in celebration of discovering a personal truth that helps you navigate the waters of your own mind, let’s turn this turd ship around.
Let’s turn it up on a Tuesday.
People in the service industry get it: the weekend isn’t the weekend for everyone. Some people’s Tuesday’s are other people’s Fridays, and vice versa.
For all the folks battling with depression, the big dreamers/employed waiters, the stoned pizza delivery drivers, the community college Super Seniors, the still-trying-to-be-rappers, the zombied out club kids, the peaking-at-25ers, the 3rd shift nurses and the substitute teachers…let us rejoice with ILOVEMAKONNEN.
Got the Club Going Up
On a Tuesday…
I’ve been working graveyard, shifts every other weekend
Ain’t got no fucking time to party on the weekend
–ILOVEMAKONNEN
Ain’t got no time to party on the weekend…
Tell Gelo, bring the juice
We about to get lit
Fill the room up with some tings
One night off and this is it
–Drake