How I Realized Tuesdays Were The Worst — and How It Helped My Depression

Spotify playlist to accompany this article

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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

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?

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