Every Thursday, I open Instagram to see multiple teenage boys posting “Almost Friday!” images on their stories. Every Thursday, I shake my head in disgust and think to myself that boys will be boys. They’re just excited to party, to get this week finally over with…only to start another one in a few days and repeat this cycle endlessly.
As a capitalistic society, we have been conditioned to believe that we need to have a Monday-Friday, 9–5 job, no matter what. We will sit behind a desk and dread every paper, email, or memo that comes our way; wishing, hoping, and praying for Friday to come sooner. A break from our dull lives at work to let loose and party, because we have no responsibilities anymore! It’s the weekend! This, I have never understood. Since I started school, I hated the weekends. Fridays would fill me with dread since I was no longer in a safe environment to think freely and to allow myself the intellectual freedom that I craved. I now know that I am not the only person to feel this way.
As I have become increasingly mentally ill, I noticed that the feeling of dread on Fridays has gotten deeper, but I didn’t know why. I would be away from the people I no longer want to be friends with, and I would get to spend a few days in bed before having to get up and do it again. The human brain relies on routine, and I had created one for myself: school, work, sleep, repeat. I was using the weekends as an extreme avoidance technique, instead of trying to be productive. But what I didn’t realize was that most people were doing the same thing, manifested in a different way. There isn’t a huge difference between me in bed and the rest of the population celebrating a day of the week — we are avoiding the rest of our lives, the ones that make up most of the days in our week, the ones that we probably need to face the most.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t take a break from everything happening and curl up to watch a movie or go out with our friends. But why do we have to glorify a day of the week? The same boys who post about it being “Almost Friday” are the same type of people to hang a “Saturday’s Are For The Boys” flag in their dorm room, procliaming that they have a set routine for how a particular day of the week sould be spent. And so do I. I just don’t have a flag that reads “I’m Mentally Ill And I Want To Sleep On Saturdays.”
