Blue Monday
It’s Monday morning and I’m waiting for my train. Dozens of fellow morning commuters are frantically blowing into their hands in the hopes of keeping all ten fingers in this deadly cold.
A middle-aged woman stands beside me, her cheeks rosy, her eyes graced with bags underneath them. Our eyes meet and there’s an unspoken, mutual feeling of pity, for each other, but mostly for ourselves. Our eye contact is broken by an announcement. Ten minutes delay.
“Oh for fuck’s sake. No wonder they say it’s the most depressing day of the year,” my newfound compadre exclaims. “Actually,” I say, “that’s just something that was made up, there’s not really any scientific backing to that statement.” The woman gives me a strange, slightly annoyed look. We spend the remaining ten minutes staring into the distance, desperately searching for a train to relieve us from this awkward silence.
After an unnecessarily long journey I finally arrive home, greeted by a roommate in distress.
“Urgh, my phone keeps shutting down out of the blue. And didn’t I ask you last week if you could clean the kitchen? It’s a complete mess in there, you know that? And it’s not like I don’t have other things on my mind with these resits coming up you know! Stupid blue Monday..” As she storms off into her room, I shout after her: “You know, Blue Monday isn’t actually a th-”
She slams her door shut.
The train delay has forced me to rush to university, to make it in time for my resit. Winded and cold I rush into the lecture room. Barely able to catch my breath, I stare at the painfully unfamiliar questions and sigh. “Don’t let them get to you, Leanne. It’s all just a myth, this blue Monday. Just breathe.” After three hours of an attempted positive attitude, I take a couple of minutes to find my bicycle, only to find that my tire has decided to free the air that had been captured inside it. In a moment of frustration I give my bicycle an underwhelming kick. “Stupid blue Monday!”
Another student shows up next to me. “Hey, so did you know that blue Monday was actually just made up b-”
“Fuck. Off.”