The day I couldn't get out of bed

For weeks I had been telling myself I was just tired. The kind of tired that a long weekend would fix. The kind that strong coffee could keep at bay until Friday. But on a grey Tuesday in February, I opened my eyes and the ceiling felt impossibly far away. My body was a stone. My phone buzzed and the sound was somehow violent.

I stayed in bed for nine hours. Not sleeping. Just lying there, feeling the weight of every unanswered email pressing down on my chest. This, I would later learn, is what depression and burnout look like when they finally stop hiding.

Around four in the afternoon, I saw my old steel bicycle leaning against the hallway wall. Dust on the saddle. A flat rear tyre. It looked patient, the way good things do. I did not ride it that day. But I sat up. I drank a glass of water. I told myself: tomorrow, just the courtyard. Just one slow loop.

Tomorrow came. I did one loop. Then two. Movement, I am learning, is not a cure. It is a conversation. The body says: I am still here. The mind, eventually, answers back.