There are days when getting out of bed feels like climbing Mount Everest.
Not literally — no frostbitten fingers, no oxygen tanks, no Sherpa watching me cry because my sock seam feels “wrong.” But emotionally? It’s the same mountain. And the worst part? I can see the summit. It’s right there. The summit is: Stand up. Walk downstairs. And yet my brain acts like I’m gearing up for a National Geographic documentary.
People say things like “Just put your feet on the floor!” with the same confidence of someone telling you the secret to losing weight is “Just eat less.” If it were that easy, Karen, I wouldn’t be lying here calculating whether I have the energy to blink.
I wish I could be one of those people who wakes up, stretches, springs out of bed, and decides it’s a great day to go for a jog or scrub baseboards or alphabetize the spice rack.
Meanwhile I’m over here negotiating with myself like:
“If you get up now, you can sit on the couch instead.”
“If you walk to the kitchen, you don’t even have to cook — just vibe in front of the fridge like a sad little goblin.”
“If you check the mailbox, there’s a 1% chance it’s not bad news.”
There’s this invisible weight that sits on my chest some mornings — the kind of heavy that isn’t dramatic enough to write about in a medical journal but is absolutely heavy enough to keep me from standing up. It’s not laziness. It’s not lack of motivation. It’s not “needing a better morning routine” (thanks, reels).
It’s mental illness.
It’s exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix.
It’s depression creeping in like a fog machine at a middle-school dance.
It’s anxiety whispering, “Don’t move, something might go wrong.”
It’s trauma saying, “You’re safer here.”
And yet — I still want to be the person who can just will themselves into action. I want to be the person who throws on shoes and checks the mailbox without giving themselves an internal TED Talk about perseverance. I want to be the person whose brain doesn’t turn a simple task into a death-defying expedition.
But here’s the thing I’m slowly learning:
Getting out of bed is climbing Mount Everest for some of us.
That doesn’t make us weak.
It just means we’re hiking a different mountain.
And on the days I finally swing my legs over the edge of the mattress, stand up, and take even five steps?
That’s my summit. That’s my flag at the top. That’s my “Hey, look, Ma, I made it!”
Some people climb Everest for bragging rights.
Some of us climb it just to get to the couch.
Both are victories.
