Just Get Up… I Can’t

Your eyes slowly open. Light streams through the window, and suddenly you’re acutely aware of your consciousness. You take a deep breath, preparing to move. But motivation doesn’t come. You’re frozen in bed. Your body feels weighed down, unbearably heavy. The shower you’re supposed to get up for seems impossibly far away, completely out of reach.

Your body aches. The weight of the world feels too heavy to bear today. The thoughts arrive, familiar and cruel, echoing in your own voice:

“What’s the point? You do the same thing every day. Are you just going to keep repeating this until you die?”

“No one will miss you if you don’t go to work or school. You’re a burden to everyone anyway.”

“You’re so useless you can’t even get out of bed.”

Your body tightens as the thoughts grow louder. Your stomach twists. Your head pounds.

I can’t get up.

You try again and again to force yourself out of bed, clinging to your own self-hatred as fuel.

“What’s wrong with you? Just get up. Everyone else does it. Suck it up and move like everyone else.”

Somehow, using every ounce of strength and willpower, you stand. You stumble to the shower, feeling simultaneously hollow and unbearably full. Under the water, you begin to weep. You don’t know why—you only know that everything feels like too much. Your joints and muscles ache as you go through the motions of washing yourself.

Yesterday didn’t feel like this. Yesterday wasn’t heavy. Yesterday didn’t hurt.

We live in a world where productivity is often mistaken for morality. Those who struggle to keep up are misunderstood, dismissed, or shamed. Society labels them lazy, careless, or lacking grit—searching for simple answers to explain complex realities. The struggles of others are easy to overlook when we reduce them to “not trying hard enough.”

In the U.S., many still cling to the old adage: “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” The idea is that if you just try harder, everything will be fine.

But this oversimplification ignores the painful truth of chronic health conditions and mental illness.

Depression is among the most misunderstood of these conditions. It isn’t simply “feeling sad.” It isn’t just about emotions. Depression is a disorder—often chronic—bringing repeated episodes that can alter a person’s entire life.

Because it’s classified as a mental health disorder, people assume it’s all “in the head.” And since it isn’t visible, some dismiss it as imaginary, insisting that those with depression should be able to “snap out of it.” Many living with depression know the silent judgment: “If you worked harder… If you pushed yourself… If you weren’t so lazy… you’d be fine.”

But this way of thinking is profoundly wrong.

Major Depressive Disorder is not weakness—it is an exhausting, life-altering condition. It doesn’t just affect your thoughts; it consumes your body. Depression causes fatigue, headaches, backaches, stomach pain, aching joints and muscles. These are real, daily battles.

The DSM-5 lists the symptoms, but no textbook can capture the weight of living with them—the despair, the worthlessness, the relentless heaviness. Science helps explain it: depression and pain share neurochemical pathways, both influenced by serotonin and norepinephrine. When those levels drop, depression deepens and pain intensifies. This is why depressive episodes are so often accompanied by physical suffering.

Sometimes you can’t just get up. Not because you’re weak, not because you lack discipline, not because you don’t care. But because you are living with real pain—mental and physical. Because you’ve been fighting for so long, and you’re exhausted.

To those living with depression: be kind to yourself.

You will rise when you are able. The to-do list can wait. You deserve rest and care. If the hard days become too heavy, reach out to a mental health professional. Treatment and support are available.

Your worth is not measured by productivity. You are valuable, no matter how much you accomplish today. Your pain is valid. And when you are ready, you will continue forward.

The world can wait.

Trivedi M. H. (2004). The link between depression and physical symptoms. Primary care companion to the Journal of clinical psychiatry, 6(Suppl 1), 12–16.