Learning to stay out of bed

Sometimes life hands you a heartbreak so deep that getting out of bed feels like a monumental task. Crying under your blanket, where no one can hear you, seems easier—almost like it has become your new way of living. Stiff limbs and shallow breaths take over your body. Your mind doesn’t wander toward anything new; it only circles back to old memories, moments that replay endlessly, haunting every thought and every action. After crying so much your throat turns dry, even something as simple as drinking water feels impossibly difficult.

You force yourself up for a moment, and suddenly it feels as though the world has settled onto your shoulders, heavy and unmoving. You look around your room—the same room that has witnessed your laughter with friends over the phone, your frustration while studying, your quiet joy while resting. Now it looks back at you at your lowest, unchanged. You expect everything to feel different, because your life has fallen apart, but nothing has moved. Life goes on. The outside world won’t wait for you to catch up. So the victory that day isn’t submitting a test or finishing an assignment. It’s getting out of bed and staying out, even when everything in your heart is begging you to crawl back and cocoon yourself until numbness takes over.

But numbness doesn’t begin in your bed. It begins outside—when you pass the same places, the booths where you used to sit, the bench where you once spilled your heart to them. Each encounter stabs you anew. Over days, weeks, months, the pain dulls. You start to believe you’re past it, that it was never meant to be. You begin to imagine a new life, new goals, a version of yourself that has moved on.

It’s snowing—beautifully. The sight pulls at something old, but you brush it off and focus on the present: the chilly wind that hasn’t grown harsh yet, the white flakes landing on your skin and melting away. You listen to your new favorite song after swearing off the singer who reminded you of them, and for a moment, you feel ready for newness. You walk into an unfamiliar classroom—after taking longer than expected to find it—prepared to ace a quiz you studied endlessly for.

Then you see a familiar backpack on the floor.

You look up—not at their face, that would be unbearable—but at their hair. And suddenly you’re back there, remembering how your fingers once clutched it while your lips met theirs. Before you can stop it, your mind pulls you further—to the moments when their lips traced your body, when everything felt so painfully perfect, when they held you like their life depended on it. You feel the weight of their arms again, the quiet that followed after sharing your deepest thoughts. Back when you believed that loving someone enough would make them stay. Back when everything was intact, and their name wasn’t a curse.

Then you’re standing in the classroom again. You notice your friend across the room waving you over, and you walk toward them, pretending your heart didn’t just shatter all over again. You smile with unfocused eyes and take notes with shaking hands. Pretending you didn’t almost lose yourself. Pretending you aren’t missing the bed that once held your grief, or the person who once shared your nights.

They aren’t that person anymore. They’re just a beautiful stranger—one who fills you with anger, sorrow, envy. And once, buried beneath all of it, there was joy too.

You question whether the numbness was healing born of time, or exhaustion born of strain. Either way, you return to the same bed alone, knowing that all your thoughts, all your words, all your promises have quietly lost their weight. You fall asleep thinking about the person you were before them, the person you became while loving them, and the one you are supposed to be after them—if that version of you ever comes into existence.

Student Centre, UTSC | January 6, 2026