Some days feel impossible.
You open your eyes in the morning
and it’s as if the weight of the entire world
is sitting on your chest.
You move slowly,
your thoughts feel messy,
and even simple tasks look like mountains.
Aiden had been living days like that.
Not because something dramatic happened,
but because life had slowly drained his energy
little by little
until one day he realized
he wasn’t okay.
He still worked.
He still smiled at people.
He still acted normal.
But deep inside,
something felt numb.
He didn’t know how to explain the emptiness —
a quiet kind of sadness
that didn’t make him cry
but made everything feel dull.
One afternoon,
after a long week of forcing himself to function,
Aiden sat on a bench behind his office building.
The sky was cloudy,
the air felt heavy,
and his thoughts were louder than ever.
“What happened to me?”
“Why do I feel so exhausted all the time?”
“Why does life feel so hard even when I’m trying so much?”
As he stared at the ground,
a janitor who worked at the building walked by —
an older man with calm eyes and a warm smile.
“You look like you’re carrying too much,”
the janitor said gently.
Aiden forced a small smile.
“I’m just… tired.”
The old man nodded,
as if he understood something Aiden hadn’t said out loud.
“You know,” he began,
“there’s a secret no one likes to talk about.”
Aiden looked up, curious.
“Life gets heavy for everyone,”
the man continued.
“Even the strong ones.
Especially the strong ones.
Because they’re the ones who keep going
even when they’re hurting.”
Aiden felt those words settle deep inside him.
“But here’s something else,”
the janitor added.
“The fact that you feel tired doesn’t mean you’re weak.
It means you’ve been strong for too long
without giving yourself permission to rest.”
Aiden swallowed hard.
He hadn’t realized how much he had been holding in.
“Rest isn’t quitting,”
the man said softly.
“It’s gathering strength for the next part of the journey.”
Those words hit Aiden harder than he expected.
For months, he thought slowing down meant failure.
He thought taking a break meant he wasn’t capable.
He thought stepping back meant losing his place in life.
But for the first time,
he saw it differently.
Maybe resting wasn’t a sign of weakness.
Maybe it was an act of survival.
He took a deep breath
and felt a tiny bit of the heaviness lift —
not completely,
but enough to remind him that he wasn’t broken.
The old man smiled and started walking away,
but before he left,
he said one last thing:
“Life will get lighter.
Not all at once…
but little by little.
Just don’t give up before it does.”
Aiden sat quietly for a moment,
letting those words settle inside his tired heart.
And for the first time in a long while,
he believed them.
He stood up slowly,
not feeling fully okay yet,
but feeling something more important:
Hope.
Small, gentle, but real.
And sometimes,
that’s all you need to keep moving forward.
