Waking up on a Saturday, I usually spring out of bed, ready to go. I stretch, make coffee, grab my vape, and head to the terrace. From there I watch people playing tennis on the courts across the quiet stream, the ball drifting back and forth in soft rhythm.

My dog lies at my feet. My wife is still asleep.

It feels like I have the world to myself. Birds hop across the lawn, searching for crumbs, their songs threading gently through the morning air.

But this morning was different.

Everything was there — the courts, the birds, the light, the quiet — but I noticed none of it. I just sat. Hollow. The worst part is that I didn’t even realize it at first. Not until the sedatives began to loosen their grip, inch by inch.

The sprinkler hissed. The lawn glowed an impossible green. The old oak stirred in the breeze.

I closed my eyes and tried to summon the familiar Saturday joy. It didn’t come.

The numbness stayed, heavy and cold, wrapped around me like wet concrete. The rhythmic thwack of the tennis ball — usually comforting — grated against my skull. A tear slipped down my cheek, unnoticed until it reached my jaw.

I fumbled with the hose, coffee cup trembling in my hand. Normally I’d be whistling. Today, not a sound escaped me.

The flowers looked dull. The sunbird never registered. Even the coffee tasted wrong — bitter, lifeless.

My vape blinked on the table, untouched.

My dog knew. He always does. He crept back inside to lie near my wife, choosing warmth over whatever I had become.

The coffee went cold. I poured it onto the grass and watched the birds scatter.

I checked my watch. Dead battery. I dropped it beside the vape.

When my wife called out from the hallway — “Morning!” — her voice muffled by the bathroom door, I felt panic spark in my chest. She couldn’t see me like this.

I stood up because I had to.

Inside, the house felt unfamiliar. The quiet that once comforted me pressed inward instead of out. I opened the fridge and stared, waiting for something — anything — to matter.

Nothing did.

I drank water. I sat down. I held my head in my hands and tried to remember what it felt like to feel.

It was the first proper coffee — thick, bitter, merciless — that finally cut through the fog.

And with it came the truth.

This was my last weekend before returning to work.

The place where younger colleagues laugh at my clothes and call me boomer, like a diagnosis. Where conversations die when I enter a room. Where I eat lunch alone, staring at an empty seat, chewing too fast, desperate to disappear.

The place where I am overloaded because I am “capable.” The place where black colleagues pass me in corridors and mutter Boer like a verdict carved into bone. Where teammates call me Oupa — Grandpa — smiling as they do it.

They go out together. They leave me behind.

The kitchen hums with life until I arrive. Then cups are lifted. Eyes dart. Bodies scatter.

Silence follows me like a stain.

I was away for a while. Mental health leave. It had to happen.

Something must have leaked.

When I returned, I tried to joke — a weak olive branch.

“You’re sick, man.”

“Dude, you’re fucking sick.”

At night I still hear it. Sick. Sick. Sick. A broken clock inside my skull.

My wife called HR.

No accommodations.

“We do have an EAP.”

Employee Assistance Program.

I remembered calling them before everything collapsed. The consultant laughing. Filing her nails.

“Dude, you crack me up.”

Then the survey. Please rate your experience.

I wake at four every morning. Seventy-five kilometers of traffic. Steel and brake lights and quiet dread.

I enter the building. I don’t look at faces. I don’t need to.

In the elevator, whispers bloom behind me like mould.

I’ve stood on the top floor.

I’ve looked over the balcony.

I’ve calculated the distance.

But I always get off on the third floor. Walk through reception. Smile. Greet them by name.

Now I just recognise the hollowness in their replies.

“Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, back to work I go,” my GPS sings softly, cheerful and cruel.

Better the devil you know.

The suited snakes are already waiting on their balconies, polished and unafraid of heights.

Someone has to absorb the venom.

It may as well be me.