For years, I didn’t stop.

Work all day, come home and mother, then study deep into the night. Some nights I was up until two, sometimes three in the morning, chasing a degree that felt like survival, not ambition. People saw the grades, the Dean’s List. They didn’t see the tears in the shower, the meals skipped, the silence I swallowed just to make it all fit.

There was no backup plan. No safety net. Just me.

So I didn’t have time to fall apart. I couldn’t afford to be tired or lost or overwhelmed. I kept pushing because I had no choice. Because a little boy was watching me. Because we needed stability. Because I needed to prove – to myself, to everyone – that I could build a life for us, alone.

And I did.

I built it. I landed the job. I created safety, finally. A home that didn’t echo with fear. A routine. Health insurance. Paid time off. A locked front door that only I had the key to. And just when things started to settle, I started falling apart.

It crept in quietly at first.

Fatigue that sleep couldn’t fix. Headaches that lasted for days. Brain fog so heavy I’d forget what I was saying mid-sentence. My body ached like I had been hit, even though I hadn’t moved much. I started snapping, getting irritable at nothing, crying over small things. Anxiety showed up out of nowhere—at the grocery store, in the middle of emails, during what should have been peaceful nights.

I thought something was wrong with me.

But the truth is, nothing was random.

My body wasn’t breaking down – it was finally speaking.

It was holding everything I had ignored just to survive. And now that the danger had passed, it was safe enough to feel it all.

No one talks about what happens after.

After the degree. After the job. After you “make it.”

No one tells you that sometimes your body waits until you’re safe to fall apart. That sometimes the real healing starts when the chaos ends—and it’s not pretty. It’s messy and exhausting and lonely. But it’s real.

Now I’m learning to rest.

Not because I earned it, not because I crossed some finish line – but because I need it. Because I’m human. Because for years I lived like a machine, and that’s not living. I’m learning to listen to my body instead of fighting it. To let softness in, even when it feels foreign. To forgive myself for surviving the only way I knew how.