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The message lands at 11:07 a.m.: hey—can you do me a favor? since you’re home, could you call the clinic and sit on hold for me? i’m slammed at work.

She flips the phone over like it burned her. Sun pools on the living room rug. The house is quiet enough to hear the fridge hum and the small click in her jaw when she clenches it.

She isn’t “chilling.” She’s breathing between waves.

On the coffee table: a glass of water sweating a ring, a half-folded blanket, a to-do list that looks like a dare. Call the school. Email the billing office. Reschedule the appointment she canceled when her body said Sit or I’ll sit you. The list stares back like a judge; she looks away first.

Outside, a delivery truck hisses and shudders to a stop. The driver drops a package at the wrong door, realizes, doubles back. Even strangers get do-overs. She wonders why she doesn’t offer the same grace to herself.

Then memory knocks: last year, same month, same light. She had told herself she was fine—then woke on the kitchen floor, cheek pressed to cool tile, heart racing like it was late for something. The doctor called it “overexertion.” Her aunt called it “drama.” Her body called it too much.

She learned then that there’s a cost for pretending. She paid it in full.

The couch has dents in it from the days she actually honored the order to rest. Not a punishment corner—more like a chapel pew, when she sits here on purpose, The edges soften. The clock still ticks; she just doesn’t let it bite.

The phone buzzes again. A cousin this time: you finally coming Sunday or is it another excuse? we really need your big pan of rice.
She pictures the grocery line, the thirty minutes on her feet stirring, the extra hour smiling through the ache, and the Sunday night collapse. She types I can’t this week and deletes it. Types maybe and deletes that too. Puts the phone face down again. The word that’s been following her—lazy—pokes at the door like a cat. She doesn’t let it in.

Midday light shifts. Dust floats. Her breath comes in a little easier when she notices small, ordinary things. No incense, no crystals, just air doing what air does.

There was a time she wore exhaustion like a medal. “Now that’s a real woman,” they’d say—smile on, back straight, carrying everyone’s mess without a peep. Strong as in silent. Strong as in never needs. Strong as in breaking privately. They didn’t see the nights she couldn’t unclench, the mornings she counted spoons like currency. They didn’t see the way her hands shook when she poured coffee, or how the ache behind her eyes felt like a live wire.

She used to push anyway. To be above reproach. To be the woman no one could call selfish. Turns out, you can’t outwork a nervous system that’s already in the red.

Today, she chooses a different rebellion. She chooses stillness.

Not the performative kind with a curated blanket and a book cover angled toward the camera. The sloppy kind. The kind where the laundry is half-folded and the sink is honest. The kind where a person lies down because their body said so, not because a productivity app gave them permission.

She sets a timer for twenty minutes, not because rest should be timed, but because alarms are for things that matter. The first minute, her brain gnaws on the list again. The second, it gnaws on the texts. By minute four, the body takes the lead: jaw slack, shoulders lower, breath thickens. A tear slides sideways toward her ear. It’s not a performance. It’s a release valve.

Somewhere in the middle, she remembers an afternoon from childhood. She had been sick on the couch, cartoon reruns droning, grandmother’s hand on her forehead. No rush in the room. No clock to beat. Just presence, plain as bread. She files the feeling and names it: safety.

When the timer chirps, she doesn’t leap up in apology. The first thoughts crash the party as a pack: See? You don’t do anything. What have you finished? You can’t even keep up. Lazy. She watches them stampede by like loud motorcycles on the highway and doesn’t chase a single one.

She pours fresh water. She eats something that doesn’t argue with her stomach. She stands at the window and watches a girl on a bike launch herself off a tiny curb, wobble, then steady, grinning like she invented balance. Rest feels like that—awkward, then possible.

A sharp clack on the picket fence. The neighbor leans on the rail, cheerful and nosy, voice pitched like a favor. “Saw you at the window! You home? Must be nice. Hey—did you ever find anything yet? My cousin’s got a little side thing; you could help answer calls, or maybe watch her kids a few afternoons. Keep you busy.”

“I’m not available for side gigs,” she says, even and steady. “I’m on a health schedule right now—appointments and recovery. If that changes, I’ll let you know.”

The neighbor blinks, thrown off script. “Oh… well, okay—just thought I’d ask,” she says, smile turning papery as she backs away, confusion trailing behind her like a scarf.

The house exhales again. She sits and writes two lines on a sticky note and sticks it to the wall above the couch: Rest is work. Work worth doing.

Evening comes with the usual chorus—keys in the lock, a question from the hallway, a thud of shoes. She doesn’t greet anyone with apology. She says hello like a person who belongs in her own life. Dinner is simple. No feast, no guilt spiral. She pauses once to feel her feet on the floor. It’s such a small thing it would look like nothing on camera. It isn’t nothing.

Later, she picks up the phone and types a message that fits: I won’t make Sunday. If you need the pan, it’ll be on my porch Saturday 3–5—swing by. She sends it before anxiety can argue. No thesis, no defense. A sentence can be a border.

Before bed, she sets the timer again, not because she earned it, but because she exists. She turns her face toward the dark and doesn’t brace for impact. The ache is still there—grief for the old story where she proved her worth by bleeding for it. But the new story is in the room now, and it’s sitting on the couch with her, patient as a friend who knows how to be quiet.

Tomorrow’s list is still long. She’s not pretending otherwise. But the first line is different: Rest. Not at the end if there’s time. At the start, because there has to be a start.

It isn’t laziness. It’s liturgy. Small, daily, holy.

She turns off the lamp. Somewhere, a siren wails and fades. The fridge hums. The house holds. Her body does what bodies do when they’re finally allowed to.

It lets go.

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