Failing At Rest

When stopping feels harder than keeping up the facade and the past comes back to visit through my dreams.

I’m writing today from a place of exhaustion and some anxiety. There isn’t a real reason for it, outside of the fact that this is how some days just are right now. I slept all night—minus waking up and tossing and turning from my back hurting—and then didn’t get up and moving until close to noon. I thought I wrote on Friday, and I knew I didn’t write Monday. It’s now Wednesday and I realize that my last post was a week ago. That’s the first time that has happened since I started this Substack back in February.

I’m really throwing away all the rules here, aren’t I?

When I remove the pressure to post on a set schedule, I find that some days I am simply too exhausted to write. Today I am exhausted, but want to write. I feel like I need to write. I was all set to share my thoughts on the new live-action Moana movie. Instead, I feel this might take a different form.

A powerful visual representation of a complex emotional journey: a hand and forearm enveloped by dry, shedding leaves and glowing energy. Interwoven within this transformation are the words 'grief', 'surrender', 'unlearning', 'healing', and 'stillness' in elegant script, illustrating the profound and often painful process of self-discovery, acceptance, and renewal.

I’m in week four of medical leave. As hard as I try not to feel pressure from the six week time frame I was initially given, I can feel it looming like a deadline and perhaps the night before I will jump into action and perform my way fully into healing.

Last night I had dreams that were seemingly unrelated to medical leave ending and having to figure out what accomodations at work will look like. I did message my doctor last night, trying to figure out what I am supposed to do, as she is leaving the practice before my leave ends. And the next available appointment I could get with the nurse pracitioner there is also after I am supposed to return to work. I don’t meet with my therapist again until after the leave is supposed to end. And I feel like I’m flailing around, desperately trying to keep my head above water, with no one to guide me to safe waters.

As difficult as it is, I have been trying not to pressure myself into feeling better. I am still struggling with every day life—feeding myself, showering, keeping up with anything around the house, cooking—I don’t feel any better or stronger than I did when I started four weeks ago. I just have more craft projects to show for it.

In some ways, I feel worse.

I had read this might happen, but I didn’t actually believe it would be the case for me. It seems that with Autistic burnout and these new diagnoses, I am not quite finding the resilience as quickly.

I want to feel better.

To function better.

To be better.

I want to feel rested and restored, and each day that I don’t, I feel as if I am failing at resting. At figuring out what the next steps will be.

And perhaps that is part of the problem. That while the work piece is on the back burner for now, I am still trying to work myself into feeling better. Something tells me that it doesn’t happen that way, though. And I find myself so frustrated that I don’t see the answer.

I don’t know how to fix myself.
If I even need to be fixed.

Taking off the pressures of every day life is a gift—being able to do this. It isn’t without a cost, financially and within our marriage though. There is tension and stress, and I don’t know if it is just me putting presssure on myself and everything to fall into place, all the while I feel like I am floundering.

The rest, this time of letting my body dictate how the day unfolds, it’s hard. Because if it were just my body at play here, maybe it would be easier. But there is this entire network of stuff in my mind. Guilt, shame, insecurity, fear, worry, anxiety—all of these things rise up and try to overwhelm my senses—they do overwhelm me. Every moment that I am not just resting, my mind is busy trying to fill in the gaps. Each quiet segment of time I can find to be still and really just recover is spent battling my inner monologue.

How do I rest while also trying to figure out what comes next?
How do I trust that what comes next will be for my good?
Good for our finances?
Good for my marriage?
How do I advocate for myself and what I feel like I need and can and cannot handle right now?
Am I even allowed to do that?

And what about that friendship that I long for, the one that was ripped away from me three years ago, for reasons I still do not know? This is somehow related to where I am headed. I keep having vivid dreams about this friend. The one I met in college that I clicked with instantly. She was a couple of years older than I am, and we sung together in a small group at our Bible college. While the other two girls donned the makeup and scarves, she and I rebuffed the director’s attempts to pretty us up. We were tomboys and resented most things girly. We had similar backgrounds and understood one another at a level you only can when someone has been through the same kinds of trauma you have.

Why do I keep dreaming about her?
Why can’t I let her go?
She pulled away and she cut me off.
No explanation, no warning.
Just up and vanished out of my life, as if she never existed.

And my heart is still broken, three years later.

That is what disrupted my sleep last night. There have been so many things I have gone through without her. My grandma dying, months after hers. My husband getting cancer. Reuniting with my biological parents. Being diagnosed with AuDHD, among other things. And it isn’t that God hasn’t provided amply for me during these times. The frienships that have blossomed and grown and carried me through those times have been amazing.

It feels selfish to have the best of friends in my life, and still be left feeling alone.

Because there was just something about my connection and bond with this other friend. After 20+ years together, having survied a lot within our marriages, a several-year rift between us that was mended 15+ years ago and a bond that grew stronger after, how am I here now and she isn’t by my side? What did I do or say or imply to her that made her feel like it was better to cut me out of her life? The injustice of it all is difficult to hold.

I have a new best friend. A frienship that I had been cultivating prior to being removed from my other friend’s life as if I never existed. I didn’t go out trying to find someone to replace her. To me, there was room for both of them equally. They both had different strengths and held a different role in my life and heart. Was that the reason she pulled away?

Because someone new had come into the picture and she couldn’t understand how there would be room for both of them?
Did she cut me off before I could abandon her?
Is that what she thought was going to happen?
Or did life become so heavy for her that she simply couldn’t manage a friendship with me?
Was I too difficult?
Too intense?
Too selfish?
Did I drive her away?

The weight of those unanswered questions hangs thick in the air. It occupies more of my nights than I would like, because when I dream of her, I wake up feeling like she has died. Even though I know she still walks this earth. So much of my time thinking of her is spent trying to figure out what I did wrong, knowing full well I may have done nothing. Or I may have seriously wounded her, however unintentional it may have been.

The not knowing—it grinds me down.
It unsettles me and breaks my heart.

The thought of her out there doing life without her once-best friend hurts. And thinking I may have pushed her away? It’s almost more than I can bear. And because I can’t know her motivation or what happened, it’s hard to shut down my brain when I dream of her and I grieve all over again the absence of her.

Maybe the dreaming of her is a sign from God, trying to point me to the truth in my medical leave:

it is simply unknown.

The future.

How do I sit with that?

When I consider it, panic wells up within me. And I feel the opposite of peace. And just like that friendship, I wonder with this medical leave and the AuDHD diagnosis and I can’t know how it will play out. I can’t understand why at age 47 it all came to a head. Why in a year of trying to cultivate stillness it all came about. And in writing that, I understand that it is exactly because I asked God to help me learn to be still, truly still, that the diagnoses came. These are things I cannot simply rush my way through. I can’t just close my eyes and make it all make sense. So much of me and my past and my present feel called into question.

And maybe the grief I feel from dreaming about her again is necessary. Because I can see how there is a certain kind of grief that comes with finding out after nearly 50 years that I am Autistic. And coming to terms with that is tricky. There’s a lot wrapped up in the masks I cemented to my face in order to survive a world that was built for a brain that processed things differently.

I have been able to see that the diagnosis isn’t a curse and it isn’t a failure. It is a gift—to have confirmation that my brain does in fact see the world differently. Autism isn’t this ugly thing we need to be afraid of. It’s beautiful and can bring with it some incredible blessings. I am incredibly empathetic. I am sensitive to the pain I see in others. I can detect it, with almost perfect precision. Often I will know just in meeting someone, sometimes before they speak, that they carry deep wounds that have never been tended to. The hypervigilance that grew from infancy can sometimes allow me to see what others cannot.

And so I am sitting with that, while also grieving. There is deep grief over always being misunderstood. I catch myself saying something and I hear my tone. And I think, “Woah…why is my voice coming out like that?” I feel like I am constantly apologizing now for my tone, as I am hyper-aware of how often I sound contrary to what I am thinking and feeling. I don’t even understand how that happens, but I am very aware of it now.

I am aware of how I blunder my way into conflict, and put others in a position to tend to me before they even have a chance to sit down and digest their day. And I look back and realize I have done this my whole life!

Always told I talk too much, or I am too loud, or I am too sensitive, I used to feel so much shame. I see now, though these are areas I can work on (the too much and too loud parts), this has always been how I am.

And I don’t use the Autism diagnois as an excuse. But it does explain a lot. And now that I am aware, I am hyper-aware. And I see all the time how I get myself into situations I don’t intend to, all because I seem to have this impulse control issue and will physically feel more anxious if I don’t blurt out whatever I am struggling with in any given moment.

I don’t know where this leaves me. I don’t know what is going to happen with my medical leave and my job and what accommodations would be reasonable. I feel like there is no guidance, and I am still just trying to rest and recover from decades of high-performing and high-masking.

The masks are stripped away, and I’m not sure what is left underneath. Right now it just feels like I’ve had deep burns and every day I go back under the microscope and new sections of dead skin have to be ripped off so new, healthy skin can grow. And each day, I don’t feel any closer to healing.

Because the process is brutally difficult and physically and emotionally excruciating.

So I’m going to do what I do best: I’m gonna sit with what I am feeling, and I am going to chat with Jesus, and listen to my worship music. And at least for today, I know that will be enough.

Jamie

Let’s Stay Connected

If this spoke to your heart, there are a few quick ways you can support my ministry:

• Subscribe: Hit the subscribe button here on Substack so you never miss a post or podcast episode. It is always free to subscribe. If you want to support my ministry with a financial donation, you are welcome to do that as well.

• Follow along: You can find me on Instagram @theweightofstillness for daily encouragement, behind-the-scenes thoughts, and community.

• Share the hope: If this message touched your heart, please share it with someone who needs it. You never know who in your life is waiting to hear that they are loved, valued, and worthy of grace.

The Weight of Stillness is a reader-supported ministry.
There will never be a paywall blocking you from full
access to what God is teaching me as I embrace
stillness. But if you are led to donate to this ministry
God is birthing out of my journey, you can become a
paid subscriber.