For Years I Thought I Was Lazy. I Did Not Know How Deeply Exhausted I Was

by Rebecca Bloom

For a long time I carried the shameful belief that I was lazy. I thought there was something wrong with me because I could not keep up with other people. I saw how easily others seemed to move through life and wondered why my body felt heavy even on the simplest days. I blamed myself. I criticised myself. I pushed myself harder than anyone ever knew.

What I did not realise was that there is a difference between laziness and exhaustion. Laziness is a lack of desire. Exhaustion is a lack of capacity. And I was living with a body and mind that had been in survival mode for decades.

I was not lazy. I was depleted. I was worn down by years of emotional labour no one could see. Years of holding myself together with no one to hold me. Years of being alert to every shift in mood around me. Years of trying to earn love by being useful, agreeable and strong.

No one tells you how much energy this kind of childhood takes from you. How it empties you long before adulthood even begins. How it teaches you to keep going even when your insides are screaming for rest.

By the time illness arrived, I had nothing left to give. My body was not failing. It was telling the truth. A truth I did not want to hear. A truth I had learned to ignore. A truth that sounded like weakness because I had been taught to treat rest as something shameful.

The more my body slowed, the more guilt I felt. Every time I sat down, I heard the old voice saying I should be doing more. Every time I rested, I felt like I was failing. Every time I said I was tired, I questioned whether it was real.

But exhaustion does not need permission. It does not need approval. It does not need proof. It comes from living a life where you are never allowed to be fully human.

Now I understand myself differently. This fatigue is not laziness. It is the weight of years spent being strong in ways that harmed me. It is the toll of growing up without emotional rest. It is the cost of ignoring my own needs because I never learned they mattered.

I am not lazy. I am someone who coped for far too long without support. Someone who kept going long after her body asked her to stop. Someone who carried more than anyone ever realised.

And now I am learning to rest without apologising. I am learning to honour the tiredness that has lived in me since childhood. I am learning that the body does not lie, even when the mind tries to call it laziness.

The truth is simple. I was never lazy. I was exhausted. Deeply. Quietly. Honestly. And I am finally listening.

Rebecca Bloom