The Day My Body Made Me Slow Down

I did not recognise it as a beginning. I thought it was an ending. The day my body gave in felt like a failure I had been trying to outrun for years. Pain arrived quietly at first and then all at once, taking the speed I had built my whole life on.

I had spent so long moving fast. Fast enough not to notice. Fast enough not to feel. Fast enough to avoid the questions that might have broken me if I ever stopped long enough to hear them.

When everything slowed, I expected to feel relief. Instead I felt exposed. I did not know how to rest without guilt. I did not know how to exist without proving I was useful. My body was asking for tenderness and all I knew how to give was effort.

For the first time, I could not push through. My joints hurt. My energy disappeared. My life, which once ran on constant motion, became painfully quiet.

In that quiet, something unexpected happened. Thoughts I had ignored for years began to surface. Feelings I had buried showed up without permission. The child inside me, the one who had gone unnoticed for so long, finally had space to whisper.

She was frightened. She was tired. And she had been waiting for me.

Not the version of me that worked hard or stayed busy or held everything together. But the version of me who could listen. Who could care? Who could gently ask what happened to you? What do you need? How long have you been alone in this?

Slowing down did not fix me. It introduced me to myself. Not someone I used to be. Someone I am only just starting to know.

This is what I am learning. Survival teaches you to move quickly. Healing asks you to move honestly. And the two cannot exist at the same pace.

The day my body made me slow down was not the end I feared. It was the first time I stepped out of survival and into something closer to truth. It was the first time I realised I might deserve a life that does not hurt to live.

And I am still learning that. Every single day.

Rebecca Bloom