Why is Some Rest Restless?

Rest and I have always had an un-easy relationship. I suppose that's because rest is so often times mixed up in its definition with me as sleep or stagnation, simply non-movement.

But if you're not moving, that does not necessarily mean you're resting.

See, in my dark depression days when I was in my early to mid-twenties, I often slept for twenty-four hours straight, multiple times a month. It happened so frequently, I was diagnosed with minor narcolepsy. I was always sleeping, always stagnate. I was a lump. The gears and cogs inside of me never moving.

I was lifeless and I all I did was rest. Except that wasn't actually resting. It was being lost in depression. It was the non-movement that is stagnate stillness, not the rejuvenating rest to re-charge the machine that is the human body and mind.

One of the phrases my father (a science and math teacher) used to help me out of my depression says “an object in motion stays in motion and an object at rest stays at rest”. At the time, I used that concept to rev the little engine of my heart to move, to go, to just wake up. Just start being in motion, please. Please Jen, just swing your legs over and use the bathroom. Just have some food, some chips, anything! Just move!

That phrase, "an object in motion stays in motion and an object in rest stays in rest" helped propel me out of my depression, like using a crowbar to unstick my life. I wedged it deep into my psyche and pushed with everything I had to get the levers in my mind moving again.

Now, it's seven years later, and what was once something so helpful is now hurting me. Because if an object in motion only stays in motion as long as it's in motion, that means I can never rest. Because if I rest, I might not get up again, I might fall into that dark depression again. If I rest and I'm not moving…I'll be back in that dark place, and I don't want that. So I have to keep moving, keep moving, always.

I don't want to hurt myself anymore and I have a great, deep love for life. But still. STILL! Multiple times a week I find myself in bed at noon, sleeping, or playing video games. I feel like again, all I'm doing is resting with no movement in my days, and at the same time I feel restless, tired.

How can I feel both?

Because the stuck stagnation of sleeping till noon and playing video games is not restful. Rest, true rejuvenating rest, gives energy and power, clarity and peace. While stagnant rest takes those things from you.

Rejuvenating rest is a long hot bubble bath with soft nature sounds wafting through the warm air. Rejuvenating rest is cuddling close with a loved one and watching a new movie that is fluffy, fun, and uncomplicated. Rejuvenating rest is a nap in the warm sun, playing with your animal companions, reading a book with no hurry to get to the ending. Rejuvenating rest is taking a deep breath, a moment to yourself.

But it's not always so easy to know the difference between the two in the day to day.

I want next year to be better. Who doesn't? I want to reach for the stars next year, and a part of that is healing my relationship with rest. Because all the things I talked about before, the sleep, the lost-ness, that's not rest.

I'm so afraid. I'm afraid now that I've gotten myself to be that object in motion, to move out of my depression. What happens if I stop? What happens if I become an object in rest again? The answer is simple and difficult.

I need to learn the clarity of distinguishing the two types of rest and I need to trust that I will start again. That my rest will be good, and rejuvenating, and everything my body and mind needs. I need to trust myself.

That is my true resolution. Trust myself. Listen to my heart. Rest.