Why Rest Isn’t Fixing Your Exhaustion

You slept.

You took the weekend off.

You cancelled plans.

Maybe you got the massage, took the bath, ignored the laundry for a few hours and went to bed early.

So why are you still tired?

Maybe the problem isn’t that you haven’t rested enough.
Maybe the problem is that you keep returning to a life that requires you to recover from it.

I know that kind of tired.

And I’m not talking about needing an extra hour of sleep.

I’m talking about the kind of exhaustion that starts showing up everywhere.

There was a period of my life when my mornings were almost impossible. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I was short-tempered with my daughter and with people I loved. I’d put down my keys or wallet and immediately forget where they were.

I’d walk into a room and forget why I went in there.

Something as simple as completing the steps of a task in the right order could feel difficult.

My brain felt foggy.

I’d be exhausted all day and then have trouble sleeping at night.

And the smallest thing going wrong could send me over the edge.

I remember one night in particular.

I was making a Haitian black rice dish for dinner. I had put too much garlic into the mushroom mixture, and by the time the rice was finished, the whole pot tasted bitter.

It was ruined.

And logically?

It was rice.

Dinner didn’t work out. Throw it away. Make something else.

But that isn’t what happened.

I stood over the garbage can spooning that rice into the trash, crying harder with every scoop.

The tears came faster.

The spoon started hitting the edge of the garbage can harder.

And when the pot was finally empty, I laid flat on my back in the middle of my living-room rug with tears running down my face.

I remember hoping that one day all of those terrible days would get better.

I don’t think I made rice again for a year.

I Thought I Needed to Be Stronger

At the time, I didn’t look at my life and think:

Crissy, this life is asking too much of you.

I blamed myself.

I thought I needed to make more money.

I needed to stop being so emotional.

I needed to toughen up.

I needed to be stronger.

There was a lot of anger in me then. I had this attitude that nobody was going to fuck with me.

But underneath all of that toughness?

I was angry at myself.

I felt unsuccessful at life.

Part of me wanted to blame other people for what was happening, but then I’d turn that same blame around and beat myself with it.

You allowed this.

You made these choices.

This is your fault.

What I couldn’t see yet was just how much my life was requiring from me.

At the time, I was working as an officer for the Department of Homeland Security.

My normal shift started at 3:00 in the morning and ended at 11:30 a.m.

And then I worked extra shifts.

Sometimes noon to 6.

Sometimes 1 to 9.

Sometimes 2 to 10 at night.

I was paid on the first and fifteenth, and I can’t remember a paycheck over $1,000 hitting my account during that period—even with all of those hours.

And I was the only provider in my household.

Rent.

Food.

Electricity.

Childcare.

Transportation to and from school.

Laundry.

Gas.

Phone.

Internet.

Uniforms.

Clothes for my daughter and myself.

My daughter was only eleven.

She still needed me emotionally, mentally and physically. I needed to make sure she got up for school—which was its own battle most mornings—make meals, clean the house and figure out transportation because her father wasn’t helping with pickups or drop-offs.

I paid other people to get her where she needed to go.

I was also dating someone who constantly needed me to drive him to work.

I’d pick him up.

Drive him to work.

Drive him home.

He didn’t contribute to gas or maintaining my car, and because he was rarely on time, I often lost access to the free parking available through my job and had to pay to park instead.

My mother wanted me to take her shopping on weekends.

My cousin Angel died from a drug overdose, and I was responsible for arranging and paying for his funeral while carrying the grief of knowing we hadn’t spoken for three years before he died.

I never got to tell him that he had been my first favorite person in the world until my daughter was born.

Then he became my second favorite.

He would’ve understood.

I had almost no time or money that belonged to me.

And when I did try to do something for myself, I put it on a credit card.

Eventually, I accumulated about $25,000 in credit-card debt.

Then there was the job itself.

I hated it.

I was being bullied by coworkers.

My daughter’s father worked there too, and his behavior with women at the workplace created another layer of embarrassment and stress I had to walk into every day.

Rest Wasn’t Really Rest

People love to tell exhausted women to rest.

And yes.

You need rest.

I’m not telling you otherwise.

But here’s what I understand now:

Rest can restore some of what you’ve spent. It cannot make an unsustainable life sustainable.

Back then, I rarely had a real day off.

If I wasn’t working my officer job, I might be delivering Uber Eats or Grubhub.

Or working on my jewelry business.

And when I did stop?

It usually wasn’t because I had thoughtfully decided that my body deserved recovery.

I stopped because I physically couldn’t keep going.

My body would eventually say:

That’s enough.

I’d crash.

I’d rest just long enough to function again.

And the next day?

I’d go right back into the same life.

Work.

Money.

Parenting.

Driving.

Bills.

Relationships.

Responsibilities.

Survival.

Until I couldn’t function again.

Then I’d crash again.

I wasn’t resting and returning to normal.
I was collapsing, recovering just enough to function and returning to survival.

And underneath that cycle was fear.

Because taking a day off didn’t feel innocent to me.

Rest could mean lost income.

Lost income could threaten the little independence I had.

My apartment.

My ability to care for my daughter.

My ability to keep everything from falling apart.

So when somebody says, “You just need to take some time for yourself,” I understand why that advice can almost feel insulting to a woman whose entire life depends on her continuing to move.

Sometimes the problem isn’t that she doesn’t understand the importance of rest.

She doesn’t know what she can safely put down.

Rest Restores Energy. It Doesn’t Automatically Remove the Drain.

This is the distinction I wish I understood then.

If you sleep eight hours and wake up to an impossible workload, the workload is still there.

If you take Saturday off and return Monday to a schedule that exceeds your capacity, the schedule is still there.

If you take a bath but everybody in your life still has unlimited access to your time, the access is still there.

If you take a vacation but return to a relationship in which you do all the giving, the imbalance is still there.

If you spend Sunday practicing self-care and Monday through Friday abandoning yourself, eventually Sunday isn’t going to be enough.

Sometimes exhaustion is not only a rest problem.

Sometimes exhaustion is structural.

Your work.

Your schedule.

Your responsibilities.

Your finances.

Your relationships.

Your boundaries.

The invisible labor nobody sees.

The lack of support.

The number of things you have convinced yourself are yours to carry.

They can continuously consume more capacity than you have available.

And then, instead of questioning the structure, we question ourselves.

Why am I so tired?

Why can’t I handle this?

What’s wrong with me?

But maybe there’s a better question.

What Keeps Requiring You to Recover?

That question changed things for me.

Not:

How do I become better at handling everything?

But:

Why am I carrying all of this in the first place?

When my life finally fell apart, rebuilding forced me to answer that.

The first major thing I changed was my career.

I left my officer position in 2017 and went to work at the gas company as a meter reader.

The schedule was better.

I made more money.

I could be physically present with my daughter.

When I chose overtime, I could be more intentional about working it while she was with her father or his family instead of automatically sacrificing more time with her.

Then I started dealing with my debt.

I developed systems around my finances.

I started building a real self-care practice—not just occasional external treats, but grooming, relaxation, learning to train my attention and practices that helped me regulate myself internally.

Then came boundaries.

And I lost a lot of people.

For the better.

Because when I finally looked at those relationships honestly, many of them were giving me more to carry.

Later, I moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey because I wanted to become a homeowner and knew the numbers weren’t going to work for the life I wanted if I stayed where I was.

In 2021, I changed companies again and went to work for the utility comapny in New Jersey, where I could make more money doing the same kind of work.

And little by little, I stopped asking:

How can I become strong enough to survive this life?

And started asking:

How can I design a life I don’t have to constantly survive?

That does not mean my life is perfect now.

I still have responsibilities.

I still work.

I still have hard days.

I still have to make decisions based on my actual capacity.

The difference is that now, capacity gets a vote.

There was a season when Mondays were intentionally simple.

I’d come home.

Take a bath.

Relax for about thirty minutes.

Eat something light.

Get into bed around seven and hopefully be asleep by eight.

Laundry could wait.

The garbage could wait.

The cleaning could wait.

Someone else’s need for a listening ear could wait.

My daughter remained my responsibility, of course. But by then she was away at college, and for the first time in my adult life, I was learning how to design my life as a single woman who could actually focus on herself.

And I wish somebody had told younger me this:

You need to put yourself first so you can become the woman you’re meant to be.

Not because nobody else matters.

Not because responsibilities disappear.

Not because putting yourself first means becoming selfish.

But because a life that requires your constant depletion to function is eventually going to collect its payment.

Don’t end every relationship.

Don’t overhaul your entire schedule before breakfast.

Just tell yourself the truth.

Where is the weight?

Because sometimes the beginning of relief isn’t another nap.

It’s finally recognizing what keeps making you need one.

And if you’ve been trying to rest your way out of a life that still feels too heavy, start by looking at the whole picture.