I had just found a free parking space not far from my son’s kindergarten. Something rare enough to feel like a small victory. It was almost time to pick him up, yet for some reason I didn’t want to leave the car.

I sat there, lost in my thoughts, staring at an imaginary point somewhere far ahead. Without realizing it, I sank deeper into the seat, my breathing growing long and uncontrolled as if I were slowly deflating like an opened balloon. My day had already been long and it wasn’t over yet.

For a while, my thoughts buzzed loudly. Then, suddenly, there was silence.

I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, five minutes had slipped by.
I was already late.

Very quickly, I got out of the car and hurried toward the kindergarten as if my life depended on it.

Inside, other parents were waiting for their children, smiling easily. I forced a polite smile, hoping it looked convincing enough.

Then he appeared.

He came running toward me, shouting mama, mama with pure happiness, throwing himself into my arms. For a brief second, my brain went into fight-or-flight. His voice echoed inside my head, loud and metallic, like someone striking a gong.

And then it started.

The talking.
Sentence after sentence, without pause. Jumping, moving, speaking, already onto the next thought before I had time to react to the first. Information delivered at full speed without waiting for me to catch up.

I was there.
But I wasn’t ready.

My voice came out sharp and panicked. He stopped immediately and turned toward me with a strange, almost funny expression, waiting in silence.

I didn’t waste that fragile moment. I told him to pick up his things and that we had to leave.

Fifteen minutes later, we were finally outside. The fresh air hit me and I felt it instantly. I could breathe again. Not fully but enough to notice the difference.

I wanted to reach the car as fast as possible, to drive home, to be enclosed again. But his priority was different. He kept talking, sentence after sentence, as if the entire day was still pouring out of him and needed somewhere to land.

I put him into his seat, buckled him in and closed the door quickly.

Then I stayed there.

One hand resting on the door handle.
Not opening it yet.

I allowed myself that single quiet minute outside. The silence. The stillness. The pause before having to re-enter.

When we entered the building, I felt relieved. Home was close now. I had the brief fantasy that once inside, I could finally take a moment to come back to myself.

But the second I opened the door, it was over.

A thousand requests fell into my ears at once. Words overlapping. Demands stacking on top of each other. Two eyes, wide and bright, attached to a big smile, waiting for me to accept all of them.

Something in my brain snapped.

Hell no!

I hadn’t even stepped inside properly. I hadn’t taken off my coat. I hadn’t taken off my shoes. I hadn’t arrived.

I should have known this would happen. It always did.

Very slowly, as if any sudden movement might make things worse, I took off my coat and shoes without breaking eye contact and said quickly that I had things to do first.

That still wasn’t enough.

He answered back, insistent, filling the space again. It felt as if he wanted something from me that I no longer had skin to give.

My body reacted before my mind could intervene.

As a form of self-defense, I roared. Too loud. Too sharp. I demanded a few minutes of space, my voice carrying a threat I didn’t even finish forming. My face twisted into an anger that wasn’t meant for him but landed on him anyway.

He stopped.

Without a word, he disappeared.

And just like that, I was alone.
Standing in front of my own door.
Falling apart.

I was angry at myself for even hoping. Angry for believing I could reach home and still have something resembling free time. I called myself stupid for thinking that.

I kept mumbling under my breath, prosecuting myself as if I were the villain of my own story. Every thought became an accusation. Every feeling needed to be justified, punished.

At some point, my body took over.

I was cleaning. Automatically. Mechanically.

I don’t know how long I had been doing it.

What was I doing?
How long had I been cleaning?
Why was it so foggy to remember what I had just been doing?

Not remembering froze me in place. The absence of memory felt heavier than the noise before it.

I needed to stop.
I needed to sit down.
Now.

I felt small sitting on my kitchen chair. My strength drained out of me slowly until exhaustion settled in fully.

The answers never came.

I tried to replay the moment I had entered the apartment but the scene stayed blurred. Fragmented.

And then I realized something else.

I hadn’t seen the little one since then.

There was total inner silence. A complete shutdown.

From far away, I heard something faint. Without thinking, I stood up and tiptoed toward the sound.

There he was.

Sitting on the floor of his room, his back to the door, absorbed in his Lego cars.

My heart started racing. The memory rushed back. I had yelled.

Regret hit first.
Then guilt.
Then shame.

I stood there, unsure of what to do next.

Then he moved.

And I stopped breathing.

Instinctively, he turned toward the door and saw half of my face looking back at him. He smiled immediately and asked why I was hiding.

I hesitated.

Then, with a very small voice, I answered that I was just looking at him.

I was still glued to the door, like a little girl who knew she had done something wrong.

Without hesitation, he came toward me, now with even more questions. Somewhere between them, I gathered the courage to whisper that I was sorry for shouting, that I had panicked.

He said simply that I had scared him.

I wasn’t prepared for that.
It hurt more than I showed.

I knelt down and took him into my arms because my words got stuck in my throat.

We stayed like that for a while.

And slowly, the bad feelings loosened their grip.
The weight on my shoulders lifted, not all at once but enough for me to breathe again.

Later, I understood that this wasn’t an isolated moment. It was the shape of my days. The absence of a neutral space where nothing is required of me before something else begins. The constant demand to switch states without landing, to absorb, respond, contain, repair. Even my pauses are borrowed. Even my silence is temporary.

Motherhood doesn’t always leave room for neutrality. It moves from need to need, moment to moment, without buffer. And sometimes, in the middle of that, I disappear for a few minutes. Not because I don’t care but because there is nowhere else to go.

That day, standing in the doorway, I wasn’t failing. I was reaching the edge of what constant presence costs. And for a brief moment, in the quiet after the storm, I found myself again: not rested, not resolved but still here.

I would not be exaggerating to say that I grew up with music playing every morning on an old radio at my grandparents’ house. By then, I was already a footloose little dancer. Music was always there, filling the rooms before words ever did.

At home, music played often during the day, especially when my father was not there. I would dance and sing along even though I was too young to understand the meaning of the lyrics. It didn’t matter. My body understood before my mind ever could.

My mother had three or four music tapes that she played repeatedly, sometimes several times a day. At that time, her favorite song was The Lady in Red. Occasionally, when she thought no one was watching, she would slow-dance to it. In those moments, she looked mesmerizing to me. Soft. Happy. Free, if only for a short while.

Those rare moments stayed with me. They became inseparable from the song itself, engraved in my memory and preserved in a quiet, locked compartment of my heart that has never really opened again.

Another song that left a deep mark was It’s My Life. I remember it clearly, as if it were yesterday. The song came on the radio by coincidence while I was in the car with my family, on the way to the airport, about to leave to study abroad on my own.

My lips moved silently with every word but my body was singing loudly inside. My heart beat wildly, in perfect rhythm with the song, making me intensely emotional. I could not wait to leave everything behind. To leave what felt like hell. To finally be free.

As the years went by, I began to associate certain songs with different events in my life. Some belong to happy moments, others to drowning ones. Not by choice, but by coincidence.

Music would speak to me in its own way. It carried emotions that lived deep inside of me, emotions I often didn’t have words for. It comforted me silently, without explanation or expectation. It could lift me into a sudden, almost overwhelming happiness or pull me into a quiet, heavy stillness.

When those specific songs resurfaced later in my life, the reaction was immediate. I would feel happy or sad without any obvious reason. Only seconds later would the memory arrive, clear and cinematic, unfolding in my mind as if it had been waiting patiently all along.

Today, I know that I cannot recall all the events that have occurred in my life. Some memories have become unclear, foggy, for reasons my mind alone seems to decide. Time softens certain edges, erases others and leaves gaps I no longer try to fill.

But I am grateful that some memories are still accessible to me in another way. I can relive them simply by pressing play. A song is enough to carry me back, to slide me gently inward, into myself again.

I found myself moving in slow motion nearly every morning. My body was still half asleep, heavy, uncooperative. I prepared a coffee and clung to it like a life buoy as if it were the only thing keeping me upright. Meanwhile, the little one was already running around like Speedy Gonzales, fast, loud, relentless. That alone was enough to frustrate me. I felt unable to keep up with him, no matter how much I tried. The gap between his energy and my capacity felt enormous. I was already unraveling.

The cup felt heavier than usual in my hand. Lifting it took effort, concentration, time. It took me forever to bring it to my lips and I completely forgot that it was lava hot. The shock was violent. I spilled the coffee everywhere. I cursed myself immediately, harshly, without mercy. At least now I was fully awake. While scrubbing the floor, irritated and tense, I kept thinking that I should have been doing other more important things instead. I was already behind. Again.

I was still on my hands and knees when my son suddenly appeared beside me, talking quickly, words tumbling out of his mouth. His lips were moving but for a moment all I could hear was noise. Just noise. It pressed against my head, my chest, my nerves. I felt overwhelmed, cornered, flooded. Before I could stop myself, I shouted at him that I had to clean the stupid floor first. The words came out sharp, louder than I intended. He vanished as quickly as he had appeared, leaving me alone in the kitchen. I let out a long, heavy sigh, so deep it felt as though something inside me had given up.

Then guilt hit. Hard. My body suddenly gave way and I had to sit down on the floor, as if my muscles had simply shut off.

I stayed there, unable to move, trapped in complete silence, while a wave of negative feelings crashed over me. They came all at once. Shame. Anger. Failure. Exhaustion. I couldn’t fight any of it. My inner tension tightened further, coiling inside me. I felt restless, agitated, desperately trying to contain the chaos, to keep it from spilling out but it was already everywhere.

The voice of my subconscious turned ruthless. It reprimanded me relentlessly. I sounded like a bad attorney arguing a hopeless case, grasping for excuses that never held. For every criticism I aimed at myself, I felt forced to justify it, to explain it, to defend it and every attempt only confirmed the same verdict: I was wrong. Again. The cycle was relentless. The effort of it drained me completely.

I felt cornered, with no way out of my own thoughts. Despair tightened around me, heavy and suffocating, as if every possible outcome had already failed. There was nothing left to fix, nothing left to argue. Just the certainty that I was trapped inside myself.

Then helplessness settled in, slowly and quietly. It wasn’t dramatic. It didn’t scream. It simply removed my ability to respond. I stopped trying to defend myself. I stopped searching for the right explanation. I had no more energy to push back against the accusations forming in my own mind.

I could find no more words to defend myself and an emptiness followed. Not relief. Not peace. Just absence. The noise stopped but nothing replaced it. I was no longer hurting, yet I felt hollow, as if something essential had stepped away.

My breathing began to slow on its own. It became steadier, more regular, as the voices gradually faded until they disappeared completely. Throughout this time, I had not moved. I remained on the floor, suspended in that stillness until I noticed a strange dampness. I looked down and realized that I was still holding my dirty dishcloth in my hand, resting on my lap.

I do not remember how long I stayed there, staring at it without doing anything, before my son returned.

He gently asked why I was sitting on the floor and quickly added that he had finished brushing his teeth. His voice was calm, almost cautious, as if he sensed that something inside me was still unsteady.

I looked at him and felt a quiet relief when I realized he wasn’t angry about my behavior. I moved toward him slowly, still unsure of my own strength and whispered an apology for shouting at him. The words came out softly, without explanation, without defense.

In response, he hugged me. It was simple and immediate, as if nothing needed to be repaired or discussed. He told me that he loved me and in that moment, his small heart warmed mine just enough for happiness to return. Not loudly. Not fully. Just enough to remind me that I was still here and so was love.

Only later did I understand that this moment was not a failure and it was not a breaking point. It was not proof that I was incapable or overwhelmed beyond repair. It was simply a moment where my body stopped negotiating with my mind.

I wasn’t resting. I was recovering.

Recovery does not announce itself. It doesn’t come with clarity or motivation. It looks like slowness, like heaviness, like sitting on a kitchen floor because standing suddenly requires too much. It looks like reactions that feel disproportionate and emotions that arrive without warning. Not because something is wrong but because something has been held for too long.

Living in recovery mode means functioning differently. It means needing more time for less output. It means moving more slowly through things that once felt automatic. It means realizing that the pace you maintained for years has a cost and that cost eventually asks to be paid.

Recovery mode is not dramatic. It is quiet. It does not ask to be fixed or optimized. It does not respond to pressure or discipline. It simply asks to be allowed, without being rushed back into performance.

I am not fully rested yet. I am not back to who I was before.
I am catching up with what my body endured while I kept going.

And for now, that has to be enough.

If you wish to continue this reflection

This piece completes a wider inner thread exploring performance, rest and recovery:

• The Self That Performs and the Self That Remains
  The frame. It names the split between functioning and being.
• When I Stop Explaining Myself
  The first visible crack in performance, where language and justification fall away.
• The Illusion of Free Time
  The realization that even rest can become performance in disguise.