Today I Choose to be Still – When Stillness Feels Like Drowning

I’m sitting in my car in the Whole Foods parking lot. Engine off. Radio silent. Phone face down. It’s been seventeen minutes. I know because I’m counting.

This is stillness. Not the yoga class kind. Not the meditation app kind. The desperate kind. The “if I don’t stop moving I’m going to shatter” kind.

A woman walks by with her cart, glances at me sitting here doing nothing, probably wondering if I’m having a breakdown. I want to tell her: “Yes. No. Maybe. I’m trying to be still and it feels like dying.”

Because that’s what stillness feels like when you’ve been running your whole life. It feels like drowning in all the things you’ve been swimming away from.

The Origin Story Nobody Asked For

I learned to run before I learned to walk. Not literally, but emotionally. Spiritually. Psychologically.

Age 7: Parents fighting. I clean my room. If I’m busy, if I’m good, maybe they’ll stop.
Age 14: Mom drinking. I join every club. If I’m achieving, maybe she’ll notice.
Age 23: First marriage failing. I work three jobs. If I’m exhausted, I can’t feel the heartbreak.
Age 35: Trying to be perfect mom. I schedule every minute. If there’s no stillness, there’s no space for failure.
Age 48: Mom dying. I organize everything. If I’m handling logistics, I don’t have to handle grief.
Age 61: Still running. Still terrified of what happens when I stop.

Motion became my drug. My armor. My identity. “She’s so capable! She does so much! She never stops!”

No. She can’t stop. There’s a difference.

The Tuesday Morning Breakdown

Three weeks ago. Tuesday. I wake up and can’t move. My body has staged an intervention. Full system shutdown.

I lie there, staring at the ceiling fan going round and round, and think: “This is it. This is where I live now. In this bed. Forever.”

My husband finds me two hours later, still staring. “You okay?”

“I think I broke,” I whisper.

“Broke how?”

“The kind where you can’t remember why you’re supposed to get up.”

He calls me in sick. Brings me coffee. Sits on the edge of the bed. Doesn’t try to fix me. Just sits. Still. With me.

And in that stillness, everything I’ve been running from arrives. All at once. Like they’ve been waiting.

The Unwelcome Visitors

When you finally stop, really stop, you meet all the parts of yourself you’ve been avoiding.

The angry one who’s furious about always being the responsible one.
The sad one who’s grieving things she never had time to grieve.
The scared one who thinks if she stops doing, she’ll stop mattering.
The exhausted one who’s been screaming for rest for decades.
The lost one who doesn’t know who she is when she’s not in motion.

They all show up. In the stillness. Demanding attention. Demanding space. Demanding to be felt.

It’s a reunion nobody wants. A party where everyone’s crying. A reckoning that’s been postponed too long.

What Lives in the Stillness

Grief. So much grief. For the life I thought I’d have. For the mother I needed but didn’t get. For the woman I could have been if I hadn’t been so afraid. For all the moments I missed because I was too busy to be present.

Anger. At everyone who needed me to be strong. At myself for never learning to say no. At a world that rewards exhaustion and punishes rest.

Fear. That if I stop doing, I’ll disappear. That stillness equals death. That feeling equals falling apart. That I’ll discover I’m nothing without my productivity.

But also… something else. Barely there. Hardly noticeable. A tiny voice that whispers: “What if you’re enough, just as you are, doing nothing?”

I hate that voice. I also desperately need it to be right.

The Physical Reality of Learning Stillness

Nobody talks about how stillness hurts. Actually hurts. Physically.

When you stop clenching muscles you’ve held tight for decades, they scream. When you stop shallow breathing, your lungs panic with all that oxygen. When you stop the constant motion, your body doesn’t know what to do with itself.

I shake. Actually shake. My legs bounce. My fingers tap. My jaw clenches and unclenches. It’s like withdrawal. Because it is withdrawal. From the drug of constant motion.

The first time I tried to sit still for five minutes, I lasted ninety seconds before I was reorganizing the junk drawer. The second time, two minutes before I was checking my phone. The third time, I cried. Just sat there and cried because being still was so foreign, so frightening, so impossible.

The Stillness Practice That Isn’t

Everyone has advice about stillness. Meditate! Do yoga! Try breathing exercises! Download this app!

But what if you’re allergic to advice? What if traditional stillness makes you want to scream? What if you need a different way?

Here’s my messy, imperfect, probably-wrong approach:

Micro-Stillness
Ten seconds. That’s it. Ten seconds of nothing. Between emails. Between tasks. Between breaths. Ten seconds of just… stopping. Sometimes I make it. Sometimes I don’t. Both count.

Stillness with Witnesses
My dog doesn’t care if I’m still or moving. He just wants to be near me. So I sit still with him. He’s my stillness training wheels. My accountability partner who never judges.

Moving Stillness
Walking the same route every day. So familiar my body knows the way. My legs move but my mind can be still. It’s cheating, but it works.

Scheduled Stillness
Every day at 3 PM, I stop. Whatever I’m doing. One minute of stillness. Phone timer. When it goes off, I can move again. It’s stillness with an escape hatch.

The Parking Lot Revelations

Back to Whole Foods. Twenty-three minutes now. People are definitely wondering.

But something’s happening. The panic is settling. The urge to move is softening. I’m still uncomfortable, but it’s bearable. Like learning to float – that moment when you stop fighting the water and trust it to hold you.

I realize: I’ve been afraid that if I stop, I’ll sink. But maybe… maybe I’ll float. Maybe stillness isn’t drowning. Maybe it’s finally learning to breathe.

A text comes through. I can see the notification. Someone needs something. Someone always needs something. But for once, just this once, they can wait.

I sit still for seven more minutes. Thirty minutes total. A personal record.

When I finally start the car, I feel… different. Not transformed. Not enlightened. Just… quieter inside. Like something that’s been screaming finally got heard.

The Permission to Be Bad at This

I’m terrible at stillness. After 61 years, I’m a beginner. A remedial student in the art of not doing.

And that’s okay.

It’s okay to shake. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to be the person who can only manage ten seconds. It’s okay to be learning something that others seem to know naturally.

It’s okay to be still badly. Imperfectly. Reluctantly.

Because even bad stillness is better than no stillness. Even forced stillness is better than constant motion. Even terrified stillness counts.

The Truth I’m Learning

Stillness isn’t peaceful. Not at first. Maybe not ever for people like us.

It’s not empty. It’s full. Too full. Of all the things we’ve been avoiding.

It’s not comfortable. It’s the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever done.

But it’s necessary. Like surgery. Like birth. Like any transformation that actually transforms.

Because in the stillness, when we finally stop running, we meet ourselves. The real self. Not the performer. Not the helper. Not the one who has it all together.

The one who’s scared. The one who’s tired. The one who doesn’t know how much longer she can keep pretending.

And maybe, just maybe, she’s the one we’ve been looking for all along.

Your Turn (If You’re Ready)

What are you running from? What lives in your stillness? What would happen if you stopped, just for ten seconds?

You don’t have to answer. You don’t have to know. You don’t have to be ready.

But maybe you could try. Ten seconds. In your car. In your bathroom. In the space between breaths.

Be still. Even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts.

Because that’s where you are. In the stillness. Waiting.

And she’s been waiting so long to meet you.

Today I choose to be still. Not because I want to. Not because it feels good. But because I can’t run anymore.

And maybe that’s the only reason any of us ever stop.

Maybe that’s enough.