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by Tawnia Lives

You keep telling yourself you’ll rest when things calm down.

But they never do, do they?

The to-do list only grows.
The noise gets louder.
And the weight on your chest slowly becomes normal.

You call it drive.
You call it responsibility.
You call it being a man.

But what if it’s just fear in disguise?

Fear that if you stop moving,
the world might realize you’re not invincible.

Fear that if you take a breath,
everything you’ve been holding together might fall apart.

Fear that if you stop proving yourself,
someone might stop loving you.

So you keep running —
toward deadlines,
away from silence.

But here’s what no one told you:

You don’t have to earn stillness.

You don’t have to collapse to be allowed to rest.

You don’t have to prove your worth through exhaustion.

The world won’t end if you slow down.

But you might finally meet yourself.

The man who can’t slow down
is often the boy who never felt safe enough to stop.

You learned that motion was protection —
that speed meant safety.

But safety isn’t running faster.

It’s stopping long enough
to feel your feet on the ground.

The work will still be there tomorrow.
The world will keep spinning.

What won’t wait forever
is your body.

He’s already speaking in whispers —

the tension in your neck,
the headaches,
the breath that never quite goes all the way down.

Listen before he has to shout.

Slow down — not because you’re weak,
but because you’re wise enough to know
that constant motion isn’t success.

It’s survival.

And you’ve survived long enough.

It’s time to live.

— Tawnia Lives