I don't remember my mother resting. And if I do, what happens?

I spend a weekend in good company away from home, just being, sharing, going to the theater, reading, watching series, walking, letting myself be cared for, and I realize I've rested like never before. And if I'd been home, it wouldn't have been that way. I can't help but do everything I have pending: non-urgent but necessary household chores, writing, accounting, getting ahead on preparing for a future short trip, calling, meeting up, catching up on so many things... Do, do, do. And even though I learn to stop and rest, I realize I do it, but not enough. That I always have an endless list of to-dos in my head and that it's been like that my whole life. I even use a to-do list app so I don't forget anything. And I always have the same fantasy: that one day I'll open the app and it'll be empty of to-dos. That I'll have done everything and I'll be able to lie on the couch and be like those people who can sleep in the blanket without the anxiety of thinking about everything left to do. But it's never like that, of course.

I know it comes in phases, but it's starting to become a general, chronic state. Wanting to accomplish everything and feeling bad because I can't. That's why the two days I gave myself were revelatory. And the same thing happened to me during Holy Week. I had already booked a few days away, and I was so stressed that I lost my car keys and had to use a spare one I have. When I got there, the keys turned up in my luggage, and I realized how necessary it would have been for me to leave to stop.

I know there's a contemporary epidemic in all of this, because it seems like we always have to be doing. Whether it's work, leisure, or personal life, but doing, producing. And my professional life also has a good part of the responsibility. I'm self-employed and have a vocational job, a perfect cocktail for self-exploitation. But the other part of the responsibility comes from being a woman.

I don't remember my mother resting. In fact, my memory is of her folding endless piles of laundry (there are a lot of us siblings, and she worked as a housewife). She also didn't sit down much on weekends or vacations. Most women grew up with similar role models. And on top of that, we've added a work life outside the home, without abandoning the role of the one pulling the strings at home. Not only because we still bear the mental and physical responsibility for household chores (the figures are crystal clear about this inequality), but because we've bought into the myth of the active woman who can do it all: having a professional life, a personal life, space for herself, and a house with pictures hung and clean closets. And look, no. Doing it all is very tiring. And if I don't rest, I'm going to pay a very high price in my physical and mental health. I feel sorry for the friends I stop seeing. Or for that project that's going more slowly. Or for the stools I haven't gone shopping for in months. I'm sorry, but it's more urgent to learn that being a woman must have a new meaning: granting myself the right not to screw around and for nothing to happen.