Restlessness

You cannot sit still. Not really. Even when you try, something in you rebels — your foot taps, your fingers drum, your gaze jumps, your thoughts race. It is as if your system has a built-in motor that never switches off. Not at night either. Not even when everything should long since be quiet.

Perhaps others call you lively, full of energy, jittery. Perhaps they call you exhausting. You know the other side: the feeling of never arriving — not in yourself, not in this place, not in this moment. Wherever you are — part of you is already somewhere else. Or not quite here yet. Or both at once.

Medically, this is called inner restlessness, nervous agitation, restless syndromes, vegetative hyperarousal. Diagnoses give the condition a name. But they do not explain why your system is calibrated in such a way that stillness feels like a threat — and movement feels like the only way not to shatter.