i stopped being able to tell the difference between resting and avoiding and it's wrecking me

year four, humanities, eight months of funding left. writing up.

here's the thing nobody prepped me for. i used to know when i needed a break. you work hard, you're tired, you rest, you come back. clean cycle. somewhere this year that broke. now when i step away from the thesis i can't tell if i'm actually recovering or just hiding from it, and because i can't tell, the rest doesn't even work. i lie on the sofa "resting" and the whole time a part of me is keeping score of the chapter i'm not writing. so i get the exhaustion of work and the exhaustion of guilt and none of the recovery from either.

the version of me that started this PhD genuinely liked the topic. i can barely remember that person. i'm not depressed exactly, the gp asked, it's more specific than that. it's that the boundary between on and off dissolved and i'm just always faintly at work and never actually working.

for those of you further along, especially anyone who made it to the other side: did the boundary come back after you submitted? not the productivity. i mean did rest start feeling like rest again, or is that just gone now and i'm grieving something that doesn't return.