Living at 100% Until You Can’t Anymore
By Michelle Labine
May 2025
For most of my life, I lived at 100 miles per hour. I gave at 100, worked at 100, cared at 100, thought at 100, and felt at 100. I did not know another way to live. Slowing down felt like letting someone down, and saying no felt like failure. Rest did not come easily. It arrived only after I collapsed into it. So, I kept going. Until I could not. And eventually I would hit the wall.
The pattern repeated itself again and again. I would take on everything. I held space for everyone around me. I remembered what needed to be remembered, anticipated needs before they were spoken, and tried to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks. I planned, managed, showed up, and pushed through whatever was in front of me. From the outside I appeared capable, reliable, and composed. I was the person people could count on. I was “fine.” Until suddenly I was not.
When the crash came, it felt abrupt and confusing. I would move from being fully engaged to completely shut down. One moment I was holding everything together and the next I was barely able to function. At the time it felt as if the collapse came out of nowhere, but looking back I can see that it never really did.
Back then I did not have the language to understand what was happening, I believed something was wrong with me. I wondered if I simply was not strong enough, if I lacked the stamina that other people seemed to have. It felt as though I was failing at something invisible that everyone else had somehow learned how to manage.
Years later I came to understand what was happening; it was burnout. More specifically, autistic burnout. It was not a case of lack of strength, rather it was the predictable result of living in constant override.
For decades I did not know I was Autistic. Without that framework I had no way to understand why my nervous system seemed to be working so hard all the time. I could not make sense of why socializing left me needing so much recovery, why bright lights and overlapping conversations could leave me disoriented, or why transitions sometimes felt physically painful. I did not yet understand why routine brought me a sense of calm while unpredictability could quickly lead to overwhelm. What I did know was that I could push myself for long stretches of time, sometimes for weeks or months, and then suddenly collapse in a way that felt confusing and humiliating.
So, I did what many of us do when we do not yet have a framework for our experience; I explained it away. I told myself I was just sensitive, emotional, moody, dramatic, or fragile. Then I tried to prove those labels wrong by pushing harder. Every time I hit the wall I blamed myself. I would recover just enough to regain momentum and then the cycle would begin again.
What I understand now is that the wall was never about weakness, it was really about disconnection from my own needs. I was not lazy or inconsistent, I was living in a way that ignored what my body and mind were asking for. I did not yet realize that my sensory system, my emotional depth, and the way I process the world were different from the pace and expectations around me. So, I shaped myself to match what I believed was required. I pushed through fatigue, through overstimulation, and through the quiet resistance of my own nervous system. Somewhere along the way I confused endurance with resilience. Eventually my body and mind would shut me down in the only way they could.
The pull to live at 100 still shows up at times. I care deeply about the people and work in my life. I feel things intensely and I want to show up fully. But now I try to do that in a way that includes me in the equation. I pace my life differently by intentionally building recovery into my days before I reach the wall. I pay attention to the signs that I am moving closer to that edge and when I notice them I try to pause. I do not do this perfectly, but I do it more often than I used to.
What has changed most is that I have learned to trust my own signals. The crash does not have to be inevitable if I listen earlier. I can give myself what I need without waiting for permission or for exhaustion to force me to stop. I no longer need to prove my worth by being endlessly available, endlessly capable, or endlessly accommodating.
If you have spent much of your life swinging between over giving and collapse, I want you to hear this clearly. You are not too much. You are not broken. You are not lazy and you are not failing. You have been doing what you needed to do to survive in a world that has not always made room for your rhythm.
And now you have the opportunity to choose differently.
You do not have to live at 100 to be enough. You do not have to crash in order to deserve rest. You do not have to prove your value by how much you carry.
You can stop before the wall.
You can slow down.
You can live in a way that allows you to remain whole.
Reflection
What does living at 100 look like in my life and how does it feel in my body?
What early signs tell me I am approaching my edge?
What would pacing myself actually require?
What do I need to believe in order to rest before I am depleted?