There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from being the person everyone relies on but no one actually checks in on

A bridge cable looks strongest right before it snaps. The individual wires within the cable fray one at a time, invisibly, each micro-failure transferring more load to the remaining strands. From the outside, everything appears to hold. The bridge still carries traffic. The cable still looks intact. But the internal redistribution of stress is relentless, and the final strand doesn’t fail because it was weaker than the others. It fails because it was the last one holding everything together. This...