The Hardest Part Isn’t the Work. It’s Being the One Everyone Leans On.

The work itself was never the hardest part.

You know how to do the work.
You have done it for years.

What wears you down is everything around it.

The decisions no one sees.
The mental notes you carry home.
The quiet awareness that if you stop paying attention, something important will slip.

People come to you because you are steady.
Because you remember.
Because you notice what others miss.

Over time, that turns into dependence.

Not malicious.
Not dramatic.

Just constant.

You become the place where loose ends land.
The person others trust to “handle it.”

There is pride in that.
There is also weight.

And very few places where that weight gets acknowledged.

If you feel tired even when things are going well, it makes sense.
If you feel relief at the idea of not being the only one holding it together, that makes sense too.

Being leaned on for decades leaves a mark.

Not because you failed.
Because you showed up.