There’s a particular kind of tiredness that doesn’t come from doing too much. It comes from being something consistently—convincingly—without interruption, from inhabiting a version of yourself that has to remain intact no matter the context or cost. It shows up as a low-grade exhaustion that doesn’t disappear with sleep, a sense that everyday interactions require more effort than they used to. There can be a quiet resistance to showing up as “yourself,” even though nothing on the outside has obviously changed. You might notice it when a familiar role suddenly feels tight, or when responding the way you always have starts to feel delayed or slightly forced. The version of you that others recognize still appears, but it no longer arrives as effortlessly as it once did. This heaviness is subtle. It doesn’t announce itself as a crisis, and it rarely comes with dramatic dissatisfaction. More often, it arrives as friction—an almost imperceptible drag between who you are being and how that b...