You are the one people lean on. You feel what a room needs before the room knows it needs anything, and you have already moved to give it. You are the strong one, the reliable one, the one who shows up, and people are grateful for you. They tell you so.

And in the quiet hours, when there is finally no one to hold, something else is there. A tiredness sleep does not reach. A resentment you would never say out loud. A thought you have trained yourself to look away from quickly, that you are loved for what you give, and that if you ever stopped, you would find out how much of the love was ever really for you.

So you never stop. You give until there is nothing left, and then you give the nothing. You make yourself the one who cannot be done without, and your own needs you have shrunk so small that most days you cannot even feel them.