LGBTQ+ Burnout: The Cost of Always Having to Explain Ourselves
When existing means educating everyone around you.
You weren't hired to be Wikipedia with a pulse.
Yet here you are. Again. Watching your colleague's face arrange itself into that familiar expression — part curiosity, part entitlement — as they lean in with another "innocent" question about pronouns, or Pride, or "how does being non-binary even work?"
The weight settles across your shoulders like wet concrete. Not because the question itself is harmful. But because you've answered it seventeen times this month. Because you know declining makes you seem difficult. Because somehow, somewhere, you became the designated translator between queerness and straight comprehension.