Being “the responsible one” is heavy. It’s also building muscles your friends won’t find until they’re thirty.

Carrying more than your share when you are young is genuinely tiring, and nobody should pretend otherwise. It is also a long apprenticeship in things most people meet much later: planning, anticipating, holding something steady while others are not. The weight is real and so is what it is making, and both can be true at once.

Let yourself acknowledge the cost rather than only the usefulness. Put down one thing that is not actually yours to carry, and see whether the world holds. Keep the habit of noticing what needs doing; drop the belief that all of it is your job.