Explained a burnout gap on my resume for the first time without apologizing for it

Eight months, no caregiving story, no layoff to point to — I just hit a wall and stopped. Every draft of my explanation used to start with "so this is going to sound bad" before I'd even said what happened. Rewrote it this week to just say the plain thing: I was burned out, I took the time, I'm ready now. Said it in a screening call yesterday without the apology preamble and the recruiter just said "makes sense" and moved on. Wish I'd tried the plain version months ago.