My (26M) girlfriend (24F) gets upset when I need alone time after work. How do I explain this without making her feel rejected?

We've been together for about a year and a half. Overall things are good we genuinely like each other, same sense of humor, not a lot of fighting. The one thing that keeps coming up is this.

I work a pretty demanding job. By the time I get home most days I need maybe an hour to just decompress. Watch something, sit quietly, not really talk. It's not about her. It's just how I reset.

She takes it personally almost every time. She'll ask how my day was and when I give short answers she goes quiet and I can feel the shift in her mood. A couple times she's said things like "you clearly don't want to be around me" or "I feel like I'm bothering you." I've tried explaining that I'm just drained and it has nothing to do with how I feel about her but it doesn't seem to fully land.

I don't want her walking on eggshells or feeling like she did something wrong when she didn't. But I also genuinely need that window to function like a normal person for the rest of the evening.

Is there a better way to communicate this that doesn't keep landing as rejection? Has anyone dealt with this kind of mismatch and actually worked through it?

TLDR: I (26M) need alone time after work to decompress and my girlfriend (24F) keeps reading it as me not wanting to be around her. Looking for advice on how to communicate this better.