The Lie That Makes You Shrink

The afternoon sun is high, and the world expects you to be productive, so you swallow the words rising in your throat. You say 'I'm fine' while feeling something inside you shrink, curling away from the light to fit the shape of the moment.

There was a man by a pool who had been waiting for thirty-eight years, and when the light asked if he wanted to get well, he did not say yes — he gave an excuse about having no one to help him. He answered with his identity as the broken one because the lying-down felt safer than the standing-up.

You do the same when you say you are fine; you are protecting the part of you that is afraid to take up space. But the light does not want your performance of okayness.

It wants the truth you are hiding behind the polite smile. There is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole world — but if you do not bring it forth, the unspoken truth begins to consume you from the inside.

The shrinking stops the moment you admit you are not fine. The lie is the weight; the honesty is the standing up.