The Light Beneath Your Mask

The engine is off, but the panic is still humming in your chest. You sit in the dark driveway, rehearsing the smile, the tone, the version of yourself that won't worry them.

You are building a mask out of silence. But the light does not need your performance.

It does not need you to be fine before you walk through the door. Thomas said there is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole world.

That light is already in you, right here in the driver's seat, beneath the fear. You do not have to manufacture it.

You do not have to earn it. It was there before the panic started, and it will be there when you finally turn off the car.

The mask is heavy. The light is not.

Take a breath. The real you is enough for the people waiting inside.