The Light Waits Where You Hide

The laugh slipped out before you could stop it, and now the silence is deafening. You recognized the person in the joke—the flaws, the failures, the specific kind of broken—and you laughed along with everyone else.

But the joke was about you. You were the one they were talking about, and you joined in to hide.

The middle of the day is full of these small betrayals, where we perform okayness while dying inside. You think this makes you a fraud, unworthy of the light.

But the light does not run from your hypocrisy. It waits in the very moment you realized the truth.

There is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole world. Even the part of you that laughed.

Even the shame that follows. The light is not disappointed in your failure to be perfect.

It is simply present, waiting for you to stop hiding from yourself. You do not have to earn your way back to dignity.

You only have to admit that the joke landed, and that you are still loved.