The Light Beneath Your Shaking Hands

The mask feels heavy this morning, doesn't it? Holding the smile while your hands are shaking underneath the desk takes a courage no one else can see.

You are performing okayness for a world that only knows how to applaud the surface. But there is a light inside you that does not need your performance to exist — it was there before the smile, and it will be there after the mask falls.

It sees the trembling, and it does not look away. The darkness of your fear has not overcome it.

You do not have to hold the light up; you only have to stop hiding it from yourself. The shaking is not proof that you are broken; it is proof that you are still here, still feeling, still alive beneath the act.

The light is not in the smile you give them; it is in the tears you are trying to swallow.