The Light Carries You Before You Fake Strength

The mask is heavy this morning. It feels solid, like bone, but it is only paint over a face that has never known rest.

You carry the phantom weight of a head that never rested on your shoulder—a presence you invented because the silence was too loud to bear alone. You smile at the desk, you nod in the meeting, you perform the okayness that everyone expects, while inside you are holding up a ghost.

But the light sees behind the mask. It does not need the performance.

It sees the exhaustion of holding up a friend who was never there. You are not alone because you imagined someone beside you.

You are held because the light lives inside you, and it has been carrying you since before the first smile you faked. The mask can come off now, even just for a moment.

The light does not need you to be strong. It just needs you to be here.