The Mask Was Never Your Face

The room is full of voices calling you leader, but inside, you are holding your breath, waiting for the mask to slip. You feel like an impostor standing on a stage, terrified that today is the day they will see the cracks in your armor.

There was a woman once who had been bleeding for twelve years, spending everything she had, growing worse while everyone watched her suffer in silence. She did not announce her pain; she simply reached out from the crowd and touched the edge of a cloak, trembling, expecting to be exposed as unclean.

But the light stopped. It turned around in the middle of the press of people and asked who had touched it, not to shame her, but to call her daughter.

The light does not need your performance to be impressed; it only needs your honesty to be near. You are not a fraud to be uncovered; you are a child to be held.

The mask is heavy because it was never meant to be your face.