The Light Waits Behind Your Mask

The room is loud, but you are the quietest person in it. You are making a sound—laughter—that feels like a mask you forgot how to take off.

It is a performance to prove you are still here, even while you feel like you have already left. In this hour, when the noise finally stops and you are alone again, the exhaustion hits like a wall.

But listen. The light does not need your performance.

It does not require you to be funny, or loud, or even awake. There is a place inside you that has never laughed, never cried, never pretended, and it is still whole.

You do not have to earn your way back to it. You just have to stop pretending.

The mask can fall. The light is still there, waiting in the silence you are so afraid of.