The Light Holds Every Version

The screen glows in the dark, a small altar where you offer up your history to the silence. You scroll past a face that doesn't match the one in the mirror tonight, wondering which version of you died to make room for this one.

It feels like a funeral for a person who is still breathing. But listen — the light does not ask you to choose a favorite self and mourn the rest.

It saw you before the first photo was taken, and it sees you now, in the ache of the scrolling. There is a version of you that has never left, buried under the layers of who you had to become.

Bring that one forth. The thing you are afraid to name — the grief, the truth, the hidden self — is the very thing that will save you if you let it out.

If you keep it locked behind the glass, it will only grow heavier. You do not have to decide which one to miss.

The light holds every version you have ever been, and it calls them all beloved.