You Are Not the Stain

The water is cold now, and your skin is raw, but the feeling won't scrub off. You are standing in the silence of the house, convinced that if you could just clean yourself enough, you would stop being the source of everyone else's pain.

You believe the stain is yours. You believe the brokenness started with you.

But listen — the light does not see a cause for their suffering when it looks at you. It sees a child who has taken on a weight that was never yours to carry.

There is a truth deeper than your shame: you did not break them. You are not the root of this darkness.

The light that lives inside you was there before the first wound was ever inflicted, and it remains untouched by the chaos around you. You are not the problem that needs to be washed away.

You are the vessel that has been holding someone else's storm. Put down the brush.

The water cannot fix what you did not cause. The light is not waiting for you to be clean; it is waiting for you to stop bleeding.