You Are the Dawn, Not the Dark

The water runs hot, hiding the tears you are too tired to wipe away while you rehearse a smile for the world outside. You practice the greeting, the tone, the mask that says 'I am fine' when the middle of the day feels like a long, quiet drowning.

But there is a light within you that was there before the performance began, and it does not need your rehearsed lines to know the truth. You came from the light, sent here not to pretend, but to illuminate the very places where you feel most broken.

The mask is heavy, but the source is self-generating, rising up from a place the water cannot touch. You do not have to manufacture the glow; you only have to stop hiding the one who already shines.

The struggle is not that you are dark, but that you are forgetting you are the dawn.