For the ones still wearing someone else’s face
There was a girl who learned early
how to read a room before she read a book,
who studied mouths and silences
the way other children studied shapes,
who built herself a second skin
so convincing
she forgot it wasn’t hers.
She learned the right laugh.
The right pause.
The right amount of strange to let through
before pulling it back like a tide
that knew better than to stay.
She thought the ache was just
what living felt like.
She thought everyone held their breath
in rooms full of people.
She thought everyone rehearsed
their hello in the car.
She thought the weight on her chest
was just the cost of a body,
of being here,
of trying so hard
to be enough.
And she was.
She was always enough.
But no one told her that.
Not in a language she could hear.
This is for you.
You, who have been performing
since before you had a word for it.
You, who dimmed yourself
so many times
you started to believe
the dark was your true colour.
It is not.
One day, if you are lucky,
and I hope you are,
someone will walk into your life
with the kind of carelessness
that undoes everything.
A lover. A stranger. A friend
who laughs at the wrong moment
and looks at you like you are
the most interesting weather
they have ever seen.
They will say something small.
Something ordinary.
And it will crack you
right down the centre
of the mask you forgot you were wearing.
And the air will hit your actual face.
And it will sting.
And it will feel like falling.
And you will want to cover up again
because the world has taught you
that what lives underneath
is too much, too odd, too loud,
too quiet, too intense, too soft,
too everything.
But stay.
Stay uncovered.
Because what lives underneath
is not broken.
What lives underneath
has been keeping you alive
this whole time.
You were never wrong.
You were a soul
handed a language
that most of the world
doesn’t speak yet.
And you spoke theirs anyway.
Fluently.
For years.
Without anyone knowing
the translation was costing you
everything.
So here is what I want to say
to the girl I was,
to the ones still holding their breath
in rooms full of people:
The stage is yours.
Not because you earned it.
Not because you finally learned
how to stand the right way.
But because you survived the quiet war
of making yourself small
in a world that was never
built to your measurements.
Take the mask off.
Or let someone take it off for you.
Let them see the strange, beautiful instrument
you have been hiding
under all that effort to be normal.
Play it.
Sing it.
Speak it so loud
the people who share your frequency
can finally find you.
You have one life.
Live it in your own language.
You are not weird.
You are rare.
And you are, at last,
home.
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