Page 179 - DivineSparkRisingFinal

Nicholas Boothman
"And it makes sense," she said. "Pretending
keeps the world tidy. It keeps our meetings smooth,
our relationships steady, our masks in place. But it
also keeps something else in place, that quiet
feeling that something is missing. Like there’s a gap
between the person everyone sees and the person
we actually are.
“And that gap, that ache? That’s the cost of
pretending."
No one shifted now. The room had gone
completely still.
"A few years ago, I hit a crossroad," she said. "I
was coding for Chorus, the so-called visionaries.
They said they were building tools to connect the
world. What they were really doing was editing it,
editing us.
“And I helped them do it. I told myself I was
just the engineer, just the girl behind the screen. But
the truth is, I was hiding. Pretending I didn’t see
what I was building, because I didn’t want to face
who I’d become."
Someone exhaled sharply, the sound carrying in
the silence.
"That was the day I said, no more pretending. I
didn’t have a grand plan. I just decided that from
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