I was ashamed of myself the day I understood.
Not of the world. Of myself.
When I realized that life is a masquerade ball, and I entered it with my real face, trembling, unprepared for the cold lights of the hall.

I spoke when others smiled.
I felt when others played roles.
I believed that truth was enough, that the heart, beating chaotically, was a ticket of entry. It was not.

Among shiny, self-assured masks, my face seemed like a mistake.
Without makeup.
Without learned lines.
With all the cracks exposed.

I felt that dull, silent shame that does not scream, but weighs heavy. The shame of being too much. Too sincere. Too open. As if I had broken an unwritten rule: do not show who you truly are.

And then I asked myself whether the mask is not a form of survival. Whether people hide not because they are false, but because they are afraid. Afraid of being rejected, judged, abandoned. Just as I felt, for a moment, naked in the middle of the room.

But my real face does not know how to pretend.
It only knows how to feel.
To believe.
To hope, even when hope hurts.

Perhaps my shame is not a failure, but a wound of lucidity. Perhaps I came without a mask not out of naivety, but out of a desperate need for truth. For what is real. For human touch.

And if life truly is a masquerade ball, I choose to remain the one who does not know how to dance in lies. Even if my steps are uncertain. Even if sometimes I am alone on the floor.

Because in the end, when the music stops, the only face I will have to recognize in the mirror will be my own.