there's this hum that’s not the accustomed agitation, not the buzz behind my eyes that means something’s inherently wrong, but something else, a different vibration under my skin that started to settle when my hands found that rhythm yesterday in pottery, like my body just decided to fall into a current it recognized, and that sense of things being suddenly and deeply right, it hits me with a shudder, a tremor that’s not panic but this strange unease, because for so long the struggle was the only familiar landscape i knew how to navigate, the only ground i could trust, and now this… this new kind of settledness, it’s like my parents still looking at me with that puzzled kindness, still searching for the person i was, waiting for the costume to drop, but this isn’t a costume, this feels like the actual skin of someone i’m only just meeting, someone whose mouth curves into an unfamiliar smile when i’m not even trying to make it, and i wonder if this new state of being, this feeling of an unknown quantity that isn't terrifying, isn't disorienting like the shifting sands used to be, but almost... steadying, yet still leaves me with this vast, open possibility that is sometimes more exposed than the battlefield ever was.