...the face staring back from that photo, it has my bone structure, yes, the same shape to the jaw, the curve of the eyebrow, even the slight gap between my two front teeth that Cosmo once tried to stick his tongue through, but the set of the mouth, the tension around the eyes, it's not me, not anymore, and that realization isn't sad or even surprising really, just a kind of deep, biological recognition of how much a person can shed, how much you can truly become something else entirely without changing the fundamental architecture, like the reef that looks the same from a distance but up close is teeming with a whole different kind of life than it was last season, the saltwater on my skin right now feels like a constant baptism, a continuous washing away of whatever that person was holding onto, a feeling of being completely unburdened in my shoulders and the absolute freedom in the way my spine moves when I pivot on the board, like every cell finally remembered its original instructions for how to just BE here.