the dangerous honest version is that this feeling, this sense of everything finally aligning, it feels less like a destination and more like a precipice, like i’m balanced on the edge of something beautiful and completely unfamiliar and the wind could pick up at any moment and just… nudge me off, and this connects to the pottery instructor saying my hands were confident, because that confidence, it’s not a settled thing, it’s an active holding, like the clay itself is just GIVING and that ease, it actually makes a peculiar vibration start in my teeth, a kind of internal hum that’s not quite discomfort but not quite peace either, just a recognition that my body has been geared for struggle for so long that this flow state, this actual serenity within, feels like a trick, like I should be bracing, preparing for the inevitable crash that always follows, and my parents wouldn’t understand this at all, they just see that i quit the stable job and that alone means chaos to them, but this is a different kind of chaotic, this is the chaos of things suddenly making sense, of my skin finally feeling like it MIGHT fit but it still itches sometimes, like i want to dye my hair purple again just to remind myself i still have control over something, anything, even if it’s just the outward expression of a self that’s always in flux, always moving, maybe to portland next, always trying on another form.