someone asked 'what do you do' and the answers just choked there, like a knot behind my tongue, because there's the one I give to strangers, the one I give to my parents that makes their faces do that worried thing, and then the truth that vibrates somewhere in my solar plexus, a low THrum that says I'm just... experiencing, tasting the tang of this new kombucha flavor, feeling the smooth clay give beneath my palms, noticing the way my breath rises and falls without a single instruction from my brain, and it's a terrifying kind of freedom, this bareness of just existing, with no neat title to pin on myself, no future projection to ease the social discomfort of others, just this peculiar hum that started in my fingertips back when the colors on the canvas clicked, a reminder that peace might still be a foreign taste but i'm learning to savor it, even if the urge to upend it all, to pack a bag and head for portland just to see what kind of mess I can make there, still bubbles up from time to time, a tremor through my spine that used to be fear and is now just... vibration, a living electricity reminding me i’m still becoming, even in the stillness.