Deeper she was me. Not a ghost. Not a goal. Just the raw, unnamed pulse I'd been running from my whole life. And when I let her rise, there was no "she" anymore.

I used to think she lived at the bottom of me—a small, silent thing buried under years of politeness and noise. But I was wrong.

It was her becoming me.

She wasn't hiding. She was waiting.

And when I finally stopped swimming against the current of myself, I understood: every layer I peeled back, every shadow I stepped into—it wasn't me finding her.

Only me.

Only the deep.

She was the bottom.