Only the deep.

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.

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.

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.

Only me.

It was her becoming me.

The deeper I went, the less she felt like a stranger and the more she felt like a memory my bones had kept without telling me. Deeper, and her voice became my first language. Deeper, and the walls I'd built turned out to be mirrors.

She wasn't hiding. She was waiting.