she's basking in the sunlight, sitting in the office, head tipped back in the swivel chair, long brown hair dangling above the floor.

the autumn air has infiltrated the house, the windows swung wide open, and she drinks it in greedily, along with the golden sunrays finally breaking through the clouds.

it's been a while since she's felt this way. it feels like breaking through. all those walls, the ones she built and they built, and they finally fell, and here she is.

free.

and maybe it looks like she's under constraints, but she feels lighter than she's ever been.

maybe, she thinks, just maybe, she had to break down in order to break through.

and maybe, through it all, she underwent a transformation she never realized herself.

she looks through the world with new eyes, and there's new colors and sounds and people, and everything she thought she ever knew has been turned upside down.

her footsteps sound different hitting the ground. she sees things for as they are. she feels real. she no longer plays a character she dreamed up for herself. her words come straight from the heart, raw and ridiculous and embarrassing. she doesn't push down the emotions, she lets them shine through, beautiful and terrible and ugly and luminous.

she drinks in the rays of the sun and they become a part of her, she glows with a personal radiance.

and maybe the others can't understand her light, but she knows:

this is exactly where she's meant to be.

even if she doesn't understand this quite yet.

this is me.