THE ONE WHO DIDN’T RUN

No one could say when it began.

Only that she felt it.

a quiet pull beneath her ribs,

the kind that hums before thunder breaks.

Most would have called it danger.

She called it recognition.

There was something ancient in the air,

something that didn’t promise safety,

only honesty.

It spoke without words:

“If you come closer, you will not return the same.”

She hesitated.

But the truth was already moving through her.

So she stepped forward.

At first, it felt like light.

A shimmer that wrapped around her doubts

and kissed them quiet.

Every breath turned golden,

every heartbeat a hymn.

Euphoria rose,

…not from being seen,

but from seeing.

Her own reflection,

unmasked,

undaunted,

limitless.

It whispered,

“Here is what you’ve hidden to be loved.

Here is what you were before the world told you to be small.”

And she smiled,

thinking this was the miracle,

….to finally meet herself in her brilliance.

But the current was not done.

It began to shift.

The light flickered.

Warmth became weight.

The air grew thick with memory.

“Now,” it said,

“if you would know your light,

you must walk through your dark.”

So she descended.

Into the ache she’d buried.

Into the voices that still whispered

she wasn’t enough,

or was too much,

or was never meant to be either.

Her laughter turned to echoes.

Her beauty,

….to bone.

Her confidence,

….to cinders.

And in that still, trembling silence,

she saw herself again….

the version she had hidden behind performance,

the one who knew how to love without pretending.

She didn’t fight her shadow this time.

She held it.

She forgave it.

She became it.

When she rose again,

nothing had changed,

and yet everything had.

The current released her,

not as the woman she had been,

but as the woman who could hold both sun and storm

without apology.

Those who saw her afterward

said she carried something new

a stillness that shimmered,

a peace that burned.

But she knew.

It was never new.

It was always there,

waiting for her to remember.

And when others now feel the hum

beneath their ribs.

that pull toward something both terrifying and tender,

….she smiles.

Because she knows what waits for them on the other side.

And she knows the truth of it:

The light doesn’t choose you.

It calls you.

And you answer

by becoming whole.