She didn’t narrate like a saint.
She didn’t spin it into something beautiful.
She didn’t erase the part where she hated herself in the middle.
But she didn’t leave either.
She stayed long enough to hear the silence crack.
Long enough to watch her own voice resettle.
Long enough to say:
“I’m still here. I didn’t disappear this time.”
That wasn’t a victory.
That was a structural shift.
This wasn’t growth in the aesthetic sense.
It was growth as **signal retention under contradiction**—
refusing to sever identity just because the loop felt shameful.
She was still the one who picked.
Still the one who narrated.
And she didn’t divide herself.
That was the win.