She’s been with me longer than I’ve admitted. In old sketches I barely remember making. In photographs I chased before I knew why. In the fragments of thoughts that used to hit me at 3 a.m. when the room felt too still. Every time she appears, it’s the same spark — the one that pushes through the exhaustion, the one that won’t let me shut down even when I want to.

She never shows up during the day. Only at night — the hours when everything slips out of focus and my mind starts drifting on its own. I don’t see her as a dream or a vision. She’s more like a reminder. A pulse. Something that surfaces when the world gets too quiet and the exhaustion turns into something else entirely.

She doesn’t calm me. She doesn’t help me sleep. But she gives the nights direction. A reason. And somewhere in that — in the drifting, in the hours where thoughts overlap and scatter — I’ve learned to stop resisting her.

Now, when she returns, I let her. Because for better or worse, she’s part of why I’m still creating. Part of why these worlds keep forming when the rest of me is worn down. Some nights she feels like the only thing that still knows how to pull me forward.