You don't have to wait until you die to become a new person.

The caterpillar never asks permission to dissolve. Inside the cocoon it becomes imaginal soup — a slurry of cells with no memory of legs or appetite — before reorganizing into something with wings. We do this too, quieter, all the time. The self we wore last winter is already gone; the one reading this is a draft. Identity is not a monument to protect but a weather pattern we participate in, cells turning over, attention reshaping the contours. What old skin are we still pretending to wear?