The Geography of Escape

I didn’t move to Virginia.
I ran.
I ran from the heavy breath of a broken system that once called itself healing
and now only seemed to profit from suffering.
I ran from fluorescent-lit hallways and whispered hypocrisies in white coats.
But more than that—
I ran from him.

There was a man.
And there was dance.

And there was the quiet unraveling of a woman
who no longer knew how to say no to either.
Not when the music started.
Not when he looked at her like she was a secret worth keeping.

I told myself it was a job change.
A sign-on bonus.
A fresh start.

But it was exile.
I exiled myself from a love that had grown sick in its silence,
and from a city where my boundaries had grown too soft,
where my desire to feel alive outweighed my discipline to heal.

Yes, there was work I could’ve done in Florida.
Easier work.
Closer to the sea and the sun.
But I couldn’t stay and resist the pull of the past.
So I left.
With boxes packed in a rented truck,
a poodle in the passenger seat,
and heartbreak wrapped in denial.

Now I live in a small apartment
where the walls echo with absence
and the floor beneath me creaks like an old memory.
I miss my house,
the one I painted with hope.
I miss who I was when I thought love might save me.
But most of all,
I miss the illusion that leaving would be enough.

Because it never is.

The truth is,
your pain comes with you.
It rides in the backseat.
It sleeps on the floor beside the bed.
It waits for the quiet
and whispers when the lights go out.

But here’s what I’ve found in the aftermath:

You can’t bury your ghosts in a new zip code.
You can’t buy freedom with a bonus check.
And you can’t heal by pretending the wound doesn’t exist.

What you can do—
is begin again.

In the stillness that follows the storm,
when the noise of the world fades and you are left
only with your breath and your choices,
transformation begins.

Not with fireworks.
Not with fanfare.
But with a whisper that says:
“This isn’t working. Something has to change.”

And so I sit now,
not in victory,
but in surrender.
In the rawness of knowing that rock bottom
is often the sacred ground
where reinvention plants its roots.

I still mourn the loss of him—
of us—
of the woman I was when I believed
that dancing might be enough to carry me home.
But grief, too, has its place in the wild.

And maybe that’s the grace of it all.
Not that I escaped.
But that I survived the running.
That I am still here.
And still—becoming.