There’s a kind of loneliness that doesn’t come from being alone. It comes from being surrounded by people and still feeling like something essential is missing—like you’ve stepped out of your own life and left the real you behind.
I didn’t notice it at first. It snuck up on me in the small ways. Saying yes when I meant no. Laughing at things that weren’t funny. Shrinking myself to fit into rooms where I never truly belonged. It was easier to be who people expected me to be than to risk being seen for who I actually was.
Until one day, I couldn’t do it anymore.
I was sitting in a café, nodding along to a conversation I had no interest in, and I had this absurd, almost comical realization—I was bored out of my mind. Not just with the conversation, but with myself. My own life had become so unrecognizable that even I wanted to tune it out.
That’s when I knew: I had to leave. Not in a dramatic, run-away-and-vanish kind of way, but in the only way that really matters. I had to leave behind every version of me that was built for someone else.
And so, I walked away. From the places where I felt small. From the people who only knew the half-truths I fed them. From the habits that numbed instead of nourished.
At first, it felt like losing. Like I was breaking things I didn’t know how to rebuild. I had no grand plan, no clear destination—just a stubborn refusal to keep moving in the wrong direction.
The road back to myself was not glamorous. No mystical sunrises, no cinematic breakthroughs. Just a series of quiet, difficult choices. Learning how to sit alone without reaching for a distraction. How to hear my own thoughts without rushing to silence them. How to be uncomfortable without immediately fixing it.
Somewhere along the way, I started recognizing myself again. In the books I actually wanted to read, not the ones I thought I should. In the conversations that left me energized instead of drained. In the spaces where I could be still without feeling the need to perform.
That’s the thing about leaving—you don’t just lose what isn’t meant for you. You also find what is.
And I found something incredible: me. Not the polished, palatable version. The real one. The one who takes up space, who speaks her mind, who walks into rooms like she belongs there—not because anyone told her so, but because she finally believes it.
Some roads, you can only take alone. Not because no one cares, but because no one else can walk them for you.
And of all the places I’ve traveled, the journey back to myself has been the most magnificent.
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