It didn’t happen all at once.

Some people picture leaving like a door slammed shut or a suitcase thrown into the backseat of a car. But for her, the leaving started much earlier — in moments so small they were almost invisible. It was in the way her name sounded different when he said it. It was in the way she stopped laughing before the joke ended. It was in the long pauses between sentences that used to be full.

The day she actually left was quiet. Too quiet.

No final fight. No tearful begging. Just the clinking of mugs as she packed the ones she bought herself, the whisper of drawers being emptied, and the dull ache in her chest where her excitement for life used to live. She left him a note — not because she couldn’t say it to his face, but because she already had. A hundred times, in a hundred different ways. None of them stuck.

She didn’t pack everything. She left behind clothes that held too many memories and the coffee maker he loved but she hated. She kept what mattered: her journals, her books, a few old Polaroids of herself laughing — the real kind of laugh, from before.

When she closed the door behind her, it didn’t feel like escape. It felt like burial. Not of him. Of who she became to stay with him.

She sat in the driver’s seat for a long time before turning the key. Her hands trembled, not with fear, but with release. It was over. And somehow, she was still breathing.

She thought leaving would feel like freedom. But instead, it felt like standing on the edge of a cliff, toes curled over the ledge, the wind daring her to jump. And she did — not because she was ready, but because staying had already taken too much.