Tired. So tired of the place I had been. It was all I could think about every night on the way home. There was no way around it, but I already knew that. Everyone has to go through some kind of grind, but when you’ve been craving something different for years already beforehand it seems futile in the first place.

Do we only feel different when our outlook changes? Is our outlook the only thing we have to differentiate our time? It’s a strange shift, an outlook. Can you feel it changing day by day? Or do years go by, only to wake up the next day and be a completely different person.

It was summer then, and I had driven home from the spa I worked at with the window down, letting cool dark air mix with the soft music I played for quiet nights. Leaving the beach was my favorite, approaching the bridge with its string of street lights guiding an amber trail for you to cruise on and enjoy the dusky sky and water flowing together. Dusk was my favorite time, maybe it still is. Whenever the horizon is losing its luster and turning into a calm blanket of navy, I feel like whatever I lost out on in the day is done, and I’m given the gift of trying again in the relaxed hold of silent hours. When I’m alone, and the pressure to get things done has been lifted, I can breathe.

So I was alone that night. I got home and when I stepped in my apartment, I could see it all. My flatscreen staring at me, nothing I care to watch. My partner’s green velvet couch, looking for company when I had none to offer. My cat, staring out the window disinterestedly, mirroring my outlook. Nothing was here for me. It was my place to live, but that was it. I walked onto the carpet and set my things down on the coffee table. I sank to my knees and buried my head on the couch. I wrapped my arms around my head and wracked my brain trying to come up with a reason to stay here, to stay near my family, to stay in my five year relationship, to do the same thing on the same days and never look forward to the same things and go the same places and feel the same things. And I just, couldn’t.

There was nothing else I could do. I had to get out of the rut I had been in since who knows when.

When they got back, it was calm. All I managed to say was, “I have to leave.” They knew what I meant.

I wish moving on was easy to grasp, something anyone could do at the drop of a hat.