The Day I Walked Away to Find Myself

I didn’t pack a bag. I didn’t write a long goodbye text. I didn’t even take my charger. I just slipped my phone onto airplane mode, put it face down on the table, and walked out of my apartment like the place was holding its breath and I was finally letting it exhale.

Outside, the city was still wet from last night’s rain. Puddles collected the sky in broken pieces, and the air smelled like metal and mud. I didn’t have a destination. That was the point. For years, every step I took belonged to a plan, a person, a deadline. That morning, I decided to walk until the noise inside me ran out of words.

At the first red light, I almost turned back. My mind did what it always does—started counting the things I should be doing: the emails, the apology I owed someone, the message I hadn’t replied to, the life I hadn’t been living. But then the light changed to green, and I let the city make the choice for me. I crossed.

There’s a bakery three blocks down that I’ve passed a thousand times but never entered. Today I did. The bell above the door made a soft, old sound, like it had been there long before me and would stay long after. The woman behind the counter had kind eyes and a tired smile. “First time?” she asked, and when I nodded, she said, “Then you’re getting the almond croissant. Non-negotiable.”

I took my coffee and croissant to a corner table and sat where I could watch the window fog and clear with every gust of wind from the door. I tore the pastry open with my fingers, watching flakes scatter like little versions of me—every piece given away over the years. Every favor I didn’t have the energy to do but said yes to. Every conversation where I swallowed the truth and served something easier instead.

My reflection in the window looked like a stranger I almost recognized. I remembered being fourteen and filling the last page of a cheap blue diary with a promise to never lose myself for anyone. I remembered being twenty-three and erasing parts of myself like pencil marks, to fit into a shape that didn’t scare anyone. I remembered last week, staring at a ceiling at 3:17 a.m., wondering how a person could be surrounded by people and still feel like a locked room.

When I finished the croissant, I wrote on the napkin: I miss me. I folded it and put it in my pocket like evidence.

Back on the street, I walked without thinking. Past the bus stop where I once cried into a scarf no one noticed. Past the park where I used to read before life got louder than books. Past a couple arguing in low, exhausted voices—the kind of fight where both people want to be understood but neither wants to listen first. I didn’t judge them. I just recognized them. I had been both of them.

I kept walking until the city started to thin out and the trees got taller. There’s a small footbridge over a creek—nothing special, just wood and rusted nails—but I stood there longer than I planned. The water underneath moved with a kind of certainty I envied. It didn’t argue with the rocks. It didn’t justify its path. It just went.

So I tried something I hadn’t done in years: I talked to myself out loud. Not the panicked kind of self-talk you do when you’re late or lost, but the honest kind.
“I don’t hate my life,” I said to the creek. “I just don’t remember choosing most of it.”

I listed things I thought I loved and realized some of them were just habits. I listed people I gave my time to and realized some of them were just comfortable ghosts. I listed rules I lived by and realized some of them were never mine.

An older man with a baseball cap and a dog passed me on the bridge. He nodded. I nodded back. It felt like we were sharing a secret: neither of us had figured it out, and both of us were still trying.

On the way back, I took a different route, on purpose. I didn’t want to return to my apartment the same way I left it. I stopped at a stationery shop and bought a notebook with a cover the color of wet leaves. At home, I made tea I didn’t drink and sat at my desk without opening my laptop. I wrote three headings on the first page: What I’m Carrying, What I’m Letting Go, What I’m Choosing.

Under What I’m Carrying, I wrote:

The fear that if I stop saying yes, I’ll stop being loved.

The belief that if I’m not useful, I’m not valuable.

The version of me people clap for, even when it exhausts me.


Under What I’m Letting Go, I wrote:

Apologizing for needing rest.

Explaining my boundaries to people committed to misunderstanding them.

Waiting to be chosen.


And under What I’m Choosing, I wrote slowly, like I wanted the ink to sink deeper than the page:

Mornings that start quiet.

People who ask, “How are you, really?” and wait for the answer.

Work that feeds me, not just my resume.

Saying no without a novel attached.

A life where I don’t abandon myself to be acceptable.


I cried—not the dramatic movie kind, but the messy kind you almost choke on because it’s coming from someplace deep and old. When it stopped, I felt empty in a way that wasn’t scary. It felt like an empty room ready to be lived in.

I texted two people. One was an apology that didn’t include self-blame. The other was a boundary that didn’t include justification. Neither reply came immediately. For once, I didn’t refresh the screen to make them arrive faster.

As the day faded into evening, I lit the only candle I owned, the one I’d been saving for a “special moment” I could never define. The room smelled like vanilla and something I couldn’t name—maybe hope, maybe freedom, maybe both. I read a few pages from a book I never finished, not because I was trying to be productive but because I actually wanted to know how the character ended up.

Before sleeping, I taped the napkin from the bakery above my desk: I miss me. Under it, on the notebook’s first page, I added one more line: But I think I know where to find me now.

I won’t pretend everything changed overnight. The next day, I still had emails. People still asked for things. Old habits still knocked like persistent salesmen. But now I had a door I could close. A voice I could hear. A map I was actually willing to follow.

Choosing yourself isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a daily practice. It’s the way you put your phone down when your heart needs silence. It’s the way you breathe before you answer. It’s the way you leave a room that keeps shrinking you. It’s the way you return to the bridge, to the bakery, to the notebook—again and again—until the life you’re living finally sounds like your own voice reading it out loud.

If you’re lost right now, I won’t tell you to be brave. I’ll tell you to be honest. Sit with the life you’ve built and ask, “How much of this belongs to me?” If the answer hurts, don’t run. Take a walk. Buy a cheap notebook. Write badly but truthfully. Cry without apologizing. Say no without decorating it.

And then, when you’re ready, choose yourself in small, stubborn ways—until it becomes the only way you know how to live.

Maybe one day you’ll tape your own sentence above your desk. Maybe it’ll say I’m back. Maybe it’ll just say Me. Either way, I hope you never forget it.