Kedar Karkare, PhD

You leave in silence,

the kind that lives in your bones

before you ever give it permission.

You leave when your body mourns

things you haven’t lost yet—

the house, the rhythm,

the people who love you

but can’t see you clearly

Anymore.

You leave slowly.

You leave clumsily.

You leave while still trying to be good.

You pack your bag

With phone chargers and guilt

And all the versions of you

That had it together

You cry twice a day.

Sometimes more

You forget how to speak to strangers.

You eat crackers for dinner

because it’s the only thing your stomach can hold.

You think of your mother’s voice,

the way it softened when she brushed your hair,

the way it cracked when she said she was fine.

You think of your father’s shoulders,

how they carried things no one asked about,

how you inherited that quiet

and called it strength.

You think of your childhood kitchen,

the way light hit the counter at 3pm,

the hum of the fridge,

the smell of rice and something warming,

how safe it felt

before you learned to trade safety for survival.

You miss people who are still alive.

You miss versions of yourself

you had to kill to keep going.

And still—

you go.

Because there is something more loyal

than the part of you that stayed.

There is a knowing

deeper than fear.

You are not leaving.

You are remembering.

How to belong to yourself.

How to hear your own voice

And believe it.

You are remembering how it feels

To move without explanation.

To not apologize for wanting to be whole.

And when you leave—

when you finally leave—

you don’t walk into freedom with a roar.

You collapse into it

with a soft, shivering yes.

You make soup.

You light candles.

You learn to sleep again

without earning it.

You listen for your name in places that never learned to say it right.

You write letters to people who will never read them.

You let grief wash you clean

because it’s the only thing that ever told you the truth.

And one day—

you’ll be standing at the sink,

or walking under trees you forgot you loved,

or folding laundry in the quiet of your own breath—

and it will hit you.

You never lost it.

You protected it,

even when the world asked you

to trade it for survival.

You’ll realize the ache in your chest has turned into space.

Not empty—open.

Like a room waiting for the right kind of silence.

Like a home that welcomes you back

without asking where you’ve been.

There won’t be fireworks.

Just a steady hum.

A rightness.

You’ll belonging to yourself again.

Without proving.

Without shrinking.

Without needing to be anyone else.

And you’ll know—

this,

this is what you left for.

You left for

The one who never stopped waiting.

The one who knew, even in the dark,

how to find her way back

by feel alone.

This is how you leave.

And this—

this is how you return.