Stealthy Escape

Stealthy escape

I've been thinking about the ways we leave things behind. Not the dramatic exits, not the slamming doors. But the soft, gentle, silent kind. Like the way a black cat slips out of a plastic bag - no struggle, no sound, no explanation. Just gone...

We don't always announce our freedom. Sometimes we outgrow without noise. Sometimes the thing that once felt like shelter - a job, a role, a relationship, a way of being - starts to feel crinkly and tight.

Artificial. Loud in the wrong places. It doesn't breathe with us anymore.

We try to stay polite inside it. We try to make it feel okay again. We even convince ourselves it's not that bad.

Until one day...

We move toward the light without warning. Not because we're angry. But because we've one pretending.

That's what I saw in the black cat in the picture. No panic. No drama. Just instinct. An ordinary act of sovereignty.

And maybe that's how we begin. Not by burning everything down. But by listening to the whisper:

This no longer holds me

And then we slip away. Not to escape life, but to return to it.

If you're in something that doesn't breathe with you anymore, this is your sign: you don't owe the old you an explanation.

You only owe yourself the freedom to move again.

@piri