You ripped my life to shreds, now it’s time I return the favor.

I didn’t say it aloud. I whispered it in my mind, like a vow. The words tasted like steel: cold, sharp, and bitter. I stood in the doorway of the apartment we once called ours, the key still warm in my palm. The silence inside was thick, the kind that settles after a storm has passed out before damage is made.

You weren’t home. Of course you weren’t. You never were, not really. Your body might’ve been there, laying on the couch, scrolling through your phone, but you kind was always elsewhere.

Your heart? I’m not sure it ever showed up.

I moved to the bedroom, the pale were your lies used to curl up beside me at night. The bed was still unmade, the sheets tangled like the stories you spun. I opened my the closet and pulled out the duffle bag I’d hidden weeks ago. It was already half packed. I added a few extra things, my journal, my nana’s necklace, the book you never bothered to read, and I zipped it shut.

I didn’t cry, not this time. I’d cried enough, my tears were carved into this house. They were all silent battles you never cared to listen to or notice. You made me feel like a ghost in my life, like a disgrace for loving too loudly, for needing too much.

I left the ring on the counter. Not in anger, not in bitterness. Just peaceful. A full stop at the end of a sentence that had dragged on way too long.

As I reach the door, I glanced back one last time. The apartment looked the same, but it didn’t. I wasn’t the same girl who once believed your promises, who mistook control for care. I was the girl who had learned to pack her silence, sharp and clean, and walk away.

Outside, the air was cold and honest. I breathed it in like freedom.

Just like that, I vanished, unaware to you, but fully aware of myself.