{ who have you left? }
 I left her, but only because she made me. "I relapsed," she said. "I broke your trust," she said. "You deserve better than me," she said.

I didn't understand. I just nodded. But I left and tried not to look back.

Later, I learned that it was all a lie. "I was cheating on you. I had to get rid of you..it was the easiest way."

There hasn't really been a day since then that I haven't thought of her, of things she did to me and the ways she hurt me. That night is with me forever.

"You deserve better than me."

benbrown {awdangshereallydidyouin@benbrown.com}

 



 I left a city only an hour and a half away and left about 50 people behind.

When I see these people again, I don't regret it in the least. I suppose it's a part of growing.

Sometimes, I think it would be better if growing didn't require the shedding of old friends and acquaintances, rather like dead skin.

Then I imagine what I'd look like if my dead skin has never sloughed off. Ew.

"Resistance is futile. We will all be exfoliated."

Heh.

nic {noizangl@idirect.com}

 



 For three summers in a row I went to summer camp. It was just a week. Friendships and relationships were easily made, and then left at the end of that one special week. Everyone cries, and promises to write. No one ever does. It's funny how you can make and lose friends in such a short period of time. Sometimes there is nothing you can do but leave. So that is exactly what you do.

cole farrell {cole@zord.com}

 



 The air was heavy. I couldn't quite get my breath. Every time I tried to breathe another sob would try to escape my tightly pursed lips. And the cloying scent of roses, too many roses filled the air. The choked me because I knew why they were there. Not because he liked roses, because I guess someone once said that roses are appropriate for funerals. He was only 15 and he liked girls, not roses. And then the pall bearers carried him down the church aisle and that was it, he was gone. I know they took him to be buried, but he was gone long before that, he had already left.

mary farrell {maefarre@indiana.edu}

 



 I'm not sure if it counts as being forced to leave. But maybe it does... suffocation and overbearing seemed like valid enough reasons then, anyway. I walked out the door and didn't come home. I had been itching to leave... my skin felt like it was getting tighter and the rooms of the house were getting smaller and I couldn't breathe anymore. She thinks it's her fault, but mothers of runaways always do I guess.... and sometimes I feel like telling her she is right, just to get her off my back about it... In some ways she is... but mostly, my own need to be free was why I did it...

So I left...

SammyCat {sammy-cat@usa.net}

 



 oh, i leave people all the time. I left my brother again today. I move around a lot, I'm wanderer.

It's surprising how quickly a rolling stone collects moss, and how often I stop.

drunken depression

 



 I deported myself. I am far from the past and far from everyone I've ever known. One ex-girlfriend sends cheerful email from time to time. I haven't had a real hug in about a year, sex in two. It's easier to try to feel nothing, rather than sticking my schnoz out to get flicked again. *whack* Ouch.

I walked away too many times, thinking that I had to save the world from myself . Now I'm in the other hemisphere with a scar on the back of my head. The closest I've ever been to suicide, I realized last fall and three years too late. In moments when I feel silly enough to hope, I wonder if the woman who joined me for that trip on the roller coaster is really trying to find out what went wrong inside my skull...? I forced myself to leave to save both of us from me. Now I realize I've never learned to stay put.

Grendel {brane_damaj@hotmail.com}

 



 The ache never goes away. Perhaps I feel it a bit less often these days. But it never goes away.

Every time something happens in my life I know he'd enjoy, every time I'm reminded of something we did together, when I hear music we both like or am reminded of some inside joke I feel the ache.

There is a hole in my life named "Reid." And no one and nothing will ever be able to fill that hole. And the bitch is, I'm the one who left. I had to. I was dead anyway.

I thought I was taking a gamble. "If I move from this hell hole to the glittery metropolis maybe I’ll have a better life than here," I thought to myself. A few days before I left the realization hit me. There was only one thing that was guaranteed. I was giving up everyone and everything I’d ever cared about. I would be starting from zero. As I said my "goodbyes" and shed my possessions I reduced my life to nothing.

He came to the airport to see me off. We said our last goodbye and cried together. I had the gate attendant take a photo of us together. Then I got on the plane. It was one of the blackest moments of my life. I couldn’t see five minutes into my own future. I had no idea what was coming. I’d turned off every light in my life and was sitting in the dark, hoping a new light would appear and show me the way.

When I landed in New York City the lights came on. It’s taken me years to rebuild what I gave up. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it was the right decision. The gamble worked.

But there is still a hole in my life named, "Reid."

Dale Sorenson {public@sorenson-usa.com}

 



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