Home Is Not Where They Left Me

Home is not where they left me. That's the first correction.

It was the house after corporate, after the last bad man, after the last "we're a family here" that turned into "you're lucky we tolerate you."

Home was the quiet after the shouting. 

When you've been pushed out of enough rooms, you start to confuse the landing spot with the exile.

You stand in your own hallway like a kid sent to the corner, heart on mute.

You look at the shoes, the coats, the bills and think:

This is where they left me when they were done taking.

⸻

So the work now is not in the story. The stories will keep changing outfits.

Boss, boyfriend, CEO, team, contract - different faces, same pattern.

The work is in the rewrite of what home means.

Home is not where they dump you once they're finished using you.

Home is where the signal returns to baseline and you can hear yourself again.

Home is where you unplug from men and managers who treat your body, time, and talent like free snacks in the corporate fridge.

Home is where you sit with the lamp on low and admit what happened without editing it to protect their reputation.

Home is the base from which you leave again, on your own terms.

Not a cell. A launchpad.

⸻

Maybe your version isn't corporate.

Maybe it's a marriage that hollowed you out. Maybe it's a family system that ran on your labour and called it love.

Maybe it's the day you walked out with a cardboard box and a forced smile and told yourself:

This is who I am now. 

If that story is still humming in you, hear this:

They returned you to your sovereignty without ever meaning to.

They just didn't realise you would eventually change the locks.

⸻

These days I walk through my house differently.

Sometimes I still feel the old sentence run: you're alone because they didn't want you.

On those days I do something almost stupidly simple.

I put one bare foot flat on the floor and say:

This is my command center, not my punishment cell.

Then I take three ordinary steps forward.

No ritual. No ceremony.

Kitchen. Hallway. Window.

This is not where they left me.

This is where I stayed long enough to remember that my life does not begin in their buildings.

It begins here:

with my hand on the fridge, with my name on the door, with my voice intact,

planning the next exit, not a fall, but a chosen leaving.