I Didn’t Leave the Stage. I Just Changed Venues.
The life still looked right. The script just wasn’t mine anymore.
There was nothing obviously wrong with my life in Seattle.
That was part of the problem.
From the outside, it looked like a well-run production. Lights on. Cues hit. Lines delivered on time. I knew where to stand, what to say, how to move through a room without knocking over anything expensive or emotional.
I had systems. Structure. A calendar that could have qualified as a minor military operation.
I was efficient in a way that made people say things like, “Wow, you really have it together,” which is both a compliment and, in hindsight, a quiet warning.
Because I did have it together.
I just wasn’t entirely sure why.
The thing about staying on the same stage too long is that eventually, you start to notice the set.
The walls don’t move. The props repeat. The conversations circle back like a dog that’s lost the plot.
You begin to recognize your own lines before you say them.
And once that happens, it’s hard to un-hear it.
Leaving didn’t feel brave.
It felt… administrative.
Like I had scheduled my own disruption between two calendar reminders and then color-coded it.
There was paperwork. Of course there was paperwork. There is always paperwork when you attempt to rearrange your existence across international borders.
There were appointments, forms, copies of forms, copies of copies of forms, and at one point, a conversation that strongly suggested my identity depended on a document I had never seen and could not obtain but was expected to produce anyway. At one point I was fairly certain I had photocopied my own soul twice and still needed a notarized version.
I traveled with a cat named Laptop, which felt like either a bold choice or a cry for help. Possibly both.
At no point did it feel cinematic.
It felt like dragging a slightly overfilled suitcase through a series of slightly uncooperative environments while insisting to yourself, “This is fine. This is a good idea. People do this all the time.”
Which, frankly, is how I know I’m alive.
Spain was the transition.
The hallway between acts.
Nothing quite worked, but everything technically existed.
I walked in circles trying to rent a car. I signed contracts that appeared to have been printed during a previous century. I bought groceries like I was preparing for a small but determined siege.
There were moments—brief, flickering—where things felt… unnecessarily complicated.
Not wrong.
Just operating on a system I had not been given access to.
And then France.
Or more specifically, a 1647 house that looked at me the way a cat looks at a new owner: with suspicion, mild disdain, and a clear understanding that I would be doing most of the work.
Nothing about it was neutral.
The floors had opinions. The walls had history. The plumbing had… moods. Not leaks. Moods. It would function beautifully for days and then, without warning, express itself.
Men named Jean-something appeared and disappeared, offering advice that sounded less like instruction and more like folklore.
“Ah yes, the pipe. It must be respected.”
I nodded the way you nod when someone explains a horoscope to you and you decide, for survival purposes, to agree.
There were ducks. There was dust. There was a moment involving a cheese counter that I still consider a personal turning point, though I could not explain why under oath.
Nothing was efficient.
Nothing was predictable.
Nothing resembled the life I had left.
And yet—
I didn’t feel lost.
I felt… unscripted.
Which, it turns out, is a completely different sensation.
Back on the old stage, I knew how things would go.
Here, I know almost nothing.
I don’t always understand what’s happening. I occasionally make decisions that, in retrospect, feel experimental. I have stood in rooms where I am absolutely certain I have misunderstood the assignment.
But I am not repeating myself.
And that, quietly, feels like progress.
People sometimes ask if I “started over.”
I didn’t.
I just stopped performing in a play that had run too long.
The lines were fine. The audience was lovely.
But it wasn’t mine anymore.
So I left the stage.
Not dramatically.
No curtain call. No announcement.
I just… walked off.
And somewhere along the way, without fully realizing it, I found another one.
Smaller. Stranger. Occasionally held together by systems I do not fully understand.
The lighting is inconsistent.
The cast rotates.
Yes, there are ducks.
Someone is always sanding something. I rarely know why.
But the lines?
I haven’t heard them before.
And for the first time in a long time—
I don’t know what I’m going to say next.
Have you ever walked off a stage that looked perfectly fine from the outside? Tell me in the comments.
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