Leaving Because I Have To — In the Opposite Direction

Leaving Because I Have To — In the Opposite Direction

There’s something sobering about leaving a place not because you’ve outgrown it—but because you can’t survive in it anymore.

I’m not just leaving Pocatello.

I’m leaving Idaho.

And the truth is, I never planned to stay here forever. This was never the final chapter. But the way I’m leaving—the reason I’m leaving—that’s what sits heavy in my chest. I’m not packing for a promotion. I’m not chasing a shiny new opportunity. I’m not stepping boldly into some grand, pre-designed next phase.

I’m leaving because my marriage ended.
Because the walls echo.
Because the streets remember.
Because staying feels like suffocating inside a museum of what I lost.

I’m not leaving to begin a life.

I’m leaving to go find one.

And that changes everything.

There’s a narrative we like to tell about moving away. Reinvention. Fresh starts. Brave leaps. But sometimes leaving isn’t glamorous. Sometimes it’s survival. Sometimes it’s boxing up the remnants of a future you believed in and admitting that if you stay, you will slowly disappear.

And here’s the part that hurts in a different way: the only other city in Idaho worth moving to—the only one that ever truly felt like home to me—is the city he lives in now.

I loved that city before it was tied to him. It felt alive to me. It felt expansive. It felt like somewhere I could breathe. But he made it his home. And I cannot make my healing dependent on proximity to the one person I still want.

That’s the brutal truth beneath all of this.

All I want is him.

There it is. No spiritual language. No poetry. No bravado. Just the raw confession.

But wanting someone doesn’t make it wise to orbit them.

If I stayed in Idaho, I would always be aware of where he is.
If I moved to the city I love, I would always be wondering.
Every store. Every street. Every shared space would carry possibility and pain. I would live suspended between hope and dread.

That’s not healing.

That’s slow bleeding.

So I am doing something that feels both devastating and necessary: I am going in the opposite direction of wherever he is.

Not out of spite.
Not out of anger.
But out of self-preservation.

This move isn’t a glamorous reinvention. It’s a surgical decision. It’s me putting the final nail in that coffin—not because the love didn’t matter, but because I cannot keep reopening the grave.

There’s grief in leaving Pocatello. I’m leaving the home I built with hope in my hands. I’m leaving the version of me who believed certain promises were forever. I’m leaving familiarity, structure, identity.

And I’m not stepping into something fully formed. I’m stepping into uncertainty. Into a place where I will have to build friendships from scratch. Find work. Create rhythm. Construct meaning.

Right now, meaning feels thin.

That’s the part people don’t talk about. Divorce doesn’t just take a partner. It takes your assumptions about your future. It takes the scaffolding. It takes the quiet confidence that you know who you are and where you’re headed. And in the aftermath, you’re left staring at open space wondering how to rebuild.

So yes, there is hope. I pray—however imperfectly—that when I arrive in this new place, something begins to grow again. That I meet people who see me. That I build something that resembles a meaningful life. That laughter returns without effort. That purpose doesn’t feel so distant.

But hope does not cancel grief.

They coexist.

I am scared to stay.
I am scared to go.
And I am going anyway.

Because if I stay near him, I will keep hoping. And in this case, hope isn’t holy—it’s corrosive. It keeps the wound open. It keeps me positioned within reach of the one thing that undoes me.

So I am choosing distance.

I am choosing miles.
I am choosing a skyline that doesn’t carry his shadow.
I am choosing the road that does not circle back.

This isn’t me chasing a dream city.

This is me refusing to keep chasing a ghost.

Maybe the adventure isn’t in the departure. Maybe it’s in the slow, awkward rebuilding. In the empty apartment that will one day hold new memories. In discovering who I am when the old identity has burned down.

Right now, I don’t feel bold. I don’t feel triumphant. I feel raw. Untethered. Like a man walking out of ashes carrying whatever pieces of himself he could salvage.

But even that is movement.

I am leaving Idaho not because something better is guaranteed.

I am leaving because staying guarantees I will never heal.

And sometimes, going in the opposite direction of the one you love is the most loving thing you can do—for yourself.