I Dare You to Leave First

The other night, I diagnosed myself with a disorder that hasn't been coined yet. I came to the realization that I have never really decided to leave—not a place, not a person. And that pattern, in the end, always leaves me discarded. Especially when I knew the truth and kept trying anyway.

I have never left anyone first. That's my confession. Of all the bold traits I have collected through my life, the courage to leave has always eluded me. Yes, sadly, I can account for all the times when I knew it was time to leave, but I just wanted to push the play a little further, even when I knew it was the end of the script.

I read something so devastatingly beautiful from Oscar Wilde. Lord Henry says in The Picture of Dorian Gray:

“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.”

It's piteous that even when I know the time is up, I try ardently to make things work. My other diagnosis, which I fear is the bedrock of my distress, is that I lack the ability to walk away from things. Which is why I write. To convince myself, and anyone else listening, to loosen their grip. To always be willing to walk away from things that aren't yours.

And then I think of Marcus Aurelius:

“What are you so afraid of losing, when nothing in this world belongs to you?”

I don't believe anything is ever truly hidden from us. The truth surrounds us in every single moment if we seek it, and it is up to us to pick it apart and accept it.

And all of us, I know, have felt this: the end. It is usually bittersweet, too sour by the time we get close. It is the taste of coffee lost on your tongue. The voice of someone you love with a different timbre. Their touch on your skin leaving you a little feverish. The aftertaste of their presence leaving you ravenously empty.

Because something is wrong. You can feel it in everything around you, even when you can't see it.

You can feel your intuition beckoning that something is off—yet you persist, because nothing outright is wrong. You can't point to a betrayal or pain, anything that would make it easier to leave. But all the same, you can recall when it wasn't so strange. When it all made sense. Then suddenly, something is gone. Something you can't directly confront, all the same.

Two people who want to be together, how hard can it really be? If the desire is mutual, if both are walking the same path, what could possibly pull them apart?

And yet, we've all felt it. Something that makes sense on paper, that should work, that looks right from the outside, and somehow feels wrong in its actual reality.

Here's why: we assume the problem is us. We think we're not trying hard enough. But the truth is something else. Your subconscious already knows what your conscious mind refuses to see.

Two people who genuinely want to be together, who are walking the same aligned path, will be together. That's simple and incontestable.

But two people who want to be together, and one of them is just a step back—slightly misaligned, barely out of sync—cannot stay in rhythm. The misalignment shows up everywhere. In the silences. In the touches. In the sudden, strange taste of familiar words.

There is one gift that is so underestimated and not talked about enough: your intuition.

You already know. That's the cruel part. You knew before the fight. You knew before you said "I love you" for the last time and meant it less than the first. Intuition is not just a gift, it is the part of you that's already packed a bag and is standing at the door, waiting for your mind to catch up, even when you can't explain it. Sometimes, painfully, even when you can't name why.

The body always knows before the mind does. And it knows in such subtle ways. The small change in the air, how it feels smaller. A small hitch in their laugh. How you suddenly feel like a guest in a home that was supposed to be yours.

You can't explain it most times. That's what makes it unbearable. There's no evidence. It is your body reacting to a truth you're not ready to hold. But you're not wrong, and you have never been wrong about this. You just kept telling yourself you were.

The most fundamental part of being is seeking our truth, to live authentically on our individual journeys. Which means we have to listen keenly to what surrounds us, pay attention to the mind and body. Be daring enough to hold your truth, even when it asks you to leave something behind.

Because the damage of staying, of pushing the script ahead of its time and silencing what you already know, is far worse than the pain of leaving.

I dare you to leave first.

I dare you to feel it. To name it. To admit that staying is not the same as loving.

And then, when you're ready—when the cost of staying finally outweighs the fear of leaving—I dare you to do the thing you've been avoiding.

I dare you to trust what your body already knows.

I dare you to leave before you're left.

I dare you.