Episode 3: The Place I Could Breathe
885 Words
I tried to make school work.
I really did.
At first, I told myself it would get better. That if I kept my head down, stayed quiet, followed the rules, I could survive it the same way I survived everything else. But some places don’t soften with time. They sharpen.
Hallways became something I learned to dread. The sound of lockers slamming echoed too loudly. Laughter felt pointed, even when it wasn’t meant to be. I learned how to scan rooms quickly, how to spot who was safe and who wasn’t before I ever sat down.
People noticed difference like it was a flaw.
Whispers followed me more often than words. Looks lingered. I was older than some of them, younger than others, caught in a space that never quite fit. Some days, it felt like simply existing was an invitation for cruelty.
I didn’t tell him at first.
He was already carrying enough. Training. Expectations. A world that demanded more from him every day. I didn’t want to be another weight added to that list.
So I smiled on FaceTime.
I laughed when I was supposed to. I told him about small things instead. Youth group. Music. The chalk wall downstairs at church filling up faster than usual. Anything but the truth that sat heavy in my chest.
But he noticed anyway.
He always did.
“You’re quieter,” he said one Friday night, his face pixelated slightly by a weak connection. “What’s going on?”
I hesitated.
“It’s nothing,” I said automatically.
He didn’t push. He never did. He just waited.
And somehow, that made it impossible not to tell him.
“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” I admitted finally. “School. I mean.”
He didn’t react the way I expected. No disappointment. No frustration. No lectures about pushing through.
“Tell me why,” he said calmly.
So I did.
I told him about the hallways. The looks. The way I felt like I was shrinking just to make it through the day. I told him how exhausted I was, how heavy everything felt, how waking up every morning felt like preparing for battle without armor.
He listened.
When I finished, there was a brief pause.
“Leaving doesn’t mean failing,” he said. “Sometimes it means choosing yourself.”
The words stayed with me long after the call ended.
The decision wasn’t sudden. It built slowly, like everything else in my life. One hard day stacked on top of another until I realized I was breaking myself trying to belong somewhere that didn’t want me.
Dropping out felt like both relief and grief.
Relief because I could finally breathe.
Grief because it meant admitting that the path I was supposed to follow didn’t fit me.
Church became my constant again.
The youth room downstairs felt safer than anywhere else. The metal chairs still formed their familiar circle. The chalk wall still carried traces of old prayers and inside jokes. I spent more time there than anywhere else, helping clean up, staying late, letting the quiet settle.
Waiting changed shape again.
I wasn’t just waiting for him anymore. I was rebuilding myself in the space his absence created.
Friday FaceTimes became my anchor.
Sometimes we talked for hours. Other times, just enough to hear each other’s voices before one of us had to go. He called when he could, messaged when he couldn’t. The calls came more frequently now, not because his life slowed down, but because he made room.
I learned the rhythm of his days. When he was most tired. When his voice softened. When he needed silence as much as I did.
He told me about Camp Lejeune. About the routines. The exhaustion. The quiet moments between demands where he finally had time to think.
“I think about you a lot,” he admitted one night, voice low. “More than I probably should.”
I smiled. “Me too.”
The distance didn’t make us strangers. It made us deliberate.
We learned how to communicate without rushing. How to sit in silence without filling it unnecessarily. How to trust that the other person would still be there even when the connection dropped.
And then, slowly, something shifted.
The conversations changed.
Not dramatically. Just… deeper. We talked about the future in careful pieces. Not plans, exactly. Just possibilities. Questions about who we were becoming. What we wanted. What we were afraid of.
One Friday night, after a long pause, he said, “I don’t want to just survive this.”
“Me either,” I replied.
That was the moment I realized we weren’t just waiting anymore.
We were choosing.
I didn’t know then how much that choice would cost us. How quickly life would accelerate. How adulthood would arrive before either of us felt ready.
But I knew this:
He wasn’t just the boy who sat quietly in a metal chair in the youth room anymore.
And I wasn’t just the girl who walked in unsure of where she belonged.
We were becoming something new together — slowly, intentionally — across miles, across time, across everything that tried to pull us apart.
And for the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel lost.
I felt held.
- Writer
