At the beginning of the year, I felt trapped. Suffocated by a life that looked perfect on paper but left me gasping for air in rooms full of oxygen. Maybe you know the feeling – that urge to burn it all down, being stuck in a golden cage, wanting out but feeling oh so terrified of what would happen if you actually lit the match.
Well, I lit it.
In May, I quit my job. My picture perfect job. I just… quit. No backup plan, no “justifiable” reason, just the bone-deep knowing that something had to give, and it had to give now.
And you know what? The world didn’t end. My son didn’t fall apart. The sky stayed exactly where it was supposed to be.
The best part? The moment I made a decision, the moment I did something, certain doors just opened.
Here’s what nobody tells you about burning it all down: the fire doesn’t destroy you. It feeds you. All those parts of yourself you buried under “should” and “responsible” and “lucky to have what you have” – they don’t disappear in the flames. They rise.
I’ve been off social media since May 31st. Over five months of silence. Not because I had nothing to say, but because I finally had too much to live. I traveled. I wrote. I fell in love. Real love. The kind where you’re not constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, although my parts still do, at times.
I started working with my favorite coach, the best coach I know, again. We’re excavating the rage I’d been swallowing, naming the addictions I was too ashamed to voice, peeling back every layer I’d painted over myself.
And therapy. Still therapy. Always therapy.
Twenty-two years of it and still finding new floors to fall through. The brother stuff – still. The mother stuff – always. The father stuff – again. The stuff I inherited without asking for it. The patterns I kept repeating because familiar dysfunction still felt safer than unknown freedom.
Leaving the golden cage? It’s terrifying. And liberating. And sometimes you ugly-cry in your car. And sometimes you dance in your kitchen at 2 PM on a Tuesday because you can. Because you’re free. Because you’re finally, finally done pretending. And when you’re done pretending, everything you’ve been holding collapses.
I spent years holding it all together. Going from an abusive childhood into an abusive marriage into being a single mom and fighting for my life. Now that Johann doesn’t need me 24/7, now that he’s not consuming every ounce of energy I have, all the trauma, all the stress fell off me and revealed a raw, exhausted, broken person who was finally ready to live.
The golden cage isn’t just about the job or the relationship or the place you live. It’s about the story you tell yourself about what you’re allowed to want. It’s about the permission you think you need from everyone else to live your own damn life.
I’m not going to tell you to be brave. I’m going to tell you that one day you’ll be so done that brave won’t matter.
Was it easy? Fuck no. There were moments of pure panic, of ‘what have I done?’ But I would burn it all down again. Tomorrow. Without hesitation.
Because here’s the thing about golden cages – they’re still cages. And you? You were built to fly.
The woman whose soul was so restless, so sad, eleven months ago, was begging for someone to tell her what to do. The woman writing this post today wants to tell her: you already know. You’ve always known. The anger, the numbness, the yearning – that’s not you falling apart. That’s your soul telling you it’s time.
Light the match. Trust the fire. The life waiting for you on the other side isn’t just safe – it’s yours.
And that? That’s everything.