The Weight of Leaving

Sandy had forty pounds of space to fit an entire life.

Her airline ticket sat on the rickety nightstand, the name on it barely feeling like hers anymore. Sandy Ellis. One-way to Berlin. A new city. A new life. She stared at the suitcase lying open on the bed like an empty grave, waiting to swallow what little she had left.

She had three hours before the cab arrived.

The room around her was more barren than it should have been. The bookshelves were empty, clothes tossed in piles on the floor. The desk, where she'd once scribbled dreams on loose-leaf paper, was wiped clean. The photos on the walls — gone. Sandy had packed them first, slipping them into an envelope tucked in her coat. The people in those pictures weren’t coming with her, but their echoes would.

Her hands trembled as she picked up a pair of jeans, rolling them tightly and stuffing them into the suitcase. Then a few shirts, socks, underwear. Each piece of fabric weighed something intangible — memories of places she’d worn them, the people who had seen her in them. The green sweater she’d worn on her last birthday, when Barbara had surprised her with cake and candles. The red dress from the disastrous New Year’s party where she had kissed the wrong person. The hoodie stolen from an ex, still smelling faintly of cologne she no longer wanted to remember.

She left the hoodie on the bed.

Next, shoes. Only one pair fit in the suitcase, so she chose the boots that had carried her through years of wandering city streets. The sneakers, the heels, even the sandals she had worn by the lake last summer — gone.

Toiletries. A brush. Minimal makeup. The perfume bottle was too heavy. She hesitated, then set it aside.

Then came the hardest part.

Books.

She ran her fingers over their spines, feeling the weight of years between the pages. Each one had been a piece of her, a stepping stone through life. But books were heavy. She grabbed one — The Alchemist — because she’d underlined passages in it about journeys and change. Another — Frankenstein — because it reminded her of the city she was heading to.

Music. Vinyl was impossible to bring, but she had a small notebook where she had written lyrics of songs that had saved her at different times. That would have to do.

Her hands hovered over a wooden box. Inside were letters, old concert tickets, a dried flower from the first bouquet she had ever received. She opened it and felt her throat tighten. Too much weight. Too much past.

She took only one letter — the last one from her mother before she passed. The rest stayed.

The suitcase was nearly full.

She glanced at the nightstand. Her passport was there, next to the one thing she hadn’t yet packed- her grandmother’s silver locket. It had been passed down through generations, worn by women who had started over in new places, new worlds. She picked it up, tracing the engraving with her thumb.

With a deep breath, she clasped it around her neck.

A car horn blared outside.

Time was up.

Sandy zipped the suitcase shut and stood, staring at the life she had chosen to bring with her. Everything else — the books, the clothes, the pieces of herself too heavy to carry — would stay behind.

She lifted the suitcase, feeling its weight. Not just in pounds, but in history.

Then she walked out the door.

II

Sandy stepped into the cold, gray morning, her breath visible in the air. The taxi idled at the curb, its engine humming like a distant thought. She heaved the suitcase down the stairs, each step an echo of the life she was leaving behind.

The driver, a middle-aged man with tired eyes, popped the trunk without a word. She lifted the suitcase inside, feeling its weight one last time before letting it go.

The car door closed behind her with a quiet finality.

“Airport?” the driver asked, glancing at her through the mirror.

Sandy hesitated for just a moment. “Yeah,” she said. “Terminal B.”

The city slid past outside the window, familiar streets dissolving into motion-blurred memories. The coffee shop where she and Barbara used to meet. The bookstore where she had spent entire afternoons escaping into other people’s stories. The bridge where she once stood at midnight, wondering what it would be like to disappear.

Everything looked smaller now. Less permanent.

She pressed her forehead against the glass. Her phone buzzed in her lap. A message from Barbara.

“Are you really doing this?”

Sandy stared at the screen. She could hear Barbara's voice in her head, a mix of disbelief and sadness. Barbara, the one person who had tried to stop her from leaving, who had begged her to stay even when Sandy had already booked the flight.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. Yes. But she didn’t send it.

Instead, she turned the phone off and let the silence settle in.

At the airport, everything moved too fast. People rushed past in a blur of goodbyes and reunions, of rolling suitcases and hurried footsteps. But for Sandy, time had slowed.

She gripped the handle of her suitcase tighter, her fingers pressing into the worn leather. The weight of it wasn’t just in pounds — it was in history, in choices. She had spent weeks deciding what to bring, but now, standing in the midst of strangers who all seemed to have a clear destination, she felt unanchored. As if she had left something behind that she couldn’t name.

The line at security snaked forward, but her mind drifted backward. To the tiny apartment she would never return to. To the scent of Barbara’s lavender shampoo lingering in the hallway after she’d stormed out the night before, refusing to say goodbye properly. To the voice in her head — the one she had tried to silence — whispering that maybe this was a mistake.

She handed over her passport, the pages stiff from lack of use. The agent barely looked at her before stamping it and waving her through. No questions. No hesitation. Just another traveler passing through, as if she hadn’t just unraveled her entire life to be here.

The conveyor belt carried her suitcase away, disappearing into the black mouth of the scanner. She watched it go, irrationally afraid that it might not come out the other side. That somehow, this machine — this process — could see the weight of her choices and reject them.

When it emerged, untouched and approved, she exhaled, realizing she had been holding her breath.

At the gate, she took a seat by the window, pressing her forehead against the cool glass. Outside, the plane loomed, its massive metal body waiting to carry her into a new life. But she felt no excitement, no rush of freedom. Just quiet. Just a pause before everything changed.

Her phone buzzed in her lap. Barbara.

“Are you really doing this?”

She read the message over and over, as if the words might shift into something else, something easier.

Yes, she typed. But she didn’t send it.

Her finger hovered over the screen, heart hammering, waiting — maybe hoping — for another message to come through. Something that would make her stop, make her reconsider. But nothing did. The phone screen dimmed. The silence settled in.

She turned it off.

Reaching into her coat, she pulled out the letter. The paper had grown fragile from years of unfolding, but the ink remained. Her mother’s handwriting, steady and sure, a voice from a time when things had felt less uncertain.

Sandy,

There will come a day when you have to leave something behind. I hope you know that’s not the same as losing it. The past is not a thing you carry in a suitcase. It stays with you, in ways you won’t understand until much later.

Be brave. Make something new.

She traced the last sentence with her fingertip, reading it again, slower this time.

The past is not a thing you carry in a suitcase.

Then why did she feel like she was forgetting something? Like she was about to step onto a plane and leave behind a part of herself she could never get back?

A boarding announcement crackled overhead.

She folded the letter carefully, tucking it inside her coat, feeling the paper press against her heart. When they called her row, she stood, adjusting the strap of her bag, fingers brushing over the silver locket at her throat.

One step. Then another.

She walked toward the plane.

She didn’t look back.