Leaving Home, Finding Home

The suitcase sits open on my bed like a mouth waiting to swallow my life whole. Bo and Lu circle my feet, their nails clicking against the wooden floor in an anxious dance. They know something's wrong-these girls of mine, one shepherd black and tan, one retriever gold as sunset, they've always known things before I do. Their feminine energy fills the room as I fold thirteen years of my future into neat squares. Bo nudges my hand with her wet nose, leaving a mark on the shirt I'm folding. Lu whines softly, her golden fur catching the last light of what will be our final evening together.

What fits in a single suitcase when you're planning to never return? A handful of clothes, documents, and photographs that will soon yellow at the edges. What doesn't fit: the weight of debt papers scattered across my desk, their numbers swimming before my eyes like accusatory fish, the wagging tails of two girls who don't understand abandonment, the heavy silence of words unsaid to parents who will wake tomorrow to find another child vanished. First my brother (gone, gone to his own elsewhere), and now me, leaving like water through cupped hands.

I pack methodically, each item a calculation. Three shirts, two pairs of pants, essential documents. A small photo album that holds memories like pressed flowers, Mom's birthday last summer, Dad in his favorite chair, my brother's last visit before he too chose elsewhere. The girls' favorite tennis ball sits on my nightstand, and for a moment, I consider taking it. But some memories are too heavy, even for the strongest suitcase.

Bangkok greets me like a fever dream, a city that never fully wakes or sleeps. The air thick with incense and exhaust, street vendors calling out in tones that make every word sound like a question. I learn to navigate the city's arteries of concrete and neon, each day a step further from the person who left home with nothing but a suitcase and cowardice. The culture shock hits in waves: the spices that burn my tongue, the temples that pierce the sky, the endless dance of motorcycles and tuk-tuks that weave through traffic like threading a needle.

Time moves differently here, like honey dripping from a spoon. Each payday, I send money home-small victories against the mountain of debt I left behind. In my dreams, Bo and Lu are always waiting by the front door, ears perked, tails wagging, my girls expecting me to walk through at any moment. I wake to the sound of phantom barking, my pillow wet with tears I pretend not to notice. But Bangkok, beautiful and chaotic Bangkok, teaches me something about transformation.

Then Dubai emerges, not as an escape this time, but as a choice. The city rises from the desert like a geometry of possibilities, all sharp angles and brave new worlds. My debt shrinks with each passing month and I watch the numbers dance backwards, a countdown to freedom. The weight lifts slowly, then all at once, like a bird taking flight. I did this. I paid it all. But freedom tastes different than I imagined, saltier, more complex.

Thirteen years blur into a kaleidoscope of achievements and longing. I build a life between glass towers that scrape the sky, while back home, Bo and Lu fade from black and gold to gray, and finally to nothing but memory. Their deaths reach me through delayed messages, like stars whose light arrives long after they've gone dark. First Bo, my brave shepherd girl, then Lu two years later, as if she'd waited just long enough to know I was okay. I imagine them reunited somewhere, two sisters again, watching over me with their infinite understanding.

My one visit home in thirteen years feels like stepping into a photograph that's been digitally altered. The house seems smaller, as if grief has compressed it. The space where my brother's life used to be echoes with his absence as we're both gone now, scattered to different winds. My parents have aged in ways that photographs failed to capture: Dad's hair now completely silver, Mom's hands more delicate than I remember. We dance around the word "abandonment" like it's a piece of furniture we all stub our toes against but pretend isn't there.

The suitcase that once held my escape now sits in a Dubai closet, empty save for dust and possibility. Some nights, I wake to phantom sounds of paws on wooden floors, to the ghost of responsibility I left behind. I've built a new home in this city of eternal summer, but home is a word that has lost its certainty. Is it where I left my heart, buried in the backyard with two loyal girls? Is it in the silence between phone calls to my parents? Or is it here, in this place where I rebuilt myself from the contents of a single suitcase?

The years have taught me that time is also a kind of currency, spent whether we choose to or not. I've paid my debts: all of them, the financial ones with hard-earned money, the emotional ones I'm still counting out in small gestures and long-distance calls. In Dubai, I've found success, built a career, made friends who feel like family. But success tastes different when seasoned with memory.

Maybe home isn't a place at all, but rather the weight we carry, whether we choose to pack it in a suitcase or leave it behind. Some weights, I've learned, follow you anyway as heavy in Dubai as they were in Bangkok, as heavy now as they were thirteen years ago when I closed a door without saying goodbye. They become part of who we are, these invisible suitcases we carry, packed with the things we couldn't leave and the things we couldn't take, all of them somehow fitting into the space between heartbeats. And perhaps that's what makes us whole: these weights, these memories, these invisible suitcases we carry everywhere.