Staying would be too easy.
Leaving is always harder. Goodbyes are a difficult and necessary hurt, and the price of independence isn’t always freedom. There is a certain comfort level that comes with staying, a complacency of sorts.
Which is exactly why I needed to leave.
It started with a wish.
When my family decided to leave the city I love for the quiet calm of the suburban countryside, I wished for a terrible accident to befall our travels. A dramatic death seemed a more suitable punishment than leaving behind my childhood of takeout boxes and concrete-jungle adventures. The city was alive. Our new home felt dead, the silence suffocating, filled with soundless screams.
I wished desperately for an escape.
Most people don’t ever escape.
Their lives follow a much predictable path. From sunrise to sunset, their days are mapped, never changing. And that’s okay for them.
It wasn’t okay for me. I liked change. I liked the challenge of adaptation, of pushing myself to limits previously unexplored. I liked the feeling of accomplishment and success.
I didn’t belong here.
Until I almost did.
The change took place shortly after my high school graduation.
I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I only knew I wasn’t going to spend it here. But here is where my life existed. 
Why would I leave?
How could I stay?
I was torn between two worlds: the world of who I was and the world of who I could become. Only one side could win. Which would it be?
Even I wasn’t sure.
Staying would be too easy.
Staying the same would be much simpler than growing up and growing wise. Staying dependent was a much more sheltered life than breaking away on my own.
But I couldn’t stay.
So I breakaway.