The Last Lights of the Old Office

It wasn’t supposed to feel this heavy.

We were just moving out.
A change of address. A few boxes. A goodbye email.
That’s what the memo said.

But the soul doesn’t read memos.

The decision came down with the usual cold efficiency — political maneuvering dressed as “strategy.” Someone upstairs, removed the scent of our coffee or the soft glow of kindness at the front desk, decided we were better off elsewhere. More aligned. More brand-consistent. Whatever that means.

I packed my things slowly. Not because there were many — a mug, some folders, a forgotten plant — but because everything in that space had stories tangled in it.
The smile of the security guard who knew when you were too quiet.
The landlord who once fixed the busted ceiling fan on a Sunday.
The hallway where I paced during panic attacks and found calm in the hum of old fluorescent lights.

How do you walk away from a place that remembers you when you don’t want to remember yourself?

People call it “just a space.” They don’t see the ghost trail of laughter in the break room. They don’t hear the silence after someone resigns — not just from a post, but from belief. They don’t understand how a room holds the version of you that still hoped.

It wasn’t the office that hurt.
It was that we didn’t choose to leave.
It was taken — like breath in a sharp wind.

And maybe that’s the grief in all things new:
That it demands a version of us unanchored.

Everyone keeps telling me it’ll be fine.
That new walls will hold new memories.
That kindness finds a way to grow wherever people show up.

I nod, because they’re not wrong.
But also because it’s the kind of truth that only becomes real after many days of pretending it already is.

Maybe what we really mourn is not the space, but the version of ourselves that belonged there.

And so we leave — not just to a new address, but to a new self.
Lighter on our feet.
Heavier in the heart.