Staring at the street she's lived in all her life, walking backward one step at a time. Feeling her chest constrict with each breath she took; she looked to her childhood home. She stopped for one moment, feeling emotion flood her whole being. She inhaled a deep twinging breath and felt tears prick her eyes. In that moment she sharply spun the other way. She hunched her shoulders and it took all her might to tamp down the overwhelming emotion threatening to surface. She was leaving everything behind. All she had ever known and held preciously close to her heart. It was almost too much. In mere seconds, she decided, she forcefully erected walls inside her mind. She defaulted to apathy, inhaled, and took a decisive step forward. Away from everything that has been her happy life, people who made that happy life possible. She had a mission, one heavy with burden, but one she knew she had to shoulder nonetheless.
