For
almost a month now, I’ve been coughing. At first, I thought I caught it from
the rain, the long days, maybe a tired body refusing to keep up. But I remember
reading in one of Louise Hay’s books that a cough can sometimes be the body
asking for attention, a quiet signal that something inside is struggling to be
heard. The strange thing is, it didn’t start randomly. It began a week or two
before Chinese New Year, around the same time a thought started growing louder
in my mind; I need to leave this place.
The
truth is, this thought has been with me for almost a year now. I never said it
out loud. I just carried it quietly, hoping something inside me would change,
hoping the feeling would eventually pass. What confuses me the most is how the
cough behaves. When I’m at work, it almost disappears. When I’m with friends,
laughing over small things, I forget it’s even there. But the moment I return
home, it comes back, stubborn, persistent, like my chest is tightening
around something I cannot release.
It
makes me wonder if my body understands something my heart has been trying to
silence. Because the truth is, there are feelings I’ve swallowed for years. The
kind that sits quietly in your chest because saying them would change too much.
But if I’m honest with myself, the feeling is simple and painful at the same
time: this place has never really felt like home to me. So many nights, I
imagine what it would feel like to walk away completely, to finally set down
the weight I’ve been carrying on my shoulders for so long.
Maybe
that’s what my body has been screaming to tell me all along, this isn’t illness
or weakness, but years of unsaid things pressing against my chest, asking to
finally be released.