This chapter marks the beginning of my adult life. I always wanted to leave my parents’ house, for as long as I can remember. When I was about six years old, I used to pack a few things in a chador and pretend that I was leaving. Of course, I never actually left. Where was I going to go at that age? I also don’t really remember why I wanted to leave at that age. And we won’t get into that discussion here, because if you read Farsi and read the rest of my blog, you’ll see that my “why” was never important anyway, and in the end, it was always my fault. Although this chapter meant freedom to me, the journey was not easy. I was leaving with very little self-esteem, the result of years of humiliation, abuse, never having the right to speak up, being brought up my whole life been told that I’m bad, I’m a problem. Nevertheless, this is the absolute best decision of my life. One thing I do know with 100% certainty is that I left and never looked back even once. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner…