Chapter 2:

First Flight

The plane was full, but I had never felt more alone.

It wasn’t my first time flying — but this time, I wasn’t going somewhere. I was leaving. Myanmar faded beneath the clouds, and with it, the life I had built twice over. I pressed my forehead against the window, watching the land disappear, knowing that my children weren’t with me. That their small hands weren’t wrapped around mine.

That hurt more than anything.

I had told them I was going to work. “Just a little while,” I said, holding back tears. “Be good for Grandma. I’ll be back soon.” But I didn’t know when or how. Maybe I lied. Maybe it was the only truth I could say without breaking.

They were five and seven — too young to understand why their mother had to run, but old enough to know she was gone.

I tried to breathe. The seat belt felt like a chain. My heartbeat loud enough to drown the engine. I looked around at the strangers beside me — tourists, workers, maybe even other people like me. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.

I was flying to Thailand. It wasn’t a plan. It was a direction. I had no long-term vision, no map in my head. Just the belief that I couldn’t stay where I was, and I didn’t yet know where I belonged.

The flight was short. But that hour in the sky stretched like a lifetime. Every second away from my children felt like a betrayal. Every cloud we passed was a weight on my chest.

When the plane landed in Chiang Mai, I stepped off with a single bag and shaking legs. I was safe — for now. But safety without peace is a quiet kind of prison. And that was the beginning of the next storm

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