"The Little Girl Who Finally Escaped"

I was born into a middle-class family in Nepal, to two people who never truly wanted to marry each other.

They married because they had reached the age when society expected them to. It was an arranged marriage built more on obligation than choice. Sometimes, two people can create a beautiful life together despite how their story begins.

My parents couldn’t.

My earliest memories are not of birthdays, family vacations, or laughter around the dinner table. They are memories of arguments—of raised voices behind closed doors and silences that somehow felt louder than the shouting.

Home was never a place where I felt safe. It was a place where I was always waiting for the next fight.

As a child, I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t know that constant conflict could shape a person’s mind. I only knew that I was scared.

There were nights when I lay in bed wishing I had been born into a different family. I would look at my friends and wonder why their homes seemed full of warmth while mine felt so heavy. I wondered why they had families they wanted to run toward while I spent my childhood wanting to run away.

My parents never realized how deeply their relationship affected me. They were consumed by their own struggles, never noticing that a little girl was quietly absorbing every argument, every insult, and every slammed door.

Without realizing it, fear became part of who I was.

I began experiencing panic attacks and anxiety before I even knew those words existed. I became quiet and shy. I overthought everything I said because I was afraid of making things worse.

Looking back, I don’t think I was naturally timid. I had simply learned that silence felt safer than speaking.

Years later, I discovered that I wasn’t alone. My brother had been carrying the same pain. We had grown up beneath the same roof, watching the same battles unfold, each of us trying to survive in our own silent way.

For most of my childhood, I dreamed about leaving home. I believed that somewhere beyond those walls, there had to be a different kind of life.

Years later, I finally received the opportunity to study abroad.

People often say that moving to another country is one of the hardest things a person can do. They talk about homesickness, missing their families, and counting down the days until they can return home.

My experience was different.

Of course, there are many nights when I feel lonely here. Living abroad can be incredibly isolating. There are days when you celebrate your achievements alone, days when you wish someone understood how difficult everything feels, and days when the silence in your apartment reminds you of how far away everyone is.

But despite all that loneliness, I have never felt the urge to go back home.

For a long time, I wondered if that made me a bad person.

I watch people cry because they miss their parents. They count down the days until they can return home. I listen to their stories and wonder why I don’t feel that same longing.

It isn’t because I don’t love my parents.

I do.

As individuals, they are wonderful human beings. They are kind, hardworking, and generous. They have sacrificed more for me than I will probably ever fully understand. I have never doubted their love for me.

But loving someone and acknowledging the pain they caused are not mutually exclusive.

As a couple, they were never right for each other. And as parents raising children in the middle of constant conflict, they unknowingly created an environment filled with fear rather than peace.

Leaving Nepal didn’t just mean leaving my country.

It meant leaving behind the place where I had learned to survive instead of live.

For the first time in my life, I experienced what peace actually felt like. It wasn’t that life suddenly became easy. I still struggled, and I still felt lonely. But there was no shouting waiting for me when I opened the door. There was no tension filling every room and no feeling that I had to walk on eggshells.

It was only after leaving that I realized how much of my personality had been shaped by trauma:

The anxiety.

The panic attacks.

The fear of speaking up.

The habit of apologizing even when I had done nothing wrong.

The constant need to prepare for the worst.

These weren’t simply personality traits. They were survival mechanisms I had developed as a child.

Sometimes healing begins only after you leave the place where you were hurt.

I don’t think my parents ever intended to give me this childhood. They were two people carrying burdens of their own, trying to make a marriage work that perhaps never should have happened. They were human before they were parents.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve stopped looking at them only with anger. Instead, I have begun to see them with compassion.

Sometimes life doesn’t give us the family we dream of. Sometimes our parents don’t become the people we need them to be. And sometimes there are questions that will never have satisfying answers.

I’ve learned that it is okay to stop searching for those answers.

Maybe growing up means accepting that our parents are imperfect people trying to navigate lives they never fully understood themselves.

Maybe healing isn’t about blaming them.

Maybe it is about understanding them without losing yourself.

I’ve stopped searching for the childhood I wish I had.

I’ve stopped comparing my family to everyone else’s.

Instead, I am trying to build something I never had:

A home that feels peaceful.

A life that feels safe.

A future that isn’t defined by my past.

There are still lonely nights. There are still moments when old wounds find their way back to the surface.

But today, when I wake up, I no longer wish I had been born somewhere else.

Instead, I remind myself that the little girl who spent years wishing she could escape finally did.

And now, for the first time in her life, she gets to decide what home means.