[Part 1] Breaking Up, Morphing into Desire, Becoming New
Panic for sovereignty, reconciling with serial monogamy, relational lessons
Friends old and new, this is probably gonna be a TMI post about my recent ongoings relating to friendships, lovers, and the so called ~healing journey~. So a head’s up if you’re not interested in knowing too much about my personal life.
Between therapy sessions, my favourite past-time and micro-rest/late-night distraction cope ig-therapy. And today, aside from chronic sleep deprivation, hangry-ness, and general stress from life responsibilities, I was hit with this on the timeline:
I’ve been having some anxiety about my serial monogamy/monkey branching since breaking up with Liam1.
I’ve heard it all in my own head, babe aren’t you moving on too fast? / don’t you want to fuck around for a bit now that you finally can? / what if you spend another 4 years in the same karmic trap? / are you even fully healed for this shit?
Friends and therapists, however, have been supportive and urging me to see it as the perfect timing to reconcile this recurring codependency trap. I’m talking about a codependent web I’ve spun for myself since I was 18 years old. That’s almost a decade of unconscious coupling. But, voicing it means I’ve got the self-awareness to reconcile, and now I have the opportunity to take ownership of my own relational life.
This whole post is about screaming into the void (or you) about all the things that have been happening and what I’ve learned from them.
6 months ago, I urgently left Bali due to my expired visa, hoping to bridge it with an about-to-be-approved-but-not-really Australian visa, and broke up with Liam as a consequence of wanting to move on and start a new life in Melbourne.
The breakup was not a sudden decision. I had been simmering on the idea for almost a year before that. Paired with some other relational incidents that finally led to its climax, we broke up in a way that seemed predictable in hindsight: avoidant & disengaged from him, fearfully & anxiously attached from me.
Despite all the pain I had caused Liam, and the subsequent isolation I led myself into (most of the time, I’m just as avoidant), we ended on a beautiful note. We spent a night in a beautiful beachside town not far from our home, expressed our gratitudes, and enjoyed our last holiday together in a quiet, bittersweet way.
And yeah, we struggled to hold conversations, physical displays of affection felt futile, and the morning after was progressively getting awkward.
After that holiday, I spiraled into a painful period of recurring nostalgia, packing up my bags and effectively moving out of the place I have called home for the past 4 years. Every time I pet the dogs, it felt like it was the last moment I’d ever call them mine, and they didn’t even know it.
The date for me to leave Bali was looming over my head, yet no visa was issued from Australia. Every morning I longed for an email notification that never came. Then, a dreaded phone call, and strings of text messages arrived from my home country. Someone was sick and admitted to hospital, while another had passed away.
I packed 2 large suitcases, my heart smashed into smithereens, and went home to support my family members through the funeral and hospital visits. I managed to keep up a stoic outlook and avoided breaking the we broke up news to family, with the exception of confiding in my mum after the initial emotional turbulence.
Confiding in my mum was relieving, gave me insight into my mum’s life before her marriage, but ultimately created some dissonance when she expressed her own opinions about my former partner. It did build into my cartography of healing moments with her, particularly when she held my hand and pat my tears away while I hastily stuffed myself with soup noodles and iced milo.
Once the familial affairs concluded, I started easing myself back into work as a distraction. I stayed at a soulful Airbnb on my own, put my whole attention into work, and took breaks in the day to cry. At this point, I was effectively homeless, with no intention of setting roots in Kuala Lumpur, and no confirmation that I could proceed with my plans in Australia. Phone calls and visits from friends held me together. They expressed hope and excitement for what’s going to come, and congratulated me on taking the plunge.
My dear friend Tanya recommended an apropos collection of books about grief. I picked this one:
I always had a crude dichotomy for love — I thought that on the other end of love was hate, with passion binding the both of them. This book, however, taught me that grief was on the other end of love:
“Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close.”
― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
And so after all the love I had received, it was finally time for me to bide with sorrow and experience loss for the first time. I say first time because I was not only breaking up with Liam, but also with all the people I had disengaged, dissociated, or ‘moved on’ from. I knew that this was finally the time I would feel waves and waves of loss, and each day I discovered a new way for my heart to break.
First, it was the heartbreak of losing a romantic and domestic partner. I had no one to send funny memes to, and couldn’t report about my day with cute little texts or share an inside joke with.
Then, it was the heartbreak of my wild, luxe, tropical life in Bali. My days were suddenly unstructured, a plain (maybe grey) canvas for a clumsy pair of hands to paint on. I commuted to a coworking space in a cold office building. Ate food delivered from xyz ‘healthy food’ chains. Called my mum every other day. Saw my best friend on the weekends. Called Xavier more or less every night. At this time, a third mysterious thing, a strange comfort bound the both of us. I tried to compartmentalise our budding something and leaned into him as a friend for as much as I could. I’m grateful to have him check in as I stumbled into a new life routine.
And then, it was the heartbreak of losing my pets. Saying goodbye without meeting the end of their life on Earth. Such a shame to lose my closest companions, without being able to express my gratitude to them, or offer them some kind of closure. I had to remind myself that they were in good hands, that they would adjust soon enough, and so would I. The smell of them still haunts my memories.
Finally, so much heartbreak for leaving Bali, the epicenter of so much healing and loving. Every piece of nature, every moment of silence on this island pulsed with love. I missed the address, missed the people, and missed speaking the language.
It didn’t take me long to realise I had to find my way back. To find a new reason to stay. To reconcile with my connection to the land, without becoming loss in my past domesticity. With every day that my Australian visa didn’t arrive, it became apparent that I had to make my return.
“We are most alive at the threshold between loss and revelation; every loss ultimately opens the way for a new encounter.”
― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
With the support of Xavier, I returned to Bali one month after surviving in Kuala Lumpur. Having felt my current baseline of ‘rock bottom’, I ventured out to feel a new way of living. It was time to move on from a place I didn’t want to call home.
The return was everything I had hoped for. Yet another adventure with a good friend turned mysterious something, followed by weeks of coworking together while I found my footing. I started making some initiatives to reconnect with a local women’s community, and found opportunities to bring myself back into the pulse of society.
I said yes here and there. Attended a shamanic sound healing ceremony where I knelt on the floor and cried for myself, the people who attended, and the land we set foot and paws on. I reconnected with old projects and tried to resuscitate them. I laughed in the company of transient friends, lost souls on their own night sea journey. I even reconnected with Liam and haphazardly offered to reconnect and ‘see where it leads us’.
All of that turned out to be futile attempts at feeling something. I even traveled to Australia and India for more attempts at feeling something. But then it worked! I am grateful for all the stars and angels watching over me, both astronomically and earthly. I started feeling a whirlwind of emotions for friends, lovers, and strangers that crossed paths with me at this confusing time.
In between oversea trips, I stayed indoors and led a solitary life between work and play. I started playing with different mediums of creativity: dance, self-portraits, henna.
Whether I liked it or not, some kind of spiritual cleansing had been initiated. I started becoming more attuned to noises, felt my own body, and tasted the vibrance in food. I cried when the Earth cried. I smiled when a passerby smiled.
The work trip to Australia2 stretched my courage. We surfed, cycled, ran, gymed, and even scheduled to skydive3. I started paying attention to my health, observed how others interacted with their spouses, family members, and in general how they lived their lives. I became curious about my own way of living. After all, this was no longer a grey canvas, I had given myself permission to design life again.
A brief visit to the hippie towns around the Australian East coast initiated my curiosity into being a hippie. Formerly a huge identity constraint due to the illusion I painted in my former relationship, I finally felt free to follow this forked trail.
And then it was followed by a spicy, soulful trip to India that ignited all my senses.
I’ve always had trouble sleeping. I received ‘permission’ to buy myself mala beads and formulated my own relationship to spirituality. I intuited that solitude and time spent in an elevated state (reading, journaling, thinking, feeling, meditating) will help me infuse some good juju into these beads. And the stored good juju will guide me through a rocky night of insomnia and help release some calmness.
It’s December. Loving friendships were formed, and so were confusing entanglements. Somehow Hotness crept up on me. I felt a spark from Eros light up every crevice of my body, and I had the sudden urge to develop a romantic affair with every piece of food I ate, every person I touched, and every breath of air I inhaled.
I embodied Hotness and allowed myself to believe I was attractive, worthy, and an ocean of Life waiting to be discovered. Scooped up ladle by ladle to discover the galaxy within.
I started writing poems and entered into an erotic, flirtatious exchange with a friend from Twitter. The idea was for me to write words while he sketched out our mutual Muse.
•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•☾☼☽•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•
through the threads divided by the stars a stranger from oceans away made his move to prove to himself he's got the groove and so through lines and curves colour orbs and eagerness to serve this Leo man embarked in search of his Muse through loose screws and the occasional blues he infused the Muse into his brew for what is the journey of soul without things running afoul? sailor🖤lust
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The return home gave me courage to finally break things off with Liam once and for all. I invited the incoming emotional turmoil, now with a deeper courage to inspect what was lying underneath all that insecurity, all that unkindness and ugly control I had over the breakup/bargaining cycle.
Liam was more broken-hearted than I had left him with, and we both definitely knew there was no going back now. A crescendo from me, delivering harsh words that were never meant for him; a projection that was meant for an ex.
His parting words were, ‘I hope you take it back, please take good care of yourself.’
This final parting invited a deeper inspection into my serial monogamy past, codependent/avoidant cycles, affinity towards older men, being the Other Woman, keeping secrets, and why I constantly yearned to live a high octane life but shelved it as an unattainable fantasy.
The power of Love, Novelty, Adventure, Sex flooded me with mania, I dipped between extreme ends of highs and lows. Meandering through the bargaining stage of grief, I entered the holidays season by tagging along on an intimate, sensual Christmas party (by hippies obviously), inducing a slew of hot, messy attention from various men I had no business being with, followed by a cosy snuggle party on New Year’s Eve.
The Christmas party invited me to consider Desire and what it feels like to own it rather than be a hungered slave to it. I learned that my Desire can be a gift to myself, or to another. It can welcome reciprocation, but it can also be declined without losing my self-worth. It’s only in identifying and naming our Desires, can we vocalise them and allow others the opportunity to consent, and meet us where we desire to.
Being invited into a rotation of warm bodies, playing with their different body shapes, energies, desires, sent me into a dreamy, sensual haze. I went home that night with a well-appreciated Secret Santa gift, and some reassurance that I’m gonna be okay on my own. I took a shower, washed off the sweat of others and reconnected with myself, sent myself into a deep slumber all on my own, rejuvenated from the new experiences.
I knew I wasn’t okay yet, but I was getting there. Thankfully, I had all this Naughty, Cheeky energy surrounding me, serving me powerful lessons disguised as playful distractions.
In the midst of holiday season entanglements, and learning to be single again, I decided to give both of them a try at the same time. I don’t see them as separate tracks, rather a joyful toeing the line between sovereign aloneness and openness to new energies from others.
I welcomed the new sparks, and thankfully invited some emotionally intelligent, self-aware, and highly communicative individuals into my playpen. Ultimately, I learned so much about Chemistry and how it so easily seeped into my relationships due to my flirtatious nature.
chemistry with someone itself just means for whatever reason this person makes you sizzle. they can get a reaction out of you. but depending on how you were programmed to react to your reactions, it may not be a healthy thing
🪺 pulled from my (now private) twitter account
It turns out chemistry was not in scarcity as I had imagined it to be. I realised that I had used it to generate ~dark horny energy~ with people all along, to keep people close to me, to make myself special to them. This was somehow related to an early grooming incident as a child.
But now, I have learned the power of expressing my Desires with unabashed enthusiasm. Because I’m no longer afraid of not having them reciprocated. I Got Me.
Post-story-time notes:
If you know me by now, I’m exhausted from writing a mega-post like this, and it’s unfortunately nowhere near finished and I’m excited to share. Think I’ll part you here with the first half and see you another time.
If you want to hear more, or want me to cover something specific in the next half, please write to me on Twitter or leave me a comment here.
Here are some ig therapy bangers from my bookmarks in the meantime:
Liam is not a real name but iykyk
If you’re curious — still no long-term visa issued at this point
Ultimately this was canceled but I assure you I mentally rehearsed this a handful of times and that is enough adrenalin