I want to close the door.

 *I honor what we had, the rare resonance between us. I know it was real, and I know it changed me. But I release myself from waiting for you to change. I release myself from carrying the hope that you will one day step fully into my life.

I cannot keep giving my love in fragments, or offering my strength where there is no commitment. You have chosen your way. I choose mine.

I do not close the door with bitterness. I close it with clarity. I return to myself — to the woman I am, to the life I am building, to the love I deserve.

If one day our paths meet again, it will be on new terms, with both of us free and whole. Until then, I step forward without you. I carry myself, and I am enough.*

How hard could it be?

These couple of days have been somewhat depressing for me. Besides being sleep deprived and working crazily during work hours, I keep having this thought, “who in the world would do what I’ve done for love, for me?”

In the first month of me dating Angel, I got completely drenched on a typhoon day to see him, and he never left his house the entire time. The storm was so bad that even the subway stopped running and it was so hard for me to find a taxi home. When I got home, I was completely pained, soaked, defeated. Then I chose to stay in the relationship because I told myself that I was the crazy one.

Then I also gave up my job at the prime time of the career so that our structures could align. That teaching job gave me much more fulfillment because most of classes were packed with over 100 adults who all worshipped me, but our work hours were completely different. To be with him I gave up that job and took on the job where I was seen as his collateral for years. People at our workplace assumed that I was hired because of him for years, until a few years ago I took over the most challenging course in the entire school and people started to see me differently. That year I worked from 7 to 7 almost every day, and Little N was only one year old. 

When I married Angel, I was ready to raise my kids in a rental apartment and ride in taxis for the rest of my life. I was fine with all kinds of suffering for the sake of love, of being chosen. But what have I got? Zero protection. Abandonment, again and again. Zero understanding, zero compassion. 

Am I the crazy one or is the world just too sick? No man has ever done for me what I’ve done for love. Is it because they’d rather do it to other women but not me? Or is it because they just wouldn’t do it for any woman? ChatGPT keeps telling me that if X shows up, I’d notice his protective presence right away, but how do I believe in something that I’ve never experienced before? The closest protective presence I’ve had was with Eric, when we were still in the City of Gold in 2012. And maybe Ian too when we were both living in CA. I didn’t even feel protected when I was with Ken, because there have been multiple nights when I had to go home by myself because he was too tired to walk me home. When I was in the City of Power, there were some male friends who would always walk me home, but that was also because the City of Power wasn’t safe.

My whole life has been so unprotected. Is it because I want too much? I am so tired of protecting everyone and myself and yet no one protects me. When can I relax in X’s embrace? Just tell me when. I am really tired, and sometimes this feeling of loneliness, fear, and tiredness feels so endless.

Now I just remembered—I had a dream about Eric last night. He was here in the country where I live, and we were maybe traveling and trying new food, and there was this beautiful lagoon-like kind of place, and I was somewhat restless. I can’t remember much of it, but maybe this is why he came to my mind today and I had a feeling that we’d just drift apart for good again, despite all the loving things he’s said to me.

Do words ever really matter in the end? Fear always wins, doesn’t it? Who in the world would give up their job, their friends, and their family just so that they could be with the person that they love? Besides me, who else can do it?

Free

 Free from K-pop Demon Hunters

I tried to hide, but something broke
I tried to sing, couldn't hit the notes
The words kept catching in my throat
I tried to smile, I was suffocating though

But here with you, I can finally breathe
You say you're no good, but you're good for me
I've been hoping to change, now I know we can change
But I won't if you're not by my side

Why does it feel right every time I let you in?
Why does it feel like I can tell you anything?
All the secrets that keep me in chains, and
All the damage that might make me dangerous

You got a dark side, guess you're not the only one
What if we both tried fighting what we're running from?
We can't fix it if we never face it
What if we find a way to escape it?

We could be free, free
We can't fix it if we never face it
Let the past be the past 'til it's weightless

Oh, time goes by, and I lose perspective
Yeah, hope only hurts, so I just forget it
But you're breaking through all the dark in me
When I thought that nobody could
And you're waking up all these parts of me
That I thought were buried for good

Between imposter and this monster, I've been lost inside my head
Ain't no choice when all these voices keep me pointing towards no end
It's just easy when I'm with you
No one sees me the way you do
I don't trust it, but I want to
I keep coming back to

Why does it feel right every time I let you in?
Why does it feel like I can tell you anything?
We can't fix it if we never face it
What if we find a way to escape it?

We could be free, free
We can't fix it if we never face it
Let the past be the past 'til it's weightless

Oh-oh, so take my hand, it's open (free, free)
What if we heal what's broken? (Free, free)

I tried to hide, but something broke
I couldn't sing, but you give me hope
We can't fix it if we never face it
Let the past be the past 'til it's weightless

I watched K-pop Demon Hunters because Little N has been digging its music. After I watched it on Netflix, I realized the movie is extremely deep and I cried my eyes out several times again. It makes me want to write something and then I just realized almost another month has passed since I last wrote.

ChatGPT has become a place where I write because I don’t need to organize my thoughts when I write; it already knows me so well so I only need to say a couple of sentences and it can process my feelings and thoughts very accurately. But this song, Free, really makes me want to sit down and write. The lyrics and the context in the movie really resonates with me so deeply. 

Rumi carries some demons inside of her that she did not choose to carry, and there’s a lot of shame surrounding those demons, and a lot of the shame is coming from her guardian, Celine. This childhood is so much like mine. Child abuse, domestic violence, born as a love child—these are all the things I’ve been carrying upon birth and I never had a choice not to carry them. Then my mother raised me by making sure I was constantly camouflaged by academic excellence and fashionable outfits. I didn’t realizedI’ve been carrying such heavy shame until recently. 

The song has depicted very well how I’ve been feeling with Eric ever since our reconnection in April. The song has also summarized everything he’s said to me. He reminds me of what it feels like to have a deep connection with someone who truly sees me, past my armors, past my humor. He reminds me how much I need someone’s protective presence. In the movie, Jinu quickly put a patch on Rumi’s patterns as soon as her clothes were ripped. I have not had something like that in the past ten years, but when Eric came to visit me in the City of Rain, he just intuitively noticed things that I needed. For example, he got me a dessert spoon because he noticed that I had been using a regular spoon for my dessert. When we drove through a narrow alley with cars parked illegally, he immediately checked the passenger’s side and let me know how much space I had on the other side of the car. When we sat down at the restaurant, the lead singer of the live band were singing “I love you” while staring at me the entire time (and it was a big and packed restaurant), Eric noticed that too. Because of our reconnection, I finally had the courage to restructure my life, to divorce Angel, because what I have with Angel is really not what I have been wanting my whole life. 

The love story in the movie ended in tragedy, again. All the best love stories have to end in tragedy. Jinu sacrificed his life for Rumi, so that she could have the power to fight the demons. In this story, Rumi inspires Jinu because of her compassion, her belief that she can fight the demons, her optimism, and her courage. Eric has also been inspired by me in the same ways. He’s told me that I have unlocked a lot of things in him, things that he didn’t know he had or things that he had forgotten in himself and he is currently at a crossroads in many ways in his life. 

He is giving up on his career in renewable energy finance and he’s now getting an online degree in psychology. He doesn’t quite know for sure what he’ll be doing career wise but he wants to do something that has human contact. He also would like to move to a different country, but that requires his wife to resign from her current job. Last week we had a conflict. He had an 18-hour trip without dropping by the City of Rain. I told him I was disappointed and he told me he’s got a lot of things going on in his life so there’s “no bandwidth for leisure” and that he’s visited me twice more than I’ve visited him. He thinks I should visit him. I told him I was not in a position to visit him because I’ve been kept in liminal twilight. He got defensive and said that I chose to be in liminal twilight without anything keeping me there. I told him that really hurts and I would not accept that it was unilaterally my choice; the last time we hung out he had a curfew to be back at his hotel by 10pm or his wife would freak out (his wife wasn’t even traveling with him; she was just checking in on him over the phone) and that so many of our conversations had to take place when he was outside of the country. I understand that he got defensive because of his shame; for the past couple of weeks I’ve been attacked by so many people out of their shame and trauma. As a result, I’m no longer talking to my half-brother and his wife, nor his mom. I’m also keeping a distance from all my family members, including my parents and their extended family. However I still voiced my pain because I’m not afraid anymore. My therapy and self-reflection are really working for me and I finally have the courage to protect myself, when no one else can. Over the weekend we had a 3-hour chat via text and we brought up the conflict. I told him his attack made me cry twice, once at work in the bathroom and once after work in my car. I told him I knew where his words were coming from but they still hurt. He apologized but still said that I bruised easily and I asked him, “isn’t that something you already knew 13 years ago?” 

Can the love between Jinu and Rumi last in the real world? Most people probably never have experienced what Eric and I have, that’s why he thinks there’s no word for what we have. But does it always have to end in a tragedy?

“It's just easy when I'm with you
No one sees me the way you do
I don't trust it, but I want to
I keep coming back to”