It was exactly a week after turning 40 that I had my first mid-life moment. I slipped and fell in the shower.
There were two distinct things that saved me from the indignity of the next-day headlines going ‘Sexpert Found Dead Naked in Shower, Body Pruned Beyond Recognition’. Firstly, I was sitting on a low stool in the shower when I slid off. Admittedly the fact that I have a stool in the bathroom should have been Clue No 1 that I was due to have a senior moment.
The second thing that saved my ass was just literally that. My fat ass cushioned the fall. Never have I been so grateful for the extra kilos I’ve gained lately as I did back then. I screamed and landed hard on my bum as the reverberations echoed in the shower like thunder. Apart from a bruised ego and an equally bruised right thumb from sliding across the tiles and jamming it straight into the wall, thankfully I was fine.
Kinda. I was relatively fine on the outside but internally, I was freaking out as it dawned on me in that split second; “Who’s going to find my body when I die?”
Welcome existential crisis, we were expecting you.
On my 30th birthday, I celebrated it in New York with my then-boyfriend who took me to the ballet, where he promptly fell asleep and snored in his seat despite it being his idea in the first place. I wore a red dress with gold dangly earrings and thought, “This is it. I’m an adult. I’ve arrived.”
But I knew it wasn’t true. I’d been doing long-distance for four years with X by then and there still wasn’t any talk about closing the gap. I wanted to play the cool girl and thought, “That’s fine, at least I’m not single.” Though I couldn’t help but think there was always something missing from him and us.
Whenever I was in New York for work, we’ll hang out on dates but I wasn’t allowed to live with him. Instead I had to rent my own place for months while I worked on my clients’ projects. He reasoned that it’s for my own good as he’s so used to his independent life that it’ll be frustrating living with him and that it’ll be better for both our routines so I can do whatever I want when I’m in town. I’d never met his friends before but I figured that’s because he was a loner. I wanted the romantic grand gesture dates you see in the movies (because why else date a New Yorker?). Instead he always wanted to meet in Starbucks or Barnes & Nobles after work while he worked on his side hustles and tried to teach me coding because “you can earn way more in tech than in fashion.“
I was always a project that he wanted to improve. Meanwhile I secretly wondered, ‘But I love you for you, why can’t you love me for me?’
I know, I know. I used to think that Rin was an idiot for believing and staying with him for another four years. Yup, Four. More. Long. Years. Now I see her with more grace and kindness and would go back in time to hug her and whisper, “You know you deserve better right?”
That Rin didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t believe anyone else could love her for who she really was. A scared, flawed and insecure girl who didn’t have her shit together and was playing pretend as an adult.
So dear readers (who might have already guessed it), indeed there was another woman in this LDR. The plot twist? It was me.
Years later after we’d broken up, his brother reached out to me to warn me about not getting back with X who was sliding into my DMs again. According to his brother, it turned out that quote-unquote – “He was never into you seriously. He just liked the sex. He was dating around all those years. You were the side piece.”
Ooofff. If this was a movie, this would be the part where the camera zooms in on my face while the rest of the background goes into a hyper speed vortex with a distorted overlapping soundtrack of all our arguments, my pleas and tears, and his parting shot as he broke up with me over WhatsApp. “Perhaps since I know you well the following statement is biased. But you are the most selfish person I have ever known! Do yourself a favour and buy yourself a heart!”. All culminating into the climax where a beam of light falls over my head and a single crystal clear bell goes, ‘Ding!’
Ohhh…. THAT GASLIGHTING MOTHERFUCKER!
“Are you serious? All 8 years? 8 years he strung me along just for the sex???”
“Apparently it was really good. He’s still just a guy Rin.”
I didn’t know whether to throw my phone into a wall or wave to the imaginary crowd cradling my bouquet of roses and holding onto my tiara and sash for ‘Best Sex Ever’. Given the absurdity and my really expensive new iPhone, I chose the latter. Fuckit, I should add it to my LinkedIn.
Cue fast-forward montage. Rin ends up staying in Singapore and meets lots of other boys. Some are brief flashes, some break her heart, others are pure carnal delight, and the rare ones she can lay with and do nothing but talk and talk and talk and be seen for who she is. (The hot sex afterwards is a non-negotiable of course.) There’s a slight difference now when it comes to how I view the men who join my current timeline. It used to be, “How much do they adore me and how do I convince them I’m worth being part of their lives?” Now it’s, “Do I really adore them for them or is it the dopamine? Do they fit into the version of my life now and the version I want it to be?”
And that, dear readers, is how I ended up celebrating my 40th birthday alone in a familiar place, Hoi An, again.
Now before you assume this is where the girl power message kicks in, I’ve another plot twist for you. A solo YOLO birthday trip, even if it was to one of my favourite places in the world, wasn’t my first choice to commemorate embarking into a new decade. The truth was that I’d reluctantly clicked ‘Book Now’ on the flights a few weeks before my birthday after my tarot(herapist) Alane shook her head and sighed, “I’m sorry my dear. He was lying to you. You should block him.”
Early this year in March, The Ex sent me a text. Yes, it’s The Ex, capital T, capital E. He of the twin flame fame, the right-person-wrong-time, the one who got me started on my journey with the blog, and the one whose name I used to utter like a daily prayer once upon a time. He reached out and texted, “Let’s meet in Paris for your birthday.”
I proceeded to burst into tears in the back of the car and scared the shit out of my siblings who were on our way to visit our family for Hari Raya. I laughed through my tears going ‘It’s The Ex!’ as we continue to discuss where we’ll stay and where we’ll go. We joked about how we should still at least attempt to get out of the bedroom to visit the sights of Paris and how perhaps I can follow him back to Sweden afterwards for a while.
I’m embarrassed to admit that all the healing work I did to instill that I deserve more than the generational trauma of my mother and grandmother went ‘Poof!’ in that moment. In my 39th year of being a woman looking for love – I still believed him. That he finally picked me.
Until The Ex ghosted me the next day and blocked me again.
So what did I do? ‘Let’s give him space. July is still far away.’ I told myself. In April, I faltered a little but reminded myself ‘No, you must think positive!’ By May, I sent a ‘Hi, Happy birthday babe’ to him with no reply. In June, each time he crossed my mind I chided myself ‘Stop, bad Rin! Stupid Rin!’ Finally in July, I had my birthday tarot reading with Alane about everything in my life. While initially too ashamed to bring it up, I blurted it out towards the end of our session, “Why did he promise that? And why did I still believe him despite it all?? Shouldn’t I know better now??”
I could see the empathy in Alane’s eyes and the slight hesitation as she was debating how to deliver the message. “I’m sorry. He was lonely that night. Reminiscing with you made him feel good because he knows how much you love him. He never intended to follow through, he just uses you to make himself feel better. You’re like a faithful dog that waits around and cheers him up when he’s down.”
Ooofff… Deja vu.
This time around, something in me snapped. I took the imaginary tiara off my head and stomped the bouquet under my heels. No thank you, I’m no longer anyone’s bitch. So I blocked him, patched that wound in my heart, and flew to Hoi An by myself.
On my 40th birthday, I woke up with the sunlight streaming through the windows of my hotel room. I took a birthday selfie in bed and debated posting it on Instagram for the micro-dose of external validation. Then I zoomed into the photo and examined my face. The pillow marks on my not-as-supple skin, the now-permanent eye bags that can check itself at the airport as extra baggage, and my eyes. Oh, my poor, old, tired eyes that seemed so sad in the close-up. Suddenly for a second, I I felt the weight of being alone in an empty bed in a beautiful room far away from home. My head knew that just the fact that I had the freedom and means to be there was a privilege in itself that I wouldn’t dreamed of 10 years ago. Yet my heart still felt a tiny pinch of ‘But then why? If I’m that good a person, why am I still alone?’
I closed the photo app but decided not to delete the selfie. One day I’ll look through my photo album, come across it and smile to myself for worrying over nothing at all. Till then, I took a deep breath and looked across the room at the clear blue skies and boats sailing across the horizon of the South China Sea. It’s ok Baby, I still love you anyway. Insecurities, loneliness, tired eyes and all.
And this is where dear readers, the fucking fabulous Forties empowerment message makes an entrance. Only after I stayed in bed and hid under the covers for a little while longer of course. Then I stretched like a cat, rolled out of bed and decided ‘Fuckit, I’m going to do my birthday MY way.’ So in a plain black t-shirt, sweatpants and a messy tied bun, I jumped on the back of a Grab bike and rode over to a newly opened archery range in Da Nang.
The lanes were full but perhaps the birthday luck kicked in as after just a few minutes of waiting around, I was given my bow and arrows and directed to a lane with my target. Archery was a new interest I’d picked up a few weeks prior from an initial dalliance at the range at a company bonding event. While I was a fangirl of The Hunger Games trilogy, who knew I actually had the secret makings of Katniss Everdeen?
So amidst the Vietnamese chatter of the locals, the whirling of the fans’s valiant attempt to cool us in the summer heat, and the whizzing of the arrows flying by, I picked my bow and arrow up. I stepped up to the mark, cast my gaze to the target in front of me and pulled my arrow back. In that moment, the buzzing soundtrack of the outside world fell muted and all that existed was the tension of my arrow against the bow and me. I took a deep breath and let go.
Wwwwhhhooooooshhhhhh… THUMP!
There has never been a more satisfying sound than the pierce of an arrow sinking into the target. And no, I didn’t get a dramatic bullseye but oh so close. It was just a tad above the line.
I broke into my first grin for the day and felt so abso-fucking-lutely free.
You’ve got this Baby. Trust me. Let’s see where we go next.