18/12/25

Today I’m going to Paquetá Island with a few friends. The four of us met through Vipassana.

Maybe we’ll do a small group meditation on the island.

Who knows.

The night before last, I missed Beans so much.

I looked through so many of our memories, and of course I laughed, and then I cried. Before falling asleep, I kept thinking about the happiness I had with him. But during the night I had another nightmare, dreaming about the parts of him that once hurt me so deeply. Yesterday morning I woke up and went to yoga. At some point in the practice, the teacher said to look inward from the third eye, to turn inward. I closed my eyes and breathed, and the tears just kept flowing, unstoppable.

Yesterday Gui and I went to a few museums, CCC and CCBB. It was so interesting.

In the middle of the day, while we were at CCC, I told him that the Shikin inside me, the one who is romantic and full of passion in both my heart and my body, feels like she no longer exists.

And then I cried again.

I honestly don’t know why it feels like I cry every day.

The strange thing is, I don’t feel miserable.

I’m actually quite happy.

Maybe I simply need to cry.

My heart needs to cry, my body needs to cry.

I want to let her cry, and hold her while she does.

My therapist said I need to respect the time it takes to heal, emotionally and physically.

I think about my past breakups.

Back then I would also feel heartbroken, but after a while I could come back to myself. I could open my body again to welcome pleasure, desire, intimacy.

And after some time, I could open my heart again to love, even if it was a soft, light kind of romantic love.

But now, my body feels closed.

My romantic love feels dried up, almost depleted.

And yet, at the same time, my love for my friends keeps flowing, keeps moving, keeps rising in me.

This breakup really hurts, and I want to give myself enough time.

I suddenly find myself thinking: yes, sex is beautiful.

Of course it is connection. It is pleasure. It is one body moving close to another.

In that moment, we’re not only enjoying touch. We’re also feeling something softer, more hidden: being chosen, being desired, being seen, being needed, being loved. We feel special. We feel safe. We feel held. Sometimes we even feel a kind of power.

And at the same time, we are also giving. We are seeing the other person, choosing them, offering ourselves a little, and inviting them in.

But I can’t help asking myself:

Sometimes, when we reach for the heat of sex, are we trying to fill a kind of gap?

As if there is a distance between deep feelings and fear, and our words don’t dare to touch it, our hearts don’t dare to look straight at it, so our bodies step forward first, trying to cross it through touch.

So beneath the beauty of sex, sometimes there is something else.

Maybe a quiet pain.

Maybe an emptiness we can’t quite name.

Maybe a deep crack inside us.

It is real.

It is naked.

It is raw.

Last night, while I was cooking dinner, I talked to Mike on the phone. He’s the friend who has supported me the most since the breakup, and I’m truly lucky to have someone so reliable in my life. When we talked about a certain way of thinking that he believes I shouldn’t hold onto, I suddenly became defensive. I was washing vegetables, and I started crying. I cried for five minutes, and then I slowly became steady again.

I’m writing my blog now, and the tears are still here. I’m moving soon, and I hope it will be a good turning point.

Yesterday Adrian messaged me.

He read the blog post I wrote about an argument with my parents.

He said that different people express love and kindness in different ways. Sometimes we need to make choices, to keep distance from people who are trying to be kind while they are struggling, because we need to protect ourselves. But sometimes, people do love us, and they simply express love differently from the way we do. Their reactions may look like anger, frustration, or impatience, but underneath, it might be their own emotions and wounds. We need to learn, little by little, how to decode, how to translate other people’s expressions, instead of staying only on the surface of their tone. Your way of expressing yourself is very open, but not everyone is like that. If you expect everyone to respond in the same way, you will keep getting hurt. Writing is good, it helps you become clearer. And sometimes, you also need to let things rest for a while, let them settle, and come back later when you are more stable and more clear.

As I write these words down, my tears fall again.

Okay. Time to get ready to head out.

The boat ticket is for 13:20.

And yes, I think I need to bring mosquito spray too.