8/12/25 Ups And Downs

An afternoon and a night in Rio

Written in Rio de Janeiro, at five twenty in the morning.

It is three thirty in the morning right now.

Today I had an extremely beautiful afternoon and evening, and then a night where I completely fell apart.

Today I went to the botanical garden. It was truly beautiful.

I saw so many plants and little animals I had never seen before. Just sitting there, I already felt calm and safe, wrapped in a very soft, healing feeling.

I was thinking about what to do later.

Maybe go dance forró, maybe study a bit of Portuguese, go to the beach and sit in the sun for a while, or simply go for a run. Just then, Shanti sent me a message. Manu, the one who hosted the group meditation in Rio, was having his birthday gathering. She suggested that we first meet in a nearby park and then go to the gathering together.

It sounded like the perfect plan.

The first time I met Shanti was also at that group meditation. I remember feeling that she was very beautiful and very natural. There was something pure and childlike about her, a very soft and unique quality. She is always present, really living in the moment, and she has this way of noticing connection and beauty in very small things.

Every time I saw her again after that, even if it was only for a short while, I felt that I really liked her and that I admired her. So when I received her message, I was genuinely happy.

I went home and did a quick tidy up, cooked a simple bowl of pasta, put my phone on charge, and at the same time finished my 7/12/25 blog post on my laptop.

We had agreed to meet in Parque Guinle. I arrived first.

It was close to sunset. I cannot say for sure whether it was because of that time of day, but I always find myself easily overwhelmed by a kind of unspeakable sadness and emptiness right before the sky turns dark and the lights come on. Over the last few years I have slowly realised that this might be connected to when I was two or three years old. My parents took me to a boarding kindergarten, left me there on my own and went away. There was no goodbye, no explanation about whether they would come back or when they would pick me up. I stayed there alone for more than twenty days.

Every day, around this same time before dusk, there were no activities or classes. The children were free to play. I still remember the tiny version of myself, holding onto the railings and repeating in my head: “Where are my mum and dad?”

So even though I am an adult now and have been working hard to recognise what is this, to understand now its different, and to heal myself, the feelings that come with dusk, that abandoned kind of pain, still seem to live inside my body. They have turned into a kind of muscle memory that surfaces from time to time.

When I was sitting in the park waiting for her, there were many children playing around me. It was the birthday party of a little girl called Sofia. Everyone was very happy, with laughter echoing again and again. I watched those carefree children and felt a quiet sadness rising inside me.

After a while, Shanti arrived.

She sat down next to me and told me that she had recently read some of the pieces I had written, and that she more or less understood that I had been moving through a kind of “grief of separation” these days.

Then she gently asked me, “So, how have you been lately?”

In that moment, I felt a very sincere kind of care and a heart that was truly open to me.

Being seen brought up a strong urge to cry before I could even answer.

I did not cry, though. I paused for a moment and tried to let my rational brain take the lead before I spoke. I am almost certain that without that pause, my voice would have been shaking and choked with tears.

Later, she also shared her own recent state and inner journey with me.

Many of the things she mentioned were things I could deeply understand and resonate with. The way she speaks is very gentle yet very clear.

While we were sharing, I felt that both of our hearts were open. There was a very nourishing and honest energy flowing between us, with wise perspectives, a deep understanding of emotions, and a little bit of what we both cherish as “magic”.

Shanti started talking about “giving love to yourself”.

She said that when she feels tense, anxious, or heartbroken, she deliberately treats herself a little better and gives her body a lot of “mimo”, little gestures of pampering and affection. Stroking her own body, holding herself and rocking gently, and so on.

I realised that when I am single, I am actually quite good at giving myself this kind of self-mimo. No matter what my situation is, I naturally tend to offer this mimo to people around me. When friends are sick, I will very naturally cook a pot of chicken soup, buy a small cake, and bring everything over to their place. There are many, many small examples like this, barely worth listing one by one, but I know that there is a lot of “tenderness” in my heart, both for myself and for the people around me. Especially when I am in an intimate relationship, I genuinely enjoy taking care of the other person, cherishing him, nourishing him, doing many small things for him, making him comfortable, letting him feel lit up and beloved.

I laughed and said that I was not sure whether this is a kind of “maternal energy” or some form of “feminine energy”. In intimate relationships, I feel that this energy of “nourishing others” is always very abundant in me. I naturally want to take care of the other person, to feed him in an emotional sense, to create a soft and comfortable space around him.

At the same time, though, I also very easily forget myself.

I forget that I am actually the priority in my own life.

I forget where my own roots are.

I forget my own axis.

I forget that I also need and deserve the very same mimo that I am so good at giving to others.

Just as we were talking about this, a little boy suddenly walked up to me out of nowhere and asked in Portuguese, “Você está grávida?”(Are you pregnant)

Shanti and I both froze for a second.

I was wearing a jumpsuit that day and my body looked nothing like a pregnant woman. The question arrived so abruptly that it was both awkward and funny.

We looked at each other, first shocked, then we both burst out laughing.

After laughing, we both fell quiet for a moment.

I said that maybe this was a little sign sent by the universe, a reminder that it is time for me to start practising loving myself the way I would lovingly care for my own child.

Later, we saw a particularly beautiful flower called Esponjinha-vermelha. We bent down to smell it. The flower looked like a little fluffy brush, with fine filaments stretching out like tiny soft tentacles. They gently brushed against our cheeks, as if the flower itself was giving us mimo, one gentle touch after another, loving and playful at the same time.

As we walked, we started picking flowers from the ground and became completely immersed in this little game.

I picked up one with a slightly odd shape and laughed, “Look, this one is a ‘broken heart’.”

Shanti picked up another one that stood tall and proud and said, “This one is a ‘queen’.”

Then I picked up a small, round, soft one and said, “This one is the ‘inner child’.”

We kept going like this, picking up one flower after another and giving each of them a name, as if we were finding a body for different emotional states.

In that moment, the two of us were as happy as little girls, completely absorbed in flowers, wind and play.

As we were talking, Shanti told me that for her, the most important things are Presence, Love and Creativity.

She said that these three are the essence of the self, the divinity inside us. From this essence, we can relate to the whole universe in a state of creative and loving presence. Art, nature, relationships, everything can be bathed in this light.

Hearing her say that, I also paused to ask myself what my own key words would be.

What are the things that feel essential to me?

Slowly, the words that floated up in my mind were: connection and love, the ability to feel, creativity, freedom, nature, curiosity and exploration, a sense of safety, and the feeling of home.

We also talked about many other interesting topics.

I have a feeling that after these conversations breathe and ferment inside me for a while, I might write some of them into another blog post and let them unfold more slowly there.

On Manu’s birthday, the whole space felt very soft. It was as if there were little stars shining in everyone’s eyes.

On the table there was chilled borscht, and around us were people who were both kind and funny. His family and his friends all carried this warm, gentle energy.

I even ended up playing a Portuguese board game with a few of them.

With my current level of Portuguese, the fact that I could somehow keep up felt both hilarious and strangely comforting, like a small proof that I was being welcomed.

(Shhh, someone was secretly translating for me.)

Later, Manu started playing the piano.

We sat in the same room where we usually have the group meditations and listened quietly. While he played, I kept thinking to myself how amazing he is. Just the fact that he gathers everyone every week to meditate together is already something very beautiful.

And beyond all the Vipassana courses he has done, he also has all these ways of letting things flow outward, through music and through creating, sharing what lives inside him with the world.

I felt happy for him, happy that he is held by so much love and warmth.

I also felt happy for him that he can find his own paths of expression and creation, alongside his practice and inner work.

That night, I could really feel that a part of my own heart was being quietly healed.

It was as if my heart was slowly opening, little by little.

When I got home, my whole body suddenly softened. I could feel how open my heart had been the entire day.

Maybe because of that, I suddenly found the courage to tell my parents about the huge, explosive fight Beans and I had before we truly broke up.

Before this, I had mostly shared my feelings and sadness with my parents and friends, and also many of the good parts of Beans. I rarely talked about that specific scene itself.

For me, speaking about it is not easy.

Since I am already writing this piece, I decided to write that fight down in full. Even now, doing this still feels like something that requires me to clench my teeth a little and gather strength. Facing it is already hard enough, and writing it out is another layer of difficulty.

It happened before I went to Oaxaca. We had agreed to have a call. After that, I would be with friends all the time. I had friends in Oaxaca, then friends again in Mexico City, and from there I would fly to Rio and go straight into Vipassana. We both knew that this call was one of the few moments left that still “belonged only to us,” so we both cared about this plan, at least in name.

But that day, Beans fell asleep.

Rationally, I could understand. He was very tired, had a lot of work, and was under his own pressure and anxiety. But by that time we had already been arguing and crying for many days in a row. I had told him that I felt a very strong sense of being “left behind” and “abandoned” during that period. He did not feel ready to sit down and calmly explore what was happening between us, but he also did not want to separate.

For me, that was a very painful state to be in. You are still “with this person,” yet you are no longer sure if there is still love between you.

In that kind of state, all the old wounds and triggers in your body are constantly flashing red. Your survival mode is always on. Your nervous system is always ready to fight or run. There is almost never a moment when you truly feel safe.

Ever since we were physically apart, our relationship had been very up and down. I think he had his own anxieties and I had mine, and these anxieties kept pushing us into one round of conflict after another.

Anyway, that day we had agreed to talk, but he overslept.

I waited for more than an hour.

When he finally woke up, there was not a single sincere apology.

He appeared in a very flat way, as if this was something trivial, and with a bit of impatience.

I told him I felt that my vulnerability had been stepped on and disrespected.

He only said that he “could” talk with me now. There was no softness or remorse in his tone, just the attitude of someone doing something he is supposed to do.

I could feel that he was not really “there.” His heart was absent, his attention was not present, and his whole person felt only half engaged. I did not want a call like that anymore.

So I said, “If you are tired, we can talk another day.”

We both knew that “another day” meant three weeks later, after I came out of Vipassana.

I did not expect him to answer, “Ok.”

In that moment, something in me suddenly caught fire.

It was not just anger.

It was like all the accumulated hurt, disappointment, and feeling left behind rose up at the same time.

I called him back immediately.

As soon as the call connected, I was crying on my side, and on his side it was as if something had ignited him completely.

His face on the screen twisted. His eyebrows and mouth were tight, and his voice shot up, hard and sharp.

The strange thing is that at that moment, I almost had no expression. It was as if part of me had stepped out of myself and was simply watching everything happen.

He shouted at the me inside the screen, “You are an adult. You said ‘we will talk next time,’ so you have to be responsible for your own words.”

“I do not even want to share my life with you. I only send you pictures of my lunch to make you feel better.”

The day before, he had said in a very soft way that when he sees many things around him, he thinks of me and wants to share them with me.

Then came the sentence that landed like a heavy hammer. “I feel more hate than love for you.”

I no longer remember the details of everything he said after that.

I only remember that his anger was very intense, so intense that he was basically yelling at the version of me in the screen, and because of his anger the image on my phone seemed to shake. The energy felt like a wave, crashing over me one layer after another. By then, my crying had shifted from “sad” to something empty and numb and disconnected, almost like I was looking at him from outside my body.

Later he said, “Let us talk again in half an hour. I am too angry right now.”

I said, “Ok.”

Half an hour later, we connected again.

This time, he had become calm, as if he had turned all his buttons off.

His expression, his voice and the way he spoke had all turned cold and distant.

From that point on, up until now, whenever I try to feel him, I no longer sense the Beans who once felt gentle and sweet to me.

After Vipassana we did speak once more, but that coldness and that feeling of a layer between us were still very obvious.

As I write this, I can feel how tight my chest is. I cannot take a deep breath.

I stop for a while, breathe deeply a few times, and give the current version of myself a bit of mimo, so that I can keep writing.

I also remember that for a long period before this explosion, I had been crying almost every day, in a way that felt like I was breaking apart. It was not because of one specific event, but the accumulation of many things. A long-lasting mixture of heartbreak and anxiety, slowly hollowing me out.

After that call, I wrote him an email.

I told him that I felt we should take some time apart.

I said I loved him very much, but when one person already feels hate and resentment toward the other, to the point that it outweighs love, and when one side is unwilling to talk about this, calling it a “relationship” no longer makes sense.

I wrote that I hoped this time apart could bring some clarity, and help each of us reconnect with love for ourselves.

I said that after I came out of Vipassana, we could sit down and talk seriously again. That conversation was something he had been unwilling, or not yet ready, to have before.

These were my thoughts. I opened my heart and hoped to hear his.

He replied that he wanted to make this decision on a video call.

In the video, he said he agreed with what I had written.

We both expressed the same wish, that this time apart could give us a chance to return to each other in a healthier way.

He looked sad.

Inside, I was full of confusion.

Isn’t this what you wanted?

Did you not say that your hatred for me had already become stronger than your love?

Why do you feel sad when it is actually time to let go?

Why have I stayed inside your “hate” for so long, and in this moment you look more heartbroken than I am?

During Vipassana, I had countless conversations with myself every day. I reflected on my projections, my traumas, on the ways I had hurt him, and on the patterns I kept repeating in relationships.

Of course it was not only about him. I was also looking at my relationship with my parents, my own fears, my sense of lack, and the pain that lives in me.

In those silent days, three very clear realisations slowly surfaced.

1. even without anyone, I will still be able to live my life.

2. I need to face my fear of emptiness and pain. I cannot keep running away.

3. emotions come and emotions go.

4. I do not need and do not want to keep trying to control everything.

   
   

I understand now that I cannot really control anything anyway, and I certainly do not want to hold a relationship together by gripping tightly and pushing and forcing.

That way of relating is not fair to him, and it is not fair to me either.

To be honest, at that time I still had many fantasies. I would imagine that maybe during this period, Beans was also really working on himself. Maybe he was also facing his own patterns and practising new ways of being. Maybe one day we would meet again at a more mature and clearer level, and the relationship could “level up” and continue in a healthier form.

Later, after Vipassana, we really did talk again.

In that call, I apologised to him for the ways I had hurt him when I was in pain.

I also said that if we were to continue, there would be a few conditions from my side. There needed to be deep self reflection from both of us. There needed to be a sincere desire to walk together. And there needed to be actions that matched the words, not just beautiful promises.

In that same call he told me that he was also sorry, and that he felt his heart was empty and grey, and that he no longer had love to give me.

After hearing that, I said to him, “Then please do not force yourself. Take good care of yourself first. Maybe that is the most important thing for you right now.”

After that, the warmth between us simply faded.

There was no clear closure.

Things just turned colder and dimmer.

Sometimes the real ending happens exactly like this, quietly and helplessly.

In any case, this final part of our separation is something I never really described in detail to my friends or my family.

In their minds, “Beans” has always been the loving one, the gentle one, the responsible one.

In a way, I think I was also protecting that side of him. I did not quite know how to place the version of him who shouted at me and said “I feel more hate than love for you” into the picture they had of him.

Today, perhaps because I spent the day with nature, with Shanti and with friends, and received so much love and acceptance, I suddenly felt that the area around my heart had opened a little more.

I gathered my courage and told my parents the whole story.

My father became super angry.

He was, of course, furious with Beans and felt indignant on my behalf.

Yet the way he expressed it made me feel as if he was angry with me as well.

It sounded as if he was saying that I was foolish, that I could not tell right from wrong, and that I should not have been sad and crying for so long over someone treated me like this.

In that moment I felt deeply hurt.

That hurt quickly turned into anger.

A lot of old pain surfaced along with it.

I started to “explode” at my father.

I typed on my phone very quickly, sending message after message, my tone sharp and questioning, almost like I was putting him on trial.

I also made it very clear how disappointed and angry I was with him.

At the same time, I messaged my mother and briefly told her what had happened.

Her reaction was, “Why do you let your dad make you angry again? You never learned? This is not such a big deal.”

When I told her that, to me, this was not a small thing, I felt that her attention was completely on whether she herself was being disturbed, criticised or troubled.

I remembered a traumatic experience from when I was 19.

Back then, I did not know how to protect myself and felt very helpless. I went to her for help, but what I received were accusations and shaming. Step by step, I came to believe that everything was my fault, that I somehow deserved what happened.

That feeling of being pushed back into the dark rose up in me again.

So I also voiced many questions and doubts to her.

Both my father and my mother said “I am sorry” to me.

But I could not really let those three words sink into my heart.

To me, they felt shallow and on the surface, like a way to hurry toward the end of the conversation rather than something that came from a true wish to see and take responsibility.

I felt that I could not stop.

It was as if I needed to keep sending message after message, to keep speaking and “outputting”, to prove how important this was to me and how much I was hurting.

I always seem to become like this when I am in the deepest pain.

If I had to put it into one sentence, it would be something like: I am constantly checking, “Hey, do you actually love me?”

Sometimes I even think that if I could stop having expectations of anyone, life might feel much lighter.

Even when it comes to my parents, even when it comes to my partner.

If I no longer expected anything, maybe I would not have my heart broken again and again like this.

After this whole chain of conversations, I suddenly realised that when Beans and I fought, the pattern was actually very similar.

I felt hurt.

At first, I would try to express myself in a softer way, using something close to “non violent communication,” speaking on behalf of the little part of me inside who is afraid of being left.

I would do my best to say, “Hey, look, I am really in pain.”

If the other person did not respond in a loving way, or simply could not hear me, it became very hard for me to turn away.

I did not want to let go.

I did not want to admit that maybe he simply did not have the capacity to be there with me.

So I started to hold on tighter and tighter, saying more and more, my tone faster and sharper.

What began as a careful, gentle sharing gradually turned into a fully armed style of communication, as if I was picking up my emotions like weapons and throwing them at the other person.

When I finally came back to myself, it was often already too late. Both of us had been swallowed by the storm, and neither of us could hold the other anymore.

Writing all of this out, I know very clearly that there is a lot of heartbreak in there.

There is disappointment in a lover, disappointment in my parents, and also a deep tenderness toward myself.

It is not about clinging to anyone’s faults. It is about slowly seeing that I have been repeating the same longing again and again.

That longing is simple and naked.

It says: “Please look at me. I am really in pain. Please tell me that I am not alone. Please tell me that you are with me, that you love me.”

There is a part of me that feels thrown away by the world. I am trying to pick myself up and hold myself, but last night it felt like I could not do it.

In the end, I still reached for my phone and called Mike.

He was in Germany. It was the middle of the night there.

In my mind I quickly counted and realised that apart from my parents, there are only a handful of people in this world whom I could call at any time, and he is one of them.

As soon as he picked up, I was already crying, the kind of crying where you cannot catch your breath.

On his side, he said very gently, “Breathe, Xinyi, feel your body.”

In that moment, I could barely hear his words.

I was just crying, one wave after another, my whole self collapsing at once.

All the meditations I had practised, all the visualisations, all the breathing techniques seemed to disappear completely.

I could not remember a single one.

I simply could not stop, and I let the tears and the feeling of choking wrap around my whole body.

I do not know how long it took until the feelings slowly began to recede.

I started to sense my body again.

My breath was no longer racing.

My heart calmed from wild beating into a rhythm that I could actually feel.

In that slightly more grounded state, I suddenly understood that my fights with Beans followed the same pattern.

I have always wished that my parents could learn to express themselves in a healthy way, see their own issues and take responsibility for their actions.

In intimate relationships, I wish the same from my partner, that he can express himself, see himself clearly and be willing to take responsibility for his part.

I began to ask myself if, deep down, I actually find it very hard to truly accept that “they are the way they are.”

And honestly, if they cannot make me feel loved and respected, why should I have to accept that?

These questions turn slowly in my mind.

On one side is a longing for love.

On the other side is my resistance to “settling” for something that does not feel right.

I also see that I carry many fears of being abandoned, of not being special, of not being cared about.

For example, I told Beans that certain behaviours made me feel very scared and unsafe.

He knew, yet he kept doing them.

There are some main sources of the pain I endured when we were together:

From the very beginning, he quickly told me that he wanted to be in an exclusive relationship with me. At the same time, he constantly talked about his ex wife, still called her “my wife,” and often, with eyes almost shining, told me again and again how in love they had been, how sweet, how beautiful their love story was.

It left me extremely confused and feeling quite strange, wondering silently if he simply wanted an audience, because, I didnt understand why he told me all of these.

I did not accept, but later, when he came to Lima and we started traveling together, I felt more hope, intimacy, and love.

One day, we discussed it again.

I told him I still had many doubts, but when I shared them with him, he became emotional. He told me I was so engaging and committed to us, contributing so much love and energy. He realized that we had already been together, and I had been his girlfriend all this time without us realizing it.

I wasn't sure what that meant, but I was also touched.

So I said, okay, we can do this.

I do not want to criticise the version of me who chose to stay in that situation, saying things like, “He was already like this and you still stayed.”

Because I know that there were many beautiful and loving parts in him, and I also know that in my own heart there were holes, places that longed very much for safety through an intimate relationship.

The person I used to be was, in her own way, trying to move closer to love with the tools she had at that time.

There are other scenes that replay in my mind as well.

For instance, I would point out that Beans had a habit of saying, “I did this because you first did that.” Sometimes his mind would automatically create a situation to support that logic. He would say that I had done or said something, when in reality those things had never happened at all.

Even when I tried very hard to help him see this, he did admit, “Yes, I do that.” But the next time something similar happened, he would still very naturally and without hesitation say, “I hurt you because you did that first.”

There was another time when I told him honestly that his relationship with his “best female friend” in Uzbekstan made me uncomfortable. He told me that the only reason they were not together was because she already had a boyfriend., also they met every week, talked all the time, practiced tango together at her home every week and did many very intimate things. We were about to be physically apart and he would go back to Tashkent, the place where their friendship and connection had grown. I told him how unsafe this made me feel.

He said, “I understand, I can choose not to go, but I do not want to lie to you. Even if you feel hurt, inside I still want to practise dancing with her alone.”

I remember that day I exploded.

As I write this, as I memorise all of this, I can feel my scalp tingling.

Those images come back one by one. The look on his face when he said these things, his tone of voice, and the sharp ache in my chest at the time all return together.

I know that I still carry anger, and that anger is real.

At the same time, I feel that I need to write all of this down.

Not to blame him, but so that I can see the truth of what happened instead of only staying with “the truth I wished for.”

I can slowly see that our problem looked something like this.

Many of his behaviours triggered the insecurities that were already living inside me.

In that environment, I did not have enough safety to soothe my inner child.

When I felt completely unsafe, I would also use hurtful ways to fight back.

But is a romantic relationship not supposed to be a relatively safe place?

A place where the inner children of both people can come out and play, be silly, ask for comfort, express even the “negative” or “difficult” sides, and still be seen and held. Is that not what it should be?

Every time I realised that I had hurt someone I loved in my anger, I felt very sad.

I regretted the sharp words, and I felt heartache for the silence and distance that came after emotional explosions.

My therapist told me that these reactions, these explosions, are not only “bad temper.” Very often they are also a kind of protection. Because there is already pain inside, the instinct is to use sharpness to block more hurt from entering. She has been gently reminding me not to put all the blame on myself, and to look at myself with more kindness.

Yes, he has his share of responsibility. And I am working on myself, learning how to slow down inside my emotions, and how to give myself more space.

I also understand that besides the wounds he brought to me, I projected many of the old hurts from my parents onto him.

I wish that the version of me back then had known better how to regulate my own emotions, and how to choose to leave once I clearly saw the nature of things, instead of staying, hoping again and again that he would love me the way I needed, or staying and letting us hurt each other and wear each other down.

Looking back now, I sincerely hope that he can find his own ways to soothe and heal the wounds in his heart: the ones from his family, from his marriage, and from his own disappointment and confusion about himself.

As for the pain I brought him, I feel deeply and sincerely sorry.

In my heart, he has always been a beautiful person.

Even though there are many parts of him that have not yet been healed, I still know that underneath it all there is a very pure heart.

I truly hope that one day his heart can find a place that feels safe, gentle and peaceful.

And I also hope that by then, on our own separate paths, both of us will be more whole and more steady versions of ourselves.

Coming back to the topic of my parents, I find myself thinking that maybe right now I do not want to, and am not yet able to, accept that they cannot love me in the way I believe is “right.”

I do not think that “wanting to be loved” is an unreasonable desire, especially when the people in question are one’s own parents.

It is just that when I do not receive the kind of love that I feel I deserve and deeply long for, I actually could choose to protect myself. In reality, I often do something else. I keep pushing, get closer again and again, trying to force that love out into the open.

Intimate relationships, parents, inner child.

These three themes are tangled together.

Sometimes they feel like a ball of yarn that gets more knotted the more I try to untie it.

I sincerely hope that one day I can gradually find my own balance among these three, without swinging endlessly between holding on desperately and giving up completely.

Sometimes I also wonder if it is because my parents carry so many unhealed wounds that I am always drawn to people who are similarly unhealed, and then instinctively want to “fix” them.

When I look back at the moments when Beans hurt me, I also know that many times he did not intend to. He has his own lessons that have not yet been completed.

Deep down, I do not think his true intention was to make me suffer.

It is just that if there is ever a next time, I hope that version of me can be clearer inside, able to pause and look at herself, and to give herself more care and space.

Maybe in those moments, I could have had a gentler and clearer choice.

I could have said to him, “I love you, and I truly wish you happiness.”

Then, carrying that sentence and that feeling in my heart, I could have walked away slowly and softly.

Instead of doing what I actually did, which was to push him again and again to see how his actions were hurting me, to push him to admit that he was avoiding responsibility, to push him to “face himself properly” and to “start working on himself.”

After all, that homework is not mine to complete for him.

What I really need to do is to take good care of myself.

When I slowly become better inside, I will naturally have the capacity and the space to let my gentleness and kindness flow outward and be shared with the people around me.

Instead of exhausting myself trying to change others first, and then turning back to pull myself out of the ruins.

Epilogue

It is eleven fifty three in the morning on December 8th, 2025. I have just finished a yoga class and am now sitting in a café.

When I got up this morning and looked in the mirror, I saw a version of myself who had cried too much, a little worn out and fragile. I used the coffee grounds my housemate had saved to exfoliate my whole body, as if I were slowly rubbing off the sadness that had stuck to my soul from yesterday.

During yoga, with every inhale and exhale, I tried to set a small intention for myself.

To be here with myself.

To stay in the present.

To give myself love.

Even if at the beginning it felt a bit like I was playing a role, I still whispered to myself in my heart: fake it until make it.

Practice first, and slowly, one day, it will become a real habit.

Before coming to the café, I had a cup of unsweetened açaí at a street stall. It still does not taste as good as my beloved Tacacá do Norte, but in the morning, eating a cup of cold açaí, my body is slowly filled up, feeling refreshed and light.

In that moment, a simple thought came to me. I went to sleep so late yesterday and cried for so long. Today, I want to treat myself more kindly. I want to love myself with intention.

Yoga, for me, is a practice of being present and of treating myself gently.

Yesterday, Shanti and I also talked about how, when we feel very sad, we can deliberately give ourselves a little mimo, because the body has memory. When we treat ourselves as if we were a baby, holding ourselves gently, soothing ourselves slowly, the body often calms down first, the nervous system begins to feel safe, and then the heart has space to soften.

Sometimes we can also let a bit of sound come out, feeling the vibration in the throat. That vibration is connected to the nervous system and can slowly guide us out of a place where emotions feel stuck and frozen.

There is another thing I do not want to forget.

To remember to be present.

To remember to feel that I am loved, by myself and also by everything around me.

To feel myself wrapped by the wind, kissed on the skin by the sunlight, touched on the ankles by the waves.

Nature is deeply nourishing for us, but we need to be aware of it, to notice it, to connect with it, so that we can truly plug ourselves into that source of nourishment.

Sitting here, I also remember a very deep conversation I had with my parents a year and a half ago. After that talk, they did change in some ways. For the first time, they sincerely acknowledged the problems in their past behaviour. They were willing to face together the things that had happened before, and they tried to relate to me in a new way. I can feel this, and I genuinely feel fortunate about it.

When I woke up today and checked my phone, I saw that both my mum and dad had sent me messages.

They faced their own issues, acknowledged what they had done, and apologised to me sincerely.

I suddenly felt like crying, and at the same time, I had this very clear feeling of being “held” by them, in a way I could really feel.

At the same time, I find myself asking: when will I be able to be like a big tree.

The kind of tree that, no matter what happens around it, whether it is about a partner, family or friends, does not make their goodness or not so good the condition for its own ability to live well. I want to be able to enjoy and be grateful for the goodness of others without clinging to it, without depending on it.

Because I have my own roots.

I feel safe.

I am my own home.

In that state, nobody can truly destroy me, unless I agree to it.

I think what I need to practise now is slowly learning to let them be.

When a person does not want to face themselves, does not want to truly open up and communicate, does not want to acknowledge their mistakes, I do not want to keep forcing, pushing or dragging them toward the direction I imagine.

Instead, I bring my attention back to myself and recognise, “This is not the kind of relationship I want.”

I can express my needs gently and clearly. If the other person cannot, or does not want to, meet them, then I have the right to choose my own boundary, to choose where I stop, and to choose when I leave.

It sounds simple when I put it into words.

In practice, it will definitely be step by step, slowly.

But it is all right.

Looking back at last night’s huge breakdown, I no longer see it only as “losing control.” It feels more like this. In a long healing process, there was a piece of pain that had been lying at the bottom of the water for a very long time, and it finally rose slowly to the surface.

I feel that writing these things out is something good for me.

It is as if some weight has been moved out of my heart, and things that had been pressing on my chest for so long finally have a place to rest.

And the nightmares I keep having may not only be “torture.” In some sense, they are already my subconscious helping me to clear out the trash, bringing up and releasing the pain that I did not want to face or did not know how to face.

Maybe my subconscious feels that it has been helping me from the shadows for a long time, that the part it could clean up first is mostly done. Now it is time to hand this step back to me, so that my conscious mind can slowly learn to face and embrace the pain.

At the very least, the version of me who is here now has started to see the little “Shikin” who has been hiding at the bottom of the water, full of fear and hurt, and has also started to be willing to reach out and gently, slowly, hold her hand.