Either as the sender or recipient. The lengthy text that sometimes takes you days to dissect. The spontaneous, “let me add this in to make myself clearer” string of words that pop into mind as you draft. The slew of words that subconsciously makes you brace for psychological impact. The dread and dissonance of being perceived inaccurately.

I understand it perfectly, having been on both ends. Until rather recently, I realised that it was becoming counterproductive and not actually resolving the conflict.

Here’s how I see it:

We start building a case.

When someone starts gathering receipts to prove why they were hurt, this can unintentionally start feeling less “I want you to understand me” and more “let me show you why you were wrong.” And the message becomes prosecution rather than communication.

“You did this. And then there was the other time. And the other. But what that reminded me of was when you did XYZ on ABC date, which made me feel 1, 2, and 3…”

Sometimes, the more we explain, the more we can unintentionally cause more misunderstanding. What initially began as an attempt for one to be understood gradually turns into gathering evidence. And once the conversation starts feeling like a case built against someone, it becomes a lot harder to meet in the middle.

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We haven’t finished processing our own feelings.

When we draft a lengthy paragraph, we’re asking someone else to process what we ourselves have not. We churn out every detail, every feeling, every consequence with granular precision, hoping that if they understand the entire sequence of events, they will finally understand why we feel the way we do.

It makes our hurt make sense. That sense of catharsis you feel once you hit send? Sometimes the relief feels like progress when it is actually, just relief.

We need to sit with our own feelings first. Otherwise, we risk burdening the other person with an emotional load they not only don’t deserve but also isn’t their responsibility to help process.

We send it at the wrong time.

When neither party has sufficiently taken the space they need, ill-timed paragraphs designed to foster ‘open communication’ can backfire and drive a deeper wedge between them.

When emotions are still running high in the background, the best thing each person can do is to step away, briefly. Not out of avoidance or punishment, but mutual respect. Giving yourself and the other person space during moments of conflict gives both parties time to calm down before deciding what to say.

Defensiveness, one of Gottman’s Four Horsemen, is a common response when someone feels criticised or attacked. And once someone feels like they are being put on trial, they are much more likely to defend themselves than listen. (Personally, I’ve made this mistake countless times. It didn’t end well at all, and my actions only drove away the person who meant the world to me.)

Sometimes, you’re just too upset to have a useful conversation.

Imagine already being highly activated and receiving a 700-word message detailing why and how you hurt the other person.

The sender wants the other to understand, but all the recipient hears is, “wow, I’m really that shit of a person, huh.”

It can feel like being handed a laundry list of everything they did wrong. It isn’t pleasant.

There’s simply too much to take in at once.

This is not to say that “I don’t have the capacity” becomes an excuse for never dealing with difficult situations or having uncomfortable conversations. That’s avoidance dressed up as deferment. Adding that to a long message of explanations, examples, and what might be perceived as accusations, it quickly becomes overwhelming.

And even when the timing is better, 700 words can contain too much information that blurs the actual issue.

Sometimes, it’s not even about whether the other party wants to listen.

There’s just too much being asked of them at that point.

When a single message contains:

• The event

• The trigger

• The reaction

• Multiple examples

• A misinterpretation

• A couple of possible explanations

• A demand

• A boundary

• Several solutions

That’s a lot.

You can explain yourself perfectly and still end up nowhere closer to actually resolving anything.

I get it, though. We all want to be understood, even more so by those we love. I once wrote a 2,000++ word explanation essay (yes, essay) to someone extremely dear to me. You guessed as much. It didn’t work.

A boundary doesn’t require a supporting dissertation.

I believe a boundary can be articulated clearly and concisely.

Without needing the other party to agree with your elaborations and explanations. There isn’t a need for over-explaining. “No” can be, in itself, a response. Otherwise, simply stating, “that doesn’t work for me.” does the job too. You don’t need someone to agree and affirm “yes, your boundary is reasonable.”

One need not produce an airtight case complete with 5 supporting evidences, 4 heavily-explained examples and 3 alibis to prove a point.

Conflict isn’t a courtroom.

We can simply communicate a boundary.
We don’t need to convince someone why it matters.

At the end of the day, we all want to be understood.

But more explanation doesn’t necessarily create more understanding.

Sometimes it creates even more to argue about.

And more to misunderstand.

if anything in this post landed for you, i’d genuinely love to know.

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or even just to say hi.

see you in the next one. ☕

you don’t notice it at first.
maybe you do, but choose to look away.

the smile that doesn’t quite reach their eyes.
the laughter that feels forced.
the hug that now feels like an obligation.
the underlying edge in every sentence.

“I love you” now met with silence.

what was once a warm summer
is now a chilly winter.

you can’t help but feel
like they don’t want to be there.

“it’s easier for travellers to make than stay friends…”

and I remember
that I am somewhat of a traveller myself.

we think it has to be dramatic to count.

that growth should be seen.

but visibility is not the same as reality.

we’ve become so used to being witnessed that we’ve forgotten how to simply live.

the saying, “pictures or it didn’t happen” has been embedded in our psyches.

perhaps more deeply than we thought.

the vacation isn’t real unless it’s photographed.

the dinner didn’t happen unless publicly documented.

the engagement is only complete when witnessed online by 500 people.

putting on what we perceive to be our best selves through adopting a visual aesthetic that silently seeks the approval of internet strangers.

and anything that isn’t posted gets automatically overlooked.

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lately, i’ve been noticing something interesting in myself.

in the ways i’ve stopped reorganising my life around preventing loss.

in the ways i allow myself to show up imperfectly without needing to present as a polished draft.

in the ways i allow myself to love fearlessly without turning it into possession.

in acknowledging that something beautiful can touch me deeply without demanding it to last forever.

in allowing multiple—and sometimes contradictory—truths to coexist without moralising or judging it.

in stopping the performance—conscious or not.

all i know is that one day, i realised i was no longer running the same script.

no longer operating from the same system.

i used to think that change meant becoming someone else.

now, i understand it as choosing differently.

because we are allowed to change.

and we should.

loud transformation has a before and after.

quiet growth doesn’t.

there’s no clear divide between the person you were before and the person you are now.

one day, you simply realise that the things that once required conscious effort have become instinctive.

i believe that it’s attributed to an accumulation of decisions that initially feel uncomfortable.

but when repeated deliberately, over time, feel less like danger and more…

ordinary.

over time, i’ve realised it was less about addition.

and more about subtraction.

we’re constantly told that we need accumulation.

to read more.

to learn more.

to meditate more.

to optimise more.

to become more disciplined.

it’s always about adding something.

i get it. i was completely into that.

because addition gives us the feeling that we are doing something to improve ourselves.

that our best self is just around the corner, promised by the next purchase.

conversely?

subtraction sounds like scarcity.

but subtraction isn’t just in getting rid of things.

it’s removing unsuitable conditions.

in the kinds of fabrics you stop allowing on your skin.

in the purchases you stop making.

in the rooms you choose not to enter.

when you stop explaining yourself to people who have already decided who you are.

when you stop forcing relationships to become something they’re not.

when you stop treating uncertainty as something you automatically have to fix.

in realising what you will no longer tolerate.

and keeping the promises you make to yourself.

it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment it happens.

because while addition is visible,

subtraction doesn’t photograph well.

it’s easy to show the new apartment.

the new friends.

the new outfit.

but how can you photograph the conversation you chose not to participate in?

the argument you no longer feel the need to win.

the relationships you no longer try to force.

there is no grand announcement.

growth doesn’t always need to culminate in a dramatic ending or a revelation.

it lives in the small but meaningful choices we make.

day by day.

moment by moment.

what matters most isn’t always immediately seen.

perhaps real growth is becoming comfortable enough in yourself that there’s nothing left to prove, polish, or perform.

and none of these require 50 different self-improvement podcasts to implement.

if any part of this piece resonated with you,
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
publicly or privately; i read every single comment.

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you can also buy me a coffee here ☕
your presence and support mean more to me than you know.

One hearty Vietnamese meal and a warm cup of Ayurvedic tea later,

I’m filled with a startling sense of clarity.

Wired and inspired to articulate what’s been forming at the back of my mind.

Let’s get into it.

I mentioned before that people reveal themselves over time.

They show us who they are through patterns of behaviour.

Repeated often enough, those patterns becomes information.

The hard part, then, isn’t noticing the patterns.

It’s accepting them.

We like to think that we perceive people objectively.

We don’t.

Love rarely changes who someone is.

Rather, it changes how we see them.

The more affection we have for someone, the more we want to spend time around them.

Eventually, they begin to hold a special place in our hearts.

Not because they asked for a place at the table.

But because we willingly gave them one.

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When we love someone, we start seeing them differently.

Oftentimes, even unfairly.

The information doesn’t change.

Only our interpretation of it does.

And it rarely happens all at once.

It begins with tiny, almost negligible allowances.

One excuse becomes two.

Three becomes a pattern.

We brush it off.

We give them the benefit of the doubt.

We overlook the wilful ignorance that pervades their speech.

We minimise the comments that, made by any other person, would have had us reacting very differently.

We justify the times they fail to show up for us.

We hand out multiple chances for the ways they repeatedly fail to consider us through their actions.

Eventually, we find ourselves explaining away behaviours that, in anyone else,
would have made us pause.

We grapple with the seeming contradiction that you can love someone deeply,

and not necessarily like who they are.

The people you love will disappoint you, because they are human.

The question, then, is no longer whether they’ll let you down,

but how they respond afterwards.

Disappointment is inevitable.

A repeated refusal to take accountability isn’t.

This is where patterns become significant.

We can’t always choose who we love.

Neither can we decide, rationally, who is worthy of ours.

Lately, I’ve been learning to decouple love from unconditional acceptance.

Disappointment on its own isn’t the deciding factor, and neither should it be.

But when disappointment comes with an accumulation of repeated inconsistencies,

followed by the absence of accountability,

it changes things.

There’s a quote that I came across recently that stayed with me.

Love makes room for mistakes.

Self-respect notices when the mistake becomes a pattern.

The people we love will, inevitably, let us down.

We can love someone deeply, and still choose to walk away.

I don’t think accepting the pattern was the hard part.

The difficulty lies in grieving the imagined potential of it all.

Dear reader, if you enjoyed this post, I’d love to know which parts resonated.

To support The Thinking Hour, you can also buy me a coffee ☕
Your act of support—however small—goes a long way into my writing process 🤍

I started this entire series constructing an identity.

Now, I believe I am living it.

The End of Becoming

There is a quiet grief in realising that there is nothing left to chase.

No self-improvement ladder to climb.

No ‘identity glow up’ to acquire.

No future version of yourself waiting patiently at the finish line.

So much of the internet and social media is built upon the promise of becoming.

Become more unbothered.

Become more confident.

Become more attractive.

Become more successful.

Become your highest self.

.

We’re taught that life is movement.

The internet contains an endless curriculum on self-improvement.

An algorithm promising that self-fulfillment comes with only 12 new habits to integrate, 5 mindset shifts later, and 1 more reinvention away.

The message is subtle but pervasive:

You are always in transit.

And your present self is merely a draft.

This is the Illusion of Arrival

It whispers that life only begins after the next milestone.

When I finally get that promotion.

When I finally heal.

When I finally…

You get it.

Chasing these things isn’t inherently bad.

Ambition isn’t the enemy.

Neither is growth.

The danger begins when we start believing that we can only be happy after we achieve them.

When we postpone our right to exist in real time.

When we unconsciously decide that we will only allow ourselves to feel enough once we have become that person.

For a long time, I lived inside that contract.

My algorithm knew exactly what I was seeking.

‘How to Become more Magnetic.’

‘How to Reinvent Yourself by the end of Summer.’

‘How to Heal your Nervous System.’

Every video promised a better version of me.

I consumed them feverishly, hoping that one more insight would finally complete the puzzle.

Looking back, I wasn’t addicted to self-improvement.

I was addicted to the feeling of becoming.

Addicted to the dopamine rush that comes from believing your next upgrade is just around the corner.

Then, quietly, something changed.

I stopped asking,

“Who else could I become?”

and began asking,

“Can I fully inhabit person already here?”

The difference is small.

But it changes everything.

The Weight of Presence

When we loosen our grip on constant self-monitoring, we begin to inhabit our own bodies.

A presence that replaces performance.

A presence that others can feel even from across the room, even if they cannot quite put their finger on it.

A presence that remains unshakable even in the face of unpleasant circumstances.

There’s a certain quality about people who have stopped performing themselves.

You feel it before they speak.

Not because they are louder, more attractive, or more charismatic.

But because they are no longer divided between who they are and who they think they should be.

That kind of presence cannot be manufactured.

Neither can it be downloaded through 25 YouTube videos or a neatly packaged self-improvement podcast.

True presence emerges when a person stops standing outside their own lives, ruthlessly auditing them, and chooses to start living them instead.

5 months ago, I explored how presence — and a true, inner richness of life — emerges through not what you grab, but what you learn to see.

At the end of the day, when we stop seeing identity as something to work towards or a goal to chase, identity becomes ordinary.

And identity, thereafter, becomes inevitable.

I’d like to add on to this by referencing Erich Fromm’s The Art of Being.

Modern life encourages us to adopt identities, rather than inhabiting them.

To have an identity rather than be one.

But these are not status symbols.

Neither are they tokens to be collected.

You do not have confidence.

You become someone who moves through the world, confidently.

You do not become detached.

You become someone whose self-worth is no longer negotiated by outcomes.

The difference is subtle.

One is a possession.

The other is a way of being.

At the end of the day, when we stop seeing identity as something to work towards,

it becomes surprisingly… ordinary.

It lives in the rhythm of our days.

In what we choose to give our attention to.

In the people we choose.

In the things we no longer feel the need to prove.

Maybe that’s what all of this has been leading towards.

Not necessarily becoming someone new.

But in giving myself permission to fully inhabit the person already here.

I started this series believing identity was something I had to build and frequently reconstruct.

Now, I realise that identity was never waiting for me at the end of a self-improvement checklist.

It was never hidden inside another book, another city, even another relationship.

It had been quietly taking shape every time I chose differently.

And perhaps that’s what these seven essays have truly been about:

Not constructing an identity, but removing everything that kept me from inhabiting it.

If you’ve walked alongside me through Aven, Vale, Sola, Nyxen, Noven, Aelia,

and now Eryn, thank you.

You have witnessed not just a series of essays, but a defining season of my life — one of questioning and unlearning.

From here, I will turn my attention outwards.

Towards questions that continue to fascinate me —

in conversations between identity and the self, human behaviour, language, communication, culture, and the patterns that shape the way we live.

I’ll see you there ☕

Return

I’ve been pining for home.

Deeply craving the return to my life.

My routines.

My friends.

My community.

In the time I’ve been away, I’ve been extremely restless.

Holding so much tension in the space between where I no longer am

and where I want to be.

And I see — albeit with a lot more clarity — the same dynamics playing out.

Ambiguity.

Anxiety.

Tension.

Possibilities.

I fully expected old patterns to repeat.

They did.

But something was different this time.

My reactions were quieter.

The loops closed faster.

And I realised with startling clarity

that I was no longer falling apart the way I used to.

I thought I was returning to a city.

But I was actually returning to myself.

Saigon merely became the backdrop.

Recognition

I was worried about how I would be received upon my return.

Would I still be welcomed?

Would I still be chosen?

Would I still be accepted?

In the first 48 hours, these thoughts were keeping me preoccupied.

I was unable to fully relax.

But something shifted when a familiar dynamic presented itself.

Not because the anxiety disappeared.

It didn’t.

But because I recognised the pattern.

And I realised I was no longer running the same operating system.

The same trigger.

The same situation.

The same environment.

In a way, everything remained the same.

The circumstances hadn’t changed.

But my response to them had.

Perhaps the goal was never to eliminate anxiety.

But for anxiety to become information rather than instruction.

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Oh, the anxiety still arrived.

It simply stopped making my decisions for me.

Self-Trust

There was a time I thought growth would feel like certainty.

That one day, I would stop questioning myself.

Stop feeling anxious.

Stop wondering whether I belonged.

Instead, something else more profound took its place:

I learned that I could trust myself even when certainty never arrived.

That I can trust what I observe,

even when it isn’t the answer I was hoping for.

For the first time,

I no longer needed the world to reaffirm that I was on the right path.

I had finally learned not to abandon myself.

I still get triggered.

But I no longer need to detach.

I still get anxious.

But I no longer need to spiral.

I still get confused by ambiguity.

But I no longer need to invent a story.

The trigger still happens.

My body still reacts.

My mind still reaches for the old script.

But I’m getting better at interrupting it.

I know the woman I am becoming.

The test for me now?

Whether I can remain her.

For so long, becoming was the work.

What happens when becoming is no longer the story?

I explore that in Volume 7 — the culmination of The Identity Series.

☕

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Noven asks a different question:

Why do certain things keep happening—

even when everything else changes?

Different city.

Same longing.

Different people.

Same dynamic.

Different conversation.

Same ache.

Different beginning.

Same ending.

Until what repeats begins to feel true.

And repetition begins to feel convincing.

Not because it is true.

But because it is familiar.

Familiarity has a quiet way of appearing as the truth.

Patterns

After enough repeated patterns,

our minds stop noticing individual occurences.

Instead, they begin crafting conclusions.

“I’m always the one who leaves first.”

“I’m always the one who loves more.”

“I’m always the one getting hurt.”

“I’m bad at commitment.”

A series of experiences slowly become a description of someone.

An observation becomes an identity.

But what’s repeated does not mean it’s permanent.

Patterns are simply what has happened.

Not who we are.

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Attraction

I meet someone.

I become attached.

I allow that attachment to influence the way I show up.

Then, circumstances change.

Truth presents itself.

I get hurt.

I vow to myself: never again.

I heal.

I move to a different city.

A different face appears.

A different name.

A different accent.

But something feels familiar,

like it’s a song I’ve heard before.

Same word.

Different font.

A Different Lens

Across the first four volumes,

I explored different ways of seeing.

Aven pays attention to lived experiences.

Vale gives us permission to feel deeply.

Sola reminds us to step back to observe.

Nyxen gets curious about contradictions.

And Noven pays attention to what keeps coming back.

So the question is no longer:

Why do I like them?

But more about:

Why does this type of person repeatedly catch my attention?

Similarly, the question is no longer:

Which identity is the real me?

But more of:

What keeps showing up, regardless of the form it takes?

Repetition is an Invitation

When patterns recur, again and again,

they’re likely trying to tell us something.

They’re often pointing towards something we have not fully understood.

When events happen,

patterns recur.

And then we base our entire identity on those patterns.

At this point, I’d like to emphasise the central claim:

that repetition isn’t some woo story that the universe is “teaching you a lesson.”

The explanation is a lot more neuroscience-backed.

Repetition is simply our nervous system recognising what is familiar.

And the problem is that we can’t always looaway,

even when familiarity becomes unhealthy.

But repetition is not proof that we have failed to learn the lesson.

Repetition is information.

In situations that feel familiar,

that familiarity is an invitation to look again.

To see what was there all along.

Because what repeats is rarely random.

And what returns is often what was never fully seen.

PS: Pattern recognition is useful.

Not because they offer certainty.

But because they make certain things harder to ignore.

Aelia, soon.

☕

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but what appears contradictory often exists because we’re only observing part of the system.

Volume 3 (Sola) reminds us of the need to step back in order to see clearer.

To see not just others, but ourselves.

Let’s talk about needs.

We want connection.

We also want freedom.

We want certainty.

We also want possibility.

We want to be seen.

We also want to preserve the mystery.

These aren’t contradictions.

These are counterparts.

Quick to assign meaning,

we mistake alignment for truth.

Building narratives not because they are accurate,

but because uncertainty is intolerable.

We assume alignment feels harmonious.

Easy.

Automatic.

Natural.

Yet the things we value most often pull us in different directions.

Some of our deepest struggles emerge from wanting two things at once.

Freedom and belonging.

Love and independence.

Desire and detachment.

Stability and change.

A personal example is when I feel a pull toward someone.

I enjoy the connection.

I want more.

I know it’s not possible.

Yet I did not stop appreciating the person.

I simply stopped pursuing the possibility.

Desire remained,

but attachment loosened.

Both hold true.

Most people automatically assume:

If I desire something, then I must be attached to it.

If I am detached, then I must not care about it.

But it rarely works that way.

We can deeply desire connection, people, places, success, status,

while simultaneously acknowledging:

I may not receive this.

That’s not contradiction.

That’s maturity.

Wanting stability, routines, grounding, and structure

can coexist with

wanting adventure, expansion, movement, and exploration.

Most people assume one must cancel out the other.

Let’s talk about identity.

Most people think it is fixed.

Defined.

Final.

It is not.

It is fluid.

It seems to shift depending on where we are,

what we’re experiencing,

and what life is asking of us.

We tend to think of identity as an answer.

Like it’s something we arrive at.

Lately, I’m beginning to think that it’s more of an ongoing negotiation between different parts of ourselves.

When we recognise certain patterns repeating,

while also knowing that these patterns can change.

We want to assume that alignment means certainty.

Because certainty means we’re on the right path.

.

As if alignment is a one-time fix.

.

So, maybe the goal isn’t to choose between

Freedom or Belonging

Stability or Evolution

Desire or Detachment

But learning how to hold freedom and belonging without collapse.

Learning to hold desire without attachment.

Building stability that allows evolution.

Maybe, tension isn’t a problem to solve.

But a healthy state of simultaneously holding multiple truths.

That what conflicts inside us may not be evidence of misalignment.

but evidence that multiple truths are attempting to coexist.

PS: Nyxen asks us to look at the structure.

And maybe, we should pay attention to what keeps returning.

Because repetition is rarely random.

Noven, soon.

☕

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They reveal it gradually.

The difficult part is accepting what I’ve already seen.

For a long time, I assumed clarity came from understanding more.

I believed that paying closer attention would make others easier to decipher.

In some ways, it has.

In other ways, I’ve realised that clarity can also arrive differently.

Not because another person revealed something.

Because reality interrupted a story I was telling myself.

And with the assimilation of new information, the story changes.

Dissolves.

Oftentimes, what appears obvious now was nonexistent at the time.

Not always because the information was hidden.

But because I was hoping for a different answer.

Recently, I found myself drawn to someone.

And when circumstances changed, I expected to feel disappointment.

Instead, I felt relief.

Not because the feeling had been false.

But because the uncertainty had ended.

And I noticed something else in its place.

That the qualities I was drawn towards did not disappear with the initial possibility.

The warmth.

The playfulness.

The sense of being seen.

The feeling of coming alive in another person’s presence.

No.

The person had simply illuminated something I had been missing.

Those feelings reminded me of parts of myself that had been quiet for a while.

I wasn’t longing for the person,

but how I felt around them.

The lesson, for me, was that it was never about obtaining the individual.

It was about recognising the qualities I wished to cultivate in my own life.

Perhaps observation is not just the practice of seeing others clearly.

But the practice of seeing ourselves clearly too.

And learning to accept the answer,

even when it differs from the one we were hoping for.

PS: I wrote Volume 3 during a period of transition.

Many of the realisations in this piece arrived through the lens of Sola.

Volume 4 zooms out from personal experience.

Nyxen, up next.

☕

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Not everything incomplete is waiting to be completed.

Some experiences end long before we have finished experiencing them.

The pull of a city.

The spark of a connection.

The silence after a kiss.

We often think we leave versions of ourselves behind.

The reality is stranger.

They continue travelling with us.

I no longer live in Singapore.

Yet parts of me still do.

Some of the things I carry are not memories.

They are futures.

The country I almost moved to.

The life I almost chose.

The Masters degree I almost accepted.

All of them belong to a version of myself that almost existed.

I used to think I was leaving cities behind.

The truth is that they follow me.

And long after I’ve left, a part of me is still having a conversation with them.

I experienced an intense pull towards someone which made no sense.

We barely spoke.

Rarely hung out.

Communicated solely through gestures because language was a barrier.

Beneath all of this, something else was happening in my mind.

The story I was telling myself.

The narrative I was constructing.

The possibilities that played on loop long after the moment had ended.

Mentally, I had enough ammunition to build a case against it.

Psychologically, I deep-dived into the psyche of projection, seeking clarity.

Emotionally, the feeling persisted.

For a long time, I assumed that understanding would bring closure.

That if I analysed something long enough, examined it from enough angles,
I would eventually be able to move on with the right answer.

But understanding why it could not happen did not fully dissolve the emotional residue.

It continued moving through me after it was over.

This feeling did not leave me fully.

It attached itself elsewhere.

In a song.

In a question.

In a moment.

Some things do not end.

They migrate.

PS: Vale asks us to feel, deeply.
Because some experiences need to be felt before they can be understood.

But distance changes what we notice,
and what is viewed from afar often reveals a different shape.

Sola, coming soon: on stepping back to see clearly.

☕

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I rarely experience things only once.

An unexpected encounter.

A city visited at precisely the right moment in my life.

A conversation that ends.

Some time later, my mind returns to it.

Playing it on loop.

Not because I’m afraid I’ll forget, but because I’m still trying to understand what it meant.

So I revisit it, over and over again.

Before I realise it, I have begun constructing a narrative.

It’s so automatic that I don’t even realise when I’m doing it.

A story emerges, and patterns reveal themselves.

At least, I think I spot them.

The danger?

When the story arrives before the facts.

When meaning comes before truth.

And what of identity?

The more interesting observation I’m making is that these stories rarely revolve around the events themselves.

The troubling thing is how quickly I begin believing them.

A feeling that becomes intuition.

An intuition that becomes certainty.

An attraction that becomes chemistry.

And chemistry that becomes compatibility.

When the story is repeated often enough, it begins to feel like facts.

And this influences what I notice next.

The things I pay attention to.

What I dismiss.

What I remember.

What I expect to happen.

And over the past few months, I began noticing something stranger.

The stories were not just shaping how I viewed events,

but how I perceived myself.

Depending on where I was, I seemed to become a different person.

Not in a loud, dramatic way.

Just quiet enough to notice.

Certain traits felt amplified while others faded into the background,

as though they never existed.

But they did.

They all did.

The strange thing was that each felt deeply authentic while I was living them.

At first, I called it growth.

Now, I’m not so sure.

Looking back, I can identify distinct versions of myself attached to different periods of my life.

The reinvention wasn’t conscious.

Not entirely at least.

But, different environments seemed to draw out different sides to me.

In Singapore, I was preoccupied with survival.

Paying rent, building a life, creating the lifestyle I wanted.

My attention was directed towards stability and security.

Then I moved to Saigon, where possibility was more interesting than certainty.

New city. New friends. New routines. New hobbies.

Entirely new ways of spending my time.

For the first time in years, life felt expansive.

My time felt truly mine, in a way it never did in Singapore.

Highly social. Deeply connected. Fully present with everyone who crossed my path.

And then there was Da Lat.

Where I wanted absolutely nothing to do with anyone.

Not looking for new people or experiences.

Neither was I exploring new possibilities.

In fact, I was looking for less.

Less noise, less movement, less distraction.

Every single morning, the forests, lake, and the mountains called to me.

What I sought was altitude. Open space.

Three versions of me in three completely different environments.

Each had a different priority,

and each felt equally like me.

I could interpret these versions as evidence of growth and constant change.

But at the time, it did not feel like growth.

It felt like fragmentation.

As if I left a version of myself behind every time I switched locations.

But now I’m wondering if I have been looking at it the wrong way.

What if these versions of me were never separate identities?

What if these different parts of me were merely responses?

Not contradictions, but adaptations with different psychological needs.

Authentic,

just not complete.

PS: Aven is the first volume of a seven-part identity series.
I began this project hoping to better understand who I was.
Somewhere along the way, the question became more complicated.

It is also the beginning of what may be my most ambitious exploration of identity yet.

I’d be glad to have you along for the journey.

☕

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The deeper layer?

I feel most alive when I am becoming, not when I have arrived.

There’s a specific person I become in transit.

Buckle up.

We’re about to catch the next flight. Boarding pass collected.

Excitement building up in the departure lounge. Time for take off.

The distance growing between who you were in the city you’re departing from,
and the rush of adrenaline from imagined possibilities.

The unwritten version of who you could be in the next city.

I think I’m addicted to that liminal space.

To the thrill of arriving somewhere new and unfamiliar.

To adopting a temporary identity where no one knows and cares what you do
or who you were in your previous city.

And this automatically-granted freedom from older versions of the self is liberating.

What I’m describing here is the emotional openness of movement—
the psychological freedom to be whoever you want.

I’m in a completely new city.

I get to create new routines. Be completely anonymous.

Filled with the seductive possibility of method acting a character of choice.

Where the previous identity—or persona, as Carl Jung puts it—is fluid and completely mine to create. No one comparing outdated and expired versions of me from when I was 16, 22, or even from 3 years ago. My social output is completely untethered to anyone’s projections; free from the limitations of conditioning and social comparison.

I get to shed my identity temporarily, and no one says a thing.

An unfamiliar environment loosens the grip of old narratives.

With that, the grip of expectations.

That is the allure of frequent movement.

But there’s a deeper layer to this cycle.

I’ve noticed that while each place briefly feels transformative and exciting,
familiarity returns.

I get accustomed to the new routines of my new lifestyle.

Which inevitably brings about the same restlessness I try to avoid.

The subtext?

The issue was never the city itself.

And uncomfortable as it is, I’m forced to confront a deeper realisation:

Maybe I’m not searching for a place, but for relief from myself.

I’ve written about needing intensity to feel alive and mistaking emotional activation for connection.

In the never-ending cycle of anticipation and needing constant movement to thrive,
it makes me wonder if it’s actually escapism dressed up as reinvention.

If it’s the constant stimulation from transition I seek,
this same constant ‘becoming’ can lead to fragmentation.

When movement itself becomes a way to delay rootedness,
the larger question I’m left with is how to find meaning and integration in pockets of stillness.

When nothing is happening and there is nowhere to be.

Maybe.

The goal was never to stop moving,

but to stop needing movement in order to feel alive.

And that came with a deeper, more profound realisation:

I don’t fully know who I am outside of intensity.

In moments when nothing is happening, I realise how much I relied on transition to feel alive.

I say I want peace, and then I instinctively chase something stimulating.

Because stillness can feel unnerving and… suspicious.

The strange thing about stepping out of emotional chaos is how quiet everything becomes afterwards.

I find myself retreating and withdrawing from overstimulation,
pursuing calmness and tranquility through the silence that comes from nature.

Relishing pockets of peace that inevitably turn into restlessness.

When chaos became the natural impetus to feel like a life has been ‘lived to the fullest’, calm becomes disconcerting when you’re used to frequent excitement.

A new city. Different people. A switch in routines. Complete reinvention.

The deeper layer to this?

Being consistently activated made me feel alive,
and intensity becomes emotional proof of existence.

Attaching meaning to incomplete information became second nature.

When there is absolutely no information to decode, I get tense.

I tend to prefer a wrong story over no story at all.

In constructing coherence quicker than reality can catch up,
it’s no longer just an emotional reaction.

And if calm feels unfamiliar, what does that say about the baseline?

In relationships, this shows up as misreading intensity.

Irrespective of romance, it shows me that my mind prefers narrative over neutrality.

When your nervous system is trained for constant stimulation,
peace doesn’t just feel foreign, but devoid of meaning.

I don’t fully know who I am outside of intensity.

But I’m learning to

pause

before I complete the story.

And that a calm life can also be a meaningful one.

"When you're born in a burning house, you think the whole world is on fire." — Richard Kadrey

I’ve been confusing ‘sparks’ for ‘something more’.

Feeding a pattern I never knew I had been following for years.

Constant decoding. Justifying inconsistencies.

Filling in the blanks like it was my duty.

Entertaining the same thought loops of wanting to believe only in the best possible outcome that I overlook facts. That a lack of response is, in itself, a response.

I enjoyed the challenge of having to earn something.

The version of me who never grasped that the arousal of my nervous system was attributed primarily to the stress of conflict.

The moments where tension seemed delicious because of the sweetness that inevitably followed.

The version of me who did not recognise unavailability dressed up as mystery.

I’ve always been curious as to how we perceive reality.

If burning embers are what we’re accustomed to, floating amidst a placid sea feels utterly disconcerting. Oftentimes, we choose to step back into the oven.

Our baseline is what we subconsciously return to.

Fortunately, patterns of behaviour and decades of conditioning can be unlearned.

In confusing infatuation for a solid foundation, it’s easy to fall into the trap of acting in accordance with emotions, which isn’t always grounded by data proven consistently.

Chemistry is not the same as compatibility.

In hindsight, I was confusing grounded attraction with emotional activation.

And what I perceived as connection was often just my nervous system recognising familiarity.

good to have, a way to fill in the gaps between work/study, but not essential.

little things you did just to have more conversation topics.

activities performed so that you could appear more “interesting.”

but lately, I’ve noticed something.

the things I find myself returning to do more than simply pass the time for me.

they quietly shape my life; the way I move, the way I show up, the way I remain present.

on days I feel scattered, heavy, and viscerally disconnected from myself, I turn to certain practices.

not because I’m disciplined—still working on that—but because they hold me in different ways.

When I need to feel steady.

I walk.

I wish to retreat.

not into myself, but into nature.

it’s the solitude and quiet I crave.

the feeling of being surrounded by life itself.

on days like these, I seek the stimulation of:

birds chirping instead of the roar of traffic.

towering trees instead of high-rise buildings.

the feeling of earth beneath my feet instead of the vibration of my phone.

/breathes/

I feel the safest when there is no pressure to figure anything out, when there is no need to be anywhere else.

as ideal as that sounds, it’s not always possible.

so I do Pilates.

I don’t always enjoy the process—let’s be real, that shit is painful—but it demands my fullest attention.

it requires my presence. the pain stings, only because I’m noticing it.

and it reminds me that I’m alive.

in return, it rewards me with a sense of being back inside my body.

I hate it because it hurts, but I feel so damn good after the burn.

When I need to feel something.

I dance.

bachata, lately. (I’ve done street jazz, pole, and heels, but partner dances hit different.)

there’s an addictive sensuality to it.

the way my body moves, the closeness, the unspoken exchange between two people.

the kind of listening that isn’t mental.

no need for overthinking. no need for second guessing.

just the music, the rhythm, and the subtle push and pull between your partner and you.

there’s a certain freedom in not having to decide. I just follow.

and something softens within me. my femininity unfolds, naturally.

the cello meets me in a different way.

lower. deeper. more gutteral.

there’s something about the resonance of the low C that makes me feel like it’s a sound I’ve known before, but forgotten.

like it’s been patiently waiting for me when I buried it under the busyness, the survival, the noise, and the suffocating weight of conditioning.

for me, playing the cello doesn’t explain emotion. it releases it.

when I don’t have the words, I move through music.

in these moments, it feels less like I’m creating,

and more like I’m remembering.

When I need clarity.

I write.

I write to understand what’s going on beneath the surface.

to translate my thoughts into words and put pen to paper.

on that note, there’s something incredibly therapeutic about focusing on one handwritten letter at a time.

one word at a time.

one sentence at a time, in a way the keyboard can never replace.

I believe that writing is an act of defiance.

a way for truth to surface.

typing has become so natural that it makes it so easy to run on autopilot.

the sentence is somehow completed before my thoughts can take form.

writing by pen, on the other hand, reverses that process.

it forces me to s l o w d o w n.

I’m focusing on one alphabet at a time rather than typography—which is cool too, just different.

and of course, reading expands ideas in the other direction.

it gives me language, opens the windows of my mind to novel perspectives— challenges them even, if it’s a good book—and I’m reminded that my inner world is part of something larger than me.

the language we use shapes what we know and how we express it.

I’ve been learning Spanish for a couple years now, and it challenges me in the best way.

Spanish is beautiful, evocative, romantic. sexy.

it delights me to no ends to have another way of constructing my thoughts, expressing myself through new sounds and giving me new ways of moving through the world.

not to mention the people you meet and the connections you forge through speaking the language.

there is something beautiful about the way a shared language connects people who have never met; from all over the globe.

sometimes, it’s people from opposite ends of the world, meeting in the middle.

I see language as a door to another world—one you don’t just open, but step into.

and this inner expansion is tantalisingly delicious to me.

It was never about the hobbies.

above all, something I’m noticing is this:

each of these activities play their own role in my life, and for their own reasons.

not as a way to fill time, but as a way to meet myself differently.

some hobbies ground me, some open me. some help me to feel, others help me to understand.

“soft life”?

I’m still figuring that part out, and trying to decipher what and how that might look like for me.

but one thing’s for sure.

my hobbies have opened me up to a softer way of living.

sometimes, we need stillness. other times, we need movement.

overall, we need meaning.

and maybe that’s the whole point: to have a few quiet things you can return to.

to have hobbies that hold you, especially on days you don’t know how to hold yourself.

♡

“I’m a good listener. You can talk to me,” they gush, eyes wide with equal warmth
and insistence.

I feel the genuine care behind the words. The enthusiasm behind eager eyes.

So I speak.

“Why would you—”
“Why not try—”
“OH! This reminds me of—”
“I had a similar experience when—”

Please.

As much as I’d love to hear about it, fascinating as that is, I’m trying to speak.

And you said you were going to listen.

So why aren’t you listening?

We live in a world where immediacy is rewarded. Quick replies. Automatic responses. Rapid fire communication where being left on read is rude and offensive.

Why are we rewarding a culture where thoughtfulness is not considered, but speedy replies are?

The problem with this dynamic is that people are not listening.

Because they are not thinking.

They register your words as stimuli.

But just as quickly as it enters, it leaves—replaced by a string of hurried, let-me-give-you-my-opinion-you-did-not-ask-for input.

As someone trying to share and speak—not necessarily because I want to, but because you asked me to—it’s rude. Disruptive. And extremely off-putting.

When did we start talking more than we listened?

When did we start thinking less and rambling more?

It’s ironic how I am more likely to have an actual, insightful conversation with the stranger at the next table about the book he’s reading. I’d ask him what he truly thinks of Brianna West’s The Mountain Is You, because I could not finish it.

I could turn to the lady at my 2 o’ clock and ask what her favourite part about ‘Ikigai’ is, because I have some thoughts on its structure and readability, the inherent concept aside. Another one on my could-not-finish-reading list, FYI.

Listening—actual listening—is so rare. That’s sad.

I try my best to cultivate it myself, as excited as I am about the topic at hand sometimes. But I’m conscious about listening to understand. Not to respond.

Maybe that’s why I’ve turned to writing. In my journals. On Substack.

Because when I write, I hear myself think.
When I think, I’m forced to listen.
And in turn, I understand more.

So I hope that one day, someone else can do the same for me.

“Uh huh.” “Sure.” “Okay.” Just a few of the responses I get when someone is staring at their device.

The days of active listening have become few and far between. I find myself longing for deeper conversations and people who pay attention and make eye contact.

I ask for it.

“Let me know when you’re ready to listen…”
“Can we talk for a few minutes?”
“This is really important to me…”
“Can I have your attention, please?”

We have to beg for basic conversational etiquette.

We’ve been cultured for our roles and how we interact with one another by device.

Everything must be convenient. Our attention is paid briefly and without depth. Everything down to the food we eat has a time limit. If it seems like it’s going to “take too long,” we give up and we quit on it.

When we quit; we lose an opportunity for presence.

I have grown wary of trying to share myself with anyone verbally, or in interactions outside of the words I put on the page because I know in the end I’ll be left wanting. I’ll likely be the only one paying any attention to what I’m trying to communicate.

These shortfalls in our ability to listen, understand, and retain, are killing our potential as a society to really grow and develop lasting relationships and understanding.

People are so quick to draw conclusions, judge and weigh things based on feeling and not fact. That’s because trying to listen to understand the facts is TOO MUCH.

What we lose is intimacy and availability. We lose ourselves in congestion.

Caring and sharing is a thing of the past.

Caring is surface level and cliche.
Sharing is limited and half ass.

I do my best to put things away when someone genuinely wants to have a conversation with me. I pay attention, I don’t fidget, and I look them in the eyes, so they know they have my undivided attention.

I would rather write and have conversations with myself than have to beg for someone to acknowledge and pay their attention to me. This gap destroys relationships and creates resentment.

My hope is that one day, basic communication skills will become common and important. Until then, all we can do is be an example. Maybe that will provide the spark needed for a new wave of active listening to take place?

And what I thought was our future.

The engagement ring from Paris. December 2024. A week before Christmas.

“para siempre,” we vowed. (Forever.)

“ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?!” I yelled, loud enough for the partition walls to tremble.

Nothing.

Silence.

He stood there, immaculate in his calm, folding shirts into a black suitcase.

“Liar. Fuck you and your empty promises.”

My chest collapsed inward. My throat burned. My hands shook so badly I tore through the white plastic before my fingers found the smooth red velvet case.

The ring.

He had been waiting for the right moment.

It caught the moonlight. Crystal white. Precise. Beautiful.

I hurled it out the fourth-floor window with all the strength I had left.

He didn’t flinch.

He didn’t even look up.

He zipped the suitcase. Picked it up. Walked out.

Calm.

And I was a crumpled heap on the floor.

I used to think that kind of calm was maturity.

I mistook silence for depth. Emotional restraint for strength. Nonreaction for security.

I thought I had chosen the steady one. The grounded one. The man who would never erupt, never rage, never frighten me.

I once loved a man who once pressed a swiss army pocket knife to my throat.

After that, anything quiet felt safe.

I did not realise that the opposite of aggression is not always gentleness. Sometimes it is withdrawal.

I mistook distance for protection. I told myself his silence meant he was thoughtful. Controlled. Above drama.

It wasn’t steadiness. It was absence.

An emptiness that was never mine to fill.

So I began performing.

If I just adapted, I’d grow. I wanted to, because he was an exception I had made for myself. An anomaly in the pattern of lovers that took me a decade to recognise.

I broke myself to adjust. Trimmed the excess to become reasonable. Not “too emotional”, so we could finally meet in the middle. Because I was the immature one.

Love became precision. I rehearsed to get the words right. If only I could just say it better. Softer... So he would finally understand me.

I thought if I said it better, or if I had not said anything, he would stay.

So I polished myself until I shone. No longer raw, but softer at the edges. Composed. Controlled. Calm.

I called it growth when it was fear.

It was me begging quietly. Trying to earn love by twisting, contorting.

No more tears. I learnt not to cry. Erase the tear stains. Stifle the sobs.

I learnt to swallow the lump in my throat before it formed.

He kept standing still.

And I called that strength. When really, he was never reaching back.

I’d turned my hunger into discipline.

It took me a long time to admit that nothing I said would have changed him. His calm was not patience. It was detachment. He was not misunderstood, he was simply unwilling.

When I threw the ring, I was not only angry that he was leaving.

I was angry with myself for how long I had called that distance depth. That I had mistaken the absence of violence for love.

I don’t regret throwing the ring.

I regret how long I tried to deserve it.

I see now how badly I wanted his quiet to mean something generous. I dressed his absence up as depth because it hurt less that way. His avoidance looked like safety because it was soft.

It took me a long time to admit that distance is not love,

and calm is not the same as care.

The question, then, is not who feels more, but who regulates more.

Relational authority is less about whose voice is louder and more about where the moment is heading. It gathers around the partner whose responses are steadier, whose reactions do not immediately sharpen the air. Over time, intimacy settles around the one who remains composed even when voices rise. Influence is quiet. It builds through consistency, rather than intensity.

Even in secure relationships, balance is rarely exact. Regulation shifts—under stress, in conflict, in the small, private frictions of ordinary life—and there are moments when one partner is simply steadier than the other. Asymmetry does not disappear; it moves. In healthy intimacy, that influence does not harden into hierarchy. It remains fluid, adjusting as circumstances shift.

Strategic restraint is not suppression but a refusal to be pulled into escalation. Passive restraint yields; strategic restraint absorbs impact and redirects. Over time, the partner who regulates, rather than reacts, becomes the emotional axis of the relationship—the quiet reference point around which everything begins to settle. The atmosphere adjusts to that steadiness. And that asymmetry, subtle and often unnoticed, becomes influence.

And yet, steadiness is not always read as strength. There are relationships in which the calmer partner is mistaken for the colder one. In those moments, regulation can look like distance. When one partner absorbs raised voices, sharp words, even threats without visible agitation, it can feel less like composure and more like absence. Less like steadiness and more like not caring. Volatility, then, begins to feel like proof of aliveness—evidence that the love and fire still burn. The steadier partner risks being seen not as the center, but as a wall.

Here, the question changes.

What happens when calm is mistaken for detachment?

Regulation without warmth can harden into silence. And silence, over time, erodes trust just as surely as volatility erodes stability.

So is that a failure of the steady one, or a projection of the volatile one?

It can be both.

The calm one may believe that they are protecting the relationship by absorbing the escalation and choosing nonreaction. They may believe they are holding the line. But without words and reassurance, without spoken communication when things deescalate, that steadiness can begin to feel like indifference. A lack of care. What was meant to be containment begins to resemble absence.

At the same time, the more volatile partner may not be reacting to the present moment at all, but to older fears—abandonment, dismissal, rejection. The familiar ache of not being heard. Of not being understood. When there is no visible reaction, no proof that love still remains in heated moments to confirm care, all they see is a confirmation of those fears. And the cycle perpetuates. Calm becomes proof of not caring.

If no one names what is actually happening, intimacy crumbles. One grows quieter. The other grows louder. Each misreads the other in situations far from the truth.

Steadiness needs tenderness.

Restraint needs explanation.

Otherwise? Calm turns cold.

And influence turns into quiet disconnection.

I did not always know the difference.

So many times I wanted him to raise his voice. To be flustered. Angry.

I wanted a reaction.

I grew up around raised voices. Around the idea that if you cared, you reacted.

And if you didn’t react, you didn’t care.

Anger was never absence. It was proof that something mattered.

Silence, on the other hand, felt like indifference.

I grew accustomed to noise. To emotion that spilled over.

To the heavy, messy; rawness of it all. Because it meant love was real.

So I mirrored that. I grew to expect that in my own relationships.

I thought that was what love looked like.

It took me a long time to realise—and I’m still getting there—that sometimes,

what feels like distance

was simply someone

trying not to break you.

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It is unsettling how a man once standing before a firing squad could emerge transformed, as though death itself had rearranged his values. Imagine staring extinction in the face. Point blank. When one stands just a whisker away from death, illusions fall away. The trivial loses its grip. What remains is embarrassingly simple: breath in your lungs, water to drink, sunlight on your skin, the warmth of shared laughter. Things so ordinary we overlook them in our hunger for more.

We’re conditioned to chase symbols: status, titles, the reassuring weight of a paycheck. None of these are inherently wrong, in moderation. Yet too often, the ambition we chase feels borrowed. A script we didn’t write. A hunger that may have never been ours. We feed it anyway. And mistake the exhaustion for purpose.

Productivity offers a seductive clarity—the illusion that movement equates to meaning. Measurable wins, applause on demand, dashboards proving you’re “moving forward”.

It’s tidy. Familiar. Quantifiable.

Safe.

Then there’s The Alchemist, a book I return to occasionally when the noise gets too loud.

Santiago goes after treasure, believing it to be something fixed, external, glittering. What he discovers instead is that the pursuit reshapes him before it rewards him. By the time the gold appears, it’s almost an afterthought. What matters has already taken place—the treasure is not meaningless, but no longer decisive.

The real return was the chase: lessons etched in fear, love, desert stars, life itself.

The alchemist puts it simply:

It’s a quiet bomb, unsettling the idea of treasure altogether. Not simply what is gained, but what one has the discernment to see—and the depth to value.

Not what you grab. It’s what you learn to see.

The work, then, turns inward. A slow recalibration; learning to notice what is actually worth holding onto.

Perhaps wealth was never accumulation at all. Only presence.

Machiavelli understood this well: fortune flees unsteady hands. What one acquires means little without the capacity to sustain it.

One need not stand before a firing squad to realise this.

Pause.

It is simply enough to reconsider what you have been calling treasure.

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The air is crisp

mornings fresh, serene

the gleam of beginnings

captured within

the bumps raised on my skin

my soul finds its breath

pregnant with

the scent of Spring

seeking refuge in the green

whispers in the wind

light refusing to dim

-

i take

a deep breath in.

there is light

there is life

i look around

i am home.

-

Because I never left.