Conscious uncoupling

So I learned something new today. 

This term - Conscious uncoupling - was not coined by Gwyneth Paltrow. Rather, it was Katherine Woodward Thomas who introduced this phrase in 2009 as a better alternative to a messy divorce.

I think this conscious uncoupling can apply to any long term relationship - married or unmarried. 

But I wonder if only one person can be party to this? 

My twist on this phrase is the slow, untangling one needs to do in order to step away from a relationship that has two people intertwined emotionally, physically, socially, financially.

My relationship ended over two years ago. The financial detachment was pretty quick because we were both in a foreign country and didn't have a chance to merge our finances like we did back home. 

The physical separation was of course aided by covid and the ensuing lockdown rules. That made it pretty easy for me to sit in my room and stew in the marinade of my anger, sadness, memories, confusion, etc.

The emotional dissolution has been a pretty crazy ride as I'm certain anyone can guess. I am actually doing great, except when I'm not. Two years down the line and you may still catch me feeling a bit cuckoo over everything and nothing.

I realised I still pray to the god his family introduced me to. Little male characters in anime remind me of his little brother who was tiny when I first met him. Some older woman on TikTok resembles his mother, I think. And the biggest thing that makes me stop in shock is how i feel when I come across his cousins' social media posts/stories and wonder why they didn't bring him along for their fun times. He used to include them in all his activities back home. Are they not taking him along for their fun nights out on town and stuff? I feel a bit of resentment. Then I catch myself. And I am like WTFFF. Should I be caring to this extent?

That's what I mean - is it conscious uncoupling if only one person is actively trying to disentangle themselves slowly?

I came across this documentary about minimalism on Netflix and there was a person there who spoke about how they felt trapped when they got a promotion and wondered if that's what their entire life was going to be like. There was instant recognition there because that's what I felt towards the end of my relationship and when I was battling with myself about staying or leaving. Staying for the familiarity or leaving because I love myself. I am so glad 2020 me took the big decision to be brave and chose myself. 

So, while I am still a bit raw emotionally, I am very happy where I am today.

Just wondering how long till I see the end of this one person conscious uncoupling thing?

A fine, fucking Sunday - thank you BTS!

 I love Bangtan so much.

The end of the epic 4-day PTD in Las Vegas! And what a fucking finish to a legendary moment in life.

Fav chaotic duo

 

Everything felt different somehow in the last show.

Black Swan seemed to have new choreo. 

JK seemed even more energetic than his usual self if that's possible.

Tae was so jumpy and happy. 

Just model Tae walking the runway lol

Jimin and JK were cutely running around photobombing the members during Life Goes On. hehe.

Suga inundated with hundreds of 'Yoongi, marry me' posters hahahah. And he was like there are many drive-through wedding places in Las Vegas hahahaha

hahaha

Speaking of posters - there were many witty and cute ones. 

I loved what Hobi was wearing here. (Can't seem to find a full body pic right now)

I was so proud of JK and Hobi's English speeches. They have become so fluent in the language. This motivates me immensely to learn Korean. The Bangtan Academy classes begin in May - I'm so excited!!!!

And Hobi took a moment out of his speech time to thank Jin for still delivering a world class performance despite his injury so that bts on stage looked like the cohesive team they are. I believe Jin seemed really shy and a bit overwhelmed at this praise from his dance leader. During his own speech, Jin expressed regret that he hurt himself which hindered the quality of performance BTS is known for and he apologised to his band members. Tae was having none of that and immediately stood up and went up to Jin to say NO, you are not a burden to us, okay!!! 😭

Oh the fuzzy warm feelings don't stop there. Joon initiated hugs with his members. Now that makes me proud idk why lol. When he stepped to share his final thoughts, JK went 'our boss' hehehhehehehe.

my fav duo ever 

He was also in a nostalgic mood as he went all the way back to the AHL days when they were cleaning hotels and asking people to come to their concert.

Joon gave a full bow to army. And LAB dance team returned the bow to Bangtan.

THE ENDING WAS LEGENDARY. I mean Joon had been hinting something was coming because he kept saying stay with us till the end. BUT THAT ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!

When I heard the heard the words 'WE ARE BULLETPROOF' and saw the June 10th date, I literally flopped my legs and squealed loudly and sat up on my bed. hahahaha....After I calmed down, I found my own instinctive reaction so hilarious. 

I am so happy. Thank you, BTS for always colouring my life with joy. I will keep praying for only the best things for you.

BTS IS COMING!!

Why I don't want kids

There's one thing I've been increasingly certain of over the past couple of years. I don't want kids of my own. 

I have always liked children. I think they are adorable lil humans. And I actually think I'd be a good parent. When I was younger, a family of my own obviously meant children - either one or two girls. I even had names figured out. 

But now all that desire is slowly vanishing to be replaced with apathy.

It's nothing to do with currently being single and not having a romantic partner. I was in a long term relationship for a decade. Like most young people, starting a family was always a plan but a very distant one. Somehow, we always had plenty of good reasons to not consider that seriously - not ready for kids, not mature enough, no financial stability. Both of us were definitely not ready to step into the next stage of adulthood. 

But I saw plenty of people around me, in the same situation, having kids and while being parents is challenging, they seemed to be doing okay for the most part. 

Anyway, I'm just glad I am not a parent at this time. I will continue to love children. I will also be glad that life brought me here to this stage in my life where I am child free and happy about it.

My reasons - which are in no particular order - are as follows.

1. I'm lazy and don't want to bother with the daily task of taking care of any kids.
2. I'm against the idea of feeling vulnerable. Little humans we birth are walking about in the world - unprotected, open to scary incidents. My heart cannot take this emotional upheaval.
3. The cost of raising children is high. It's not fair for kids to see their parents struggle financially, I think.
4. The idea of pregnancy has started to be very unappealing. I didn't have any opinion about it before because I just accepted that it's something women have to go through if they want children but now I'm decidedly turning my back against nine whole months of aches and what-not. Just very unfair of god or whoever designed our fragile human bodies.
5. The mother is always going to be the primary caregiver. Am I up for the biggest, most enduring role of my life? No, I am not.

None of us chose to be born. I'm sure a lot of us love that we are alive and that we get to experience this revolutionary act of choosing to live every single day. But I'm equally sure many of us would rather not exist. And then there's this daunting, inevitability of old age and illness which is frankly scarier than death. Do I want to be responsible for a human being who has to experience these two scary things? Thankfully, not everyone is destined to suffer a painful decline into ageing and then death.

But because life is long, I have left open the minuscule possibility of me changing my mind. I hope I do not. But in case I do, then there's always adoption. Because I sure as heck will not be birthing any human. I am in my mid 30s and I'm already very tired and achy. I refuse to take on any physical challenges.

Enjoy this imperfect picture of perfect tulips, please.

A Small Place

Wrote this review in December 2020

As I was reading Jamaica Kincaid’s creative no-fiction essay/book ‘A Small Place’, I found myself thoroughly relishing it. I loved the idea of this voice addressing tourists, specifically white and western, and kind of holding them up by their breeches as she ticked off a million reasons why they need to pay attention, not just money, to the land they have set foot in.

I am not an essay/book critic. In fact, I really do not know how to sensibly critique any piece of work. So I will just stick to what I remember of the essay and my personal feelings.

 

I read ‘A Small Place’ in December 2020. Not a lot of time has gone by since, yet I do not remember most details from it. (Should I chuck it to everything else fighting for their share of my attention economy?) What I do recall is coming away thinking how cool and interesting this essay was. And it now has a place in my favourite reads list.

 

Ms Kincaid threw in a bunch of words, some volatile emotions, a bunch of historical facts, and a generous heap of social commentary to create this exquisite work.

 

To give a gist of the subject matter, it is centred on tourism in the island of Antigua in the Caribbean region. Formerly a British colonial land, the small island and its inhabitants are still experiencing lingering jolts of the British yoke even after all these years.

 

She has dealt a strong bittersweet, melancholic stroke to this piece. 

 

The acerbic tone was really enjoyable. She doesn’t mince words when it comes to bashing the British, the tourists, and even the island natives. It is angry, it is cutting, and it is definitely thought-provoking. I imagine every reader will feel the pervasive mood of anger and bitterness from the first to the final page.

 

Immediately, I connected it to modern day tourism and the Instagram hashtag holidays. I don’t know what Antigua looks like but I visualise blue waters, white grainy sands and palm trees. 

 

Our lives are intertwined so firmly with social media that words like ‘beach holidays’, ‘sand, ‘hotels, ‘tourism’, etc., instantly take me to the image I described above. And who would be the humans in those pictures but the white people!

 

If I remember correctly, the writer describes the thoughts of the tourists towards the locals and vice versa. Each looks down at the other. But the locals, who also work at the hotels, have to hide their thoughts behind gratitude and politeness reserved for moneyed guests. 

 

Ms Kincaid’s anger is aimed at the hundreds of years of British colonial rule and its lasting impact over the people it once ruled. It is pointed at the corruption that is rife in Antigua and the government which seems hopeless. It is aimed at the tourists who live tedious, ordinary, dull lives back home but have the temerity to spend a little bit of money (and gain a lot of value for that amount) at a lovely beachside resort in an exotic part of the world. These tourists don’t care to know what is going on beyond their resort walls. They come for a holiday but they stay inside these ‘civilised’ spaces. All they are concerned about is their hotel pools, taking in some sunshine, and walking by the beaches.

 

The corruption is rampant in Antigua. Anything is available for those who have money. Like the universal totem of corruption, the rich get richer while the poor remain downtrodden. There’s a library she talks about which is almost like the symbol of the endemic corruption. It’s been years since there was talk of fixing and restoring the library to its former glory but it remains dilapidated to the day she wrote this piece.

 

It gives an overarching view of the Antigua then. I found out this essay was published, in 1988, one year after I was born. I don’t suppose they’ve managed to root out corruption there in the last 33 years.

 

But reading this felt sort of comforting. She has written this with so much passion. There is a sense of an animal sniping at a person’s heels. It has that energy. I wish I could write like that. I also appreciated learning about Antigua’s history and reading about the powerful, crooked local people there.

 

It is 2021. We cannot escape dialogues on race, ethnicity, slavery, colonialism, caste, capitalism, etc. Our world has shrunken and broadened almost concurrently. So reading essays/books like this presents us with a worldview that feels familiar (corruption, poverty) and foreign (slavery, white colonialism) at the same time.

 

I’m also guilty of very much enjoying, especially, the literary clobbering she doled out to the entitled white tourists (Oops).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FUCK YOU.......but I still love you very much, 25/21

I'm absolutely livid at that last bit they showed at that ep finale!!! Why the fuck would you rub salt on my wound??? I'm never recovering from this betrayal ever. All that fan theories I read and held on to with the biggest hopes have been dashed.. ARGHHHHHHH I'm so miserable...

DEEP BREATHSSS

There was a big moment that stood out to me from ep 16 (apart from that nasty bit at the very end)...The scene in between the episode in the tunnel where they thrash out their issues. It felt so real and emotional I almost forgot I was watching a show. I've never ever felt that the stuff I was watching was actually being played out in real life. It was really a strange feeling to lose it for a few seconds. I truly believed in that moment where they were breaking up and then Heedo asks Yijin if he ever loved her and he is incredulous and angry at the question. Then as she leaves, he calls out to her twice. That entire scene was brilliant.

I don't want to make this all about the fucking finale but I do want to say that despite my deep anger and desire to curse the writer/director this very moment, I think they are amazing and I loved this show with all my heart. After a slew of uninspiring, boring shows that I have been watching recently, this one was excellent and jam packed with all that makes a drama beautiful, loved and enduring.

Kim Taeri, I have loved you ever since I watched Little Forest and The Handmaiden. Nam Joohyuk, I thought you were just eye-candy and I'm sorry I didn't respect your talent apart from enjoying your work in Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Soo. 

Now I think you both are the greatest thing since sliced bread. The characters of Na Heedo and Baek Yijin are tailor made for you. 

I love all the other characters - Go Yurim, Moon Jiwoong, Ji Seungwan.  I love the fan/rival/friend relationship between Heedo and Yurim. I love the friendship of Jiwoong and Seungwan. I loved how Heedo's mother was such a career woman. I loved Yijin's mom being so openly and deeply in love with her husband. 

The writer/s did an amazing job taking us back to the time of the South Korean financial crisis and showing us how it impacted the people there. There's a lot to unpack here about this but I will leave it to people who know about this better and can articulate it.

I can't write anymore because my heart hurts and I'm angry about the ending. But let me put on my mature and subjective hat on for this sentence and admit that the story did not NOT make sense. Not every love story gets a happy ending and that's okay.  I just have never wished so hard for a Korean drama to be cliche. I will never ever take that for granted now. 

Let me go back to crying and mending my broken heart.

this gendered inheritance

Often I think about why men never seem to understand the heavy burden that the women in their life shoulder when it comes to cooking, cleaning, and basically managing the household. 

Even for those women who enjoy cooking or like tidying up - the tedium of doing these tasks repeatedly from now unto forever is not especially enticing. In fact, I'm sure I am not wrong when I say the women would appreciate it if they didn't have to do these things at all. If they could reserve these things as a hobby or as a fun way to decompress.

But as surely as we must breathe, we must eat and we need a certain standard of hygiene. So there starts the endless cycle of sorting through meals according to taste and health needs, and the picking up of socks and washing bed sheets. 

There are, of course, men who do take up their share of household chores. Men who cook. Men who clean. Men who remember to make calls to fix things. But I have never seen men become frustrated or angry or sad at the prospect of having to do these things which, to me, demonstrates how these tasks are not something that men think about deeply or plan their days around. For instance, a woman might be enjoying some time outside the house with her friends but she could be thinking about the right moment she needs to leave so that she can go home and get her laundry and start dinner. 

Or maybe I am wrong and men do have the ghost of household management responsibilities following them around like women do.

Nowadays I think of my mother and my aunt who manage our house and who do the thankless tasks of cooking, cleaning, replenishing, etc. I say thankless because everyone automatically assumes the food will be cooked, the dishes will be washed, laundry folded, toilets cleaned, kitchen rolls and rubbish bags replenished. It can seem like small tasks to buy and replace the toilet paper. And sure enough they are when compared to working in a lab to find the cure for cancer or whatever! But oh, the daily grind that activates the tedious work of living must be one of the biggest curses of the gender divide. 

Our meals are not the simple sandwich/omlette variety. There is rice - to be washed, steamed. There is daal - washed, steamed in the pressure cooker, sautéed and seasoned. There is the meat dish and the vegetable dish - washed, measured, cut, fried. There is the salad. There is the chutney. Even the quickest, most experienced cook will take at least one hour. For mere mortals like me, it takes up to 3 hours to prepare dinner. This is then followed by serving food, washing up the huge amount of utensils that went into fixing up the meal, cleaning up the kitchen and throwing away the rubbish. 

I am planning to cook dinner this weekend to give my mom and aunt time off from the kitchen. I have been going through a mental list of dishes I can cook, checking the ingredients since Thursday morning. These are not some fancy meals I'm planning to make. This is the reality for most women.

All this laborious chore is time-consuming, physically draining. I don't want accolades if I can have time and peace instead.

My dad works long hours. He comes home tired. 

My mom stays home. She prepares his food.

When my dad asks if there is more salad or more daal, I feel affronted for my mother's sake because it means that perhaps the dinner in front of him is not really up to his taste. That something is missing. 

Mothers who work all their lives - at the office, at home, at managing different relationships out in the society - never really retire. Because (you guessed it!) families need to eat, houses need to be cleaned, items need to be replenished. 

This gendered inheritance - I hope we can stop passing it on to our daughters.