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What My Oldest Friends Said

When I finally told my middle school friends what had happened — the accusations, the verdict, the specific charge that I was two-faced, that I had a double personality, that I was cleverly driving wedges between people — they didn’t comfort me. They didn’t say of course that’s not true, you’re wonderful. They said something more useful than that.

they said: bullshit.

And then they were precise about it. They said: you are brutally honest, Suin. Didn’t you know? Everything shows on your face. You say things out loud all the time — before you’ve finished thinking them, usually. You are too honest. You are self-centred. You want to be the main character of the show — yes, we know, that’s you. But two-faced? Driving wedges? We have known you for fifteen years. We have never seen that. Not once. That is a bad character reading.

They didn’t say I was good. They named my actual flaws — the real ones, the ones that have always been there. Brutally honest. Self-centred. Everything on my face. Too much of a main character. They called those out clearly, without softening them.

And then they said: but the specific thing she said you were? That one we have never seen.

Clever evil requires concealment. It requires strategy. It requires a hidden interior running counter to the visible surface. Brutally honest means there is no hidden interior. What you see is what there is. The face and the self are the same thing.

You cannot be both. The shaman built her case on the assumption of a dangerous underneath. My friends, who have watched me for fifteen years and seen me at my worst, are saying: there is no underneath. There is just Suin, saying it out loud, wanting to be the main character, self-centred in the particular way of someone who doesn’t know how to hide it.

That is not a profile for clever manipulation. That is a profile for someone the shaman could read at a glance — because everything was already on the table — and use.

The five voices had one thing in common: they were all inside the system. My friends were outside it. They had been kept outside deliberately, systematically, because the shaman knew that outside voices were the one thing the room with no door couldn’t survive.

She was right about that.

There is one more outside witness from within the system’s orbit — or rather, from its attempted orbit.

Another group of my friends visited as a group of three, at some point during this period. One of them told me about it later, after everything had ended.

She said she had felt uncomfortable immediately. While her two friends received warm readings — praise, encouragement, spiritual elevation — she felt singled out in the opposite direction. Her character was being pulled apart, in front of her friends, while they were being built up. She couldn’t name it at the time. It felt like being made the crazy one while everyone around her was reasonable.

The shaman offered one of them an amulet. She refused.

The shaman praised the friend who earned the most among the three. The one who earned less she demolished — not privately, but in front of the group.

There is more to say about the friend she praised.

She had been with us — with me and my ex — the very first time when she visited the shaman. We came along that day. She was in a relationship with a woman at the time.

The shaman told her she was not destined to date women. She would marry a man and have two children.

She became one of the shaman’s regulars.

I have thought about this for a long time. What it takes to hear something like that — a verdict that contradicts your current life, your current love, your current understanding of yourself — and return for more. My friend has avoidant tendencies. The kind of avoidance that makes decisive external verdicts feel like relief rather than intrusion. If the future is already decided, the difficulty of choosing disappears. You don’t have to figure out whether this relationship is right, whether this person is right, whether you are right. The shaman has already read it. The uncertainty — which is where avoidant anxiety lives — is removed.

Later, the shaman told my ex that this friend was worth keeping close. She told her to maintain the contact. My other friends who went with her for their own readings told me she was visibly flattered, already returning, already inside the system.

The shaman praised her in the group session. She had already identified her as useful — the highest earner, a friend of my ex’s, someone with her own avoidant longing for certainty. Someone who would come back. Someone worth cultivating.

She also said, at some point in that session: I think dating women is better than dating men nowadays.

The three of them were all lesbians. One of them had just been told she was destined to marry a man. The comment landed in a room where that verdict was already sitting. It was not a neutral observation about modern relationships. It was a mirror held at exactly the right angle — I see you, I am on your side, this is a safe room — said to women who had spent their lives in a world that did not routinely offer them that. The flattery was targeted. The alignment was constructed. The contradiction between you will marry a man and dating women is better was not addressed. The room received both.

They hadn’t known what they were inside when they were inside it. They understood it better once they knew how it had ended for me.

The Realtor Wife

There was one more outside witness.

We had a realtor couple — practical people, not spiritual, not therapists. They read Four Pillars of Destiny, the Chinese horoscope system based on birth data and pattern analysis. They had known my parents for years through property work. My ex and I visited them every year.

The last visit, the middle sister came too. I was exhausted from hours of driving, tearful, barely present. The husband — blunt by nature, given to cynical remarks — said something casual to my ex: I heard your parents sold the land that was giving them hard time from the listing.

My ex said: I bought it.

The husband went quiet. Uncomfortable. I didn’t register the exchange — I was too far gone.

When I got home, I accused my mother. The shaman had spent months building the case: your parents are frauds, the unfinished fence is evidence, they agreed to a contract and didn’t deliver. The framework was already in place. My mother’s explanation landed as excuse, not truth.

Then she told me about a phone call she had received.

The realtor wife had called after the visit. Not during — after. She had gone home, thought about what she had seen, and picked up the phone. She told my mother: Suin looked like a rat surrounded by cats. She looked like she was on the verge of a cliff. She looked concerning.

This woman had no context for the shaman. She didn’t know about the ceremonies or the 3am mountain or the hierarchy of the dead. She just saw me in a room and saw: cornered. On the edge.

She called my mother out of concern for someone she barely knew.

I didn’t receive it. Instead I redirected: then why did the husband say the land was giving you hard time?

My mother explained: a property on a long listing is hard work. They wanted to liquidise. His discomfort after my ex’s announcement wasn’t the discomfort of someone caught — it was the discomfort of someone who had just understood what he was looking at. He had watched me in that room. His wife had already noted the rat and the cliff. And then my ex announced she had purchased my family’s property, in front of me, while I sat unconscious and tearful.

He went quiet because he had just seen clearly. Not because there was anything to hide.

I was too inside the system to receive what either of them were offering. My mother trying to hand me the exit. The realtor wife having already called to flag what she saw. Both of them pointing at the same thing from different directions.

For months I thought the criticism was love. I thought being told what I was thinking was someone caring enough to see me clearly. I was grateful for the correction. That’s the part that’s hardest to explain to people who weren’t inside it.

It wasn’t that I was forced to believe I was the problem. It’s that believing I was the problem felt, for a long time, like finally being honest.

No one else gets to tell me what I’m thinking. I know that now. But learning it means unlearning the idea that being corrected is the same as being cared for.

I’m still working on the difference.

The thing I keep returning to: the shaman built a world where goodness was scarce and hierarchical and hers to distribute. My ex was good. Her family was good. They had been chosen by mountains, confirmed by ceremonies, elevated beyond ordinary people. And the more that goodness accumulated — the more my ex collected those confirmations — the more my ordinary human complexity looked like corruption by comparison.

The grey human — the one who is neither villain nor hero, neither fundamentally good nor cleverly evil, just a person made of the usual complicated mixture — had no place in the shaman’s world.

That’s the thing I’m reclaiming now. Not the verdict that I was good all along. Not the counter-argument that my ex was bad. Just the insistence that sorting was always the wrong frame. That the mountain doesn’t choose heroes. That no one is fundamentally better in moral quality than anyone else.

The shaman built a world where goodness was scarce.

I’m building a different one.

From a temple where I’m learning that the people who knew me longest saw the clearest — and that keeping them out was a strategy, not an accident,

Emotionally yours,

Suinny

P.S. The hardest part of recovery isn’t learning to trust others again. It’s learning to be on your own side. When you’ve spent months as one of five people telling yourself you’re crazy — how do you become your own advocate instead of your own prosecutor? It starts with this: no one else gets to tell me what I’m thinking.

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Next week: A fortuneteller told us the truth about 2025. I said: fuck destiny. Then I asked him for the moving-in date anyway.

“Why did you say something different before?”

Her answer: “That was not meant to be told at that time. I was waiting for the right moment.”

If I were submitting evidence, this would be Exhibit B — the management of timing as a form of control. Every reading, every verdict, pre-filtered through what she decided you were ready to hear.

Every reading, every verdict, every declaration — pre-filtered through what she decided you were ready to hear. The truth was always hers to manage. The timing was always hers to control. You were not receiving spiritual insight. You were receiving a curated drip of information, released when she judged the moment correct.

I asked her: “In the beginning, you told us we were compatible. You said it was remarkable how perfectly we aligned. Why did you say that then?”

She said: “Because now the situation is different. She has outgrown you. You planted a seed. You grew a plant. But it needs to be planted outside now. She’s a tree.”

I want you to sit with that metaphor.

She took credit for my ex’s growth, reframed my entire contribution to the relationship as a temporary container, and delivered it as poetry. As though the eviction were natural. Seasonal. As inevitable as a tree outgrowing its pot. You don’t blame the pot. You just move the tree outside. The pot did its job.

I was not a partner. I was a growth medium.

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The PR compliment is where I saw the technique most clearly.

In our first session — when we were still a lovely couple, when I was still a flower — the shaman told me I did good PR. She said it as a compliment. She could see the skill. She knew what it was.

My ex laughed. It’s embarrassing, she said. A joke. An affectionate one, at that point.

Later — in one of the sessions I wasn’t present for — she told my ex what she had actually meant.

I didn’t want to be rude. But the intention behind it was: she is too vain and proud of herself, although she has achieved nothing in her life. All this hard work you heard from Suin — have you seen it with your own eyes? She was faking it. She’s not diligent or hardworking. She just knows how to package things beautifully.

The compliment she gave me in the room became the accusation she delivered when I wasn’t there.

Have you seen it with your own eyes? — not a question. An instruction to doubt what your ex had already witnessed. To introduce a gap between what she knew and what she was now being asked to suspect.

This is why sok-bin gangjeong landed so completely when it arrived. She had already told my ex, in private, that the candy was hollow. By the time she said it to my face, my ex had been carrying that verdict for however long the private sessions had been running. The hollow candy in the room was not new information for my ex. It was confirmation of what she had already been told.

The compliment about PR was the bridge. She knows how to package — said to me as praise, said to my ex as exposure. Same words. Opposite meaning. The distance between those two deliveries is where the system lived.

There’s a pattern here that ran through more than the PR compliment.

When my ex and I first started dating, I told her something I had been carrying. I was ashamed of my privileged education — the years abroad, the English fluency my parents could afford that had turned into income. I told her: I don’t want to be seen only for my English. I want to be seen for my own original skills.

She received it as a quality. She said this was what she was looking for in a partner — someone who could hold their advantages with that kind of clarity.

In 2025, my ex told the shaman: Suin said she was privileged. That she was thinking so highly of herself.

The careful accounting of unearned advantage — offered in vulnerability, received as a quality worth choosing — filed as evidence of arrogance.

The PR skill was praised then exposed as fakery. The privilege admission was received as integrity then handed to the shaman as testimony against me.

Every honest thing I offered was usable. I had not understood, until it was too late to be careful, that honesty inside a closed system is not a virtue. It is inventory.

The shaman’s actual teaching about concealment is worth naming directly, because it’s so revealing about what she was building.

She told me: you spread your cards on the table. I didn’t. Your girlfriend didn’t. We can see all of you because you showed us everything. Talk less, smile more. Don’t let anyone know what you are against or what you are for.

When she said it, something in my brain flickered. I thought: that’s Aaron Burr, sir.

Not as a joke — or not only as a joke. Those are almost verbatim Aaron Burr’s words from Hamilton. The philosophy of the man who hides his cards, reveals nothing, waits for the right moment, and never commits to a position. Talk less, smile more is the ideology of careful concealment dressed up as wisdom.

And I am — I have always been — Alexander Hamilton energy. Not throwing away my shot. Saying exactly what I think, taking up the room, performing with everything I have, because what is the point of being alive if you’re going to be careful about it?

The shaman was asking me to become Aaron Burr. My entire nervous system was built against it.

She was asking this of someone who performs on a stage with a microphone. Someone whose entire way of being in the world is presence — energy moving outward, landing on people, sparking something back. My ex had come to band practice and watched me perform and caught something from it. She had said she wanted to play guitar. She had loved seeing me with a mic.

The shaman took that — took the specific thing my ex had loved about me — and reclassified it as pride. As a flaw. And my ex, who had stood at rehearsals feeling something good, started scolding me for wanting to be seen.

“You’re not humble.”

Said to a performer. By someone who had loved watching her perform.

And then she turned to my ex and said the same thing in a different form: being queer is a weakness, don’t display it. Having visible opinions is a weakness, conceal it. Your true self, your real nature — these are cards you don’t put on the table.

She was building two half-people. A hidden ex. An erased me.

Neither of us, in the world she was constructing, was allowed to simply be what we were.

I had different traits from what she considered virtuous. I connect. I perform. I take up space. I show my cards. These are not flaws that need correcting. They are just me. The version of me that existed before the shaman decided they were evidence of bad character.

I’m taking them back.

A therapist friend said something after hearing all of this: taking up space is not something to apologise for. And then she said: but consider sliding your PR with timing. In collective culture, where visibility reads as pride before it reads as warmth — let the room settle first. Let people arrive at you rather than arriving at them. Not because you are too much. Because the room sometimes needs a moment before it knows how to receive what you are.

The shaman said: hide yourself.

My friend said: you are worth the careful introduction.

Both instructions can sound similar from a distance. They are not the same thing at all. One is a verdict. The other assumes there is something real that deserves to be seen.

I am still learning the difference between shrinking and timing. The shaman made me believe they were the same thing. They are not.

From a temple where I’m learning that being fully visible was never the problem — only the timing of the introduction,

Emotionally yours,

Suinny

Next week: The five closest people in my life. Why I kept them out. What they said when I finally let them in.

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The Mountain Chooses Its Hero

She told my ex: “The mountain chooses a person to be a hero every decade. I helped one over the last decade. Now I know who the successor is. It’s you. I’m going to tell you how much you will earn monthly over the next few years, and where you should proceed.”

Then she paused. “Do you know why the mountain chose you?”

My ex said: “Because... I’m a good person?”

The shaman laughed. “You know the answer.”

She didn’t confirm it. She laughed and let my ex confirm it herself. My ex supplied the conclusion. The shaman just built the room where that conclusion felt inevitable.

Once you believe you have been chosen by a mountain — once you believe you are the hero of the next decade — the person questioning that narrative isn’t a concerned partner. She’s an obstacle. She’s the thing the hero has to move past to reach her destiny.

Good was the shaman’s primary weapon. She used it constantly, deliberately, like currency. She praised my ex for being a good person in every session. She told her the mountain chose her because of her fundamental goodness. She made my ex feel that her moral quality was visible to the spiritual world in ways ordinary people couldn’t perceive.

And the more that currency accumulated — the more my ex collected those confirmations of her exceptional goodness — the more my ordinary human complexity looked like corruption by comparison.

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Cleverly Evil

The shaman had a specific framing for me. Not bad. Not evil. Something more precise.

The word she used was 영악하다. In the region where I had lived — the same region as the shaman — that word is used as a compliment. A kind of sharpness. Not being easily pushed over. When she said it, I thought: oh, they must have meant something good, but it came out wrong.

At the time, I was still enough of myself to give the benefit of the doubt. Not yet completely inside the system.

The fuller meaning arrived later.

She said: over normal people, you’d be seen as an okay, normally acceptable good person. But with your ex and her family — because they are fundamentally better in moral quality — you are spotted for what you really are.

What this framing does: everyone who thought well of you is simply not elevated enough to detect what they detected. The reliable witnesses to your true nature were only the people inside the system.

And when the readings contradicted each other — when something she had said before didn’t match what she was saying now — we asked. Her answer: “That was not meant to be told at that time. I was waiting for the right moment.”

She always found it funny when people discovered her quotation marks and got angry. She said: have you seen the look on their faces? I was sometimes her trophy. My ex was her trophy more often. When someone became proud of something they had, she wanted to demolish it. The performance was always in service of her authority, not our well-being.

And underneath it all: a hierarchy of moral worth. My ex and her family at the top — chosen by mountains, spiritually elevated. Me at the bottom. The sorting itself was the problem. But neither of us could see that from inside it.

The Purity Frame

There is a specific logic to the contamination charge that I want to name precisely, because it did more damage than the charge itself.

The shaman’s argument was not simply that I had done bad things. It was that my ex was pure and naive, and I — cleverly evil, fraudulent by family — had used that purity against her. My ex hadn’t chosen a way of living that wasn’t from the heart. I had installed it in her. She hadn’t grown in directions the system couldn’t sanction. She had been corrupted. She hadn’t made her own decisions inside the relationship. She had been manipulated into them by someone who knew exactly what she was doing.

My family was part of the charge. We were fraudulent — not me alone, but the household I came from. That fraudulence was structural, inherited, constitutional. It ran in how we spoke, how we presented, how we moved through rooms. And because it was in me from the beginning, everything I had ever given my ex — the confidence, the expanded imagination, the three years of real work — was contaminated at the source. Not gifts. Infections.

My ex, by contrast, was naive. Pure. Someone who needed to be protected rather than held accountable.

I want to hold that word for a moment. Naive.

Calling someone naive is not neutral. It is not a compliment dressed as concern. It is a removal of agency. If my ex was naive, then she could not have chosen anything inside our relationship. Everything that happened to her happened to her. Her growth was not her becoming: it was my corruption of her. Her choices were not her decisions: they were evidence of her innocence being exploited.

The naivety framing accomplished two things simultaneously. It protected my ex from responsibility for what she chose, including what she chose to do to me. And it made my own good faith impossible: every kind thing I had done became proof of the cleverness of the evil. The more genuinely I loved her, the more sophisticated the contamination.

There is no version of this framing where I can be innocent. Cleverly evil means the cleverness is the evil. The more carefully I behaved, the more calculated it looked. The more I gave, the more I had taken.

It also meant that the people best positioned to assess me — the ones who had known me for years, who had watched me across different circumstances, who didn’t see what the shaman saw — were simply not elevated enough to detect it. My friends, my colleagues, everyone outside the system: lacking the spiritual sight to see what was actually there. The witnesses who might have contradicted the verdict were pre-discredited as morally insufficient to see clearly.

The ones elevated enough to see the truth? Her family. The shaman. The system.

What She Told Us About Herself

At some point, the shaman said this: “When stubborn people come for fortunetelling, I say random things. Because they won’t listen anyway.”

She said this out loud. In front of us.

Once you understand that, every reading becomes suspect. Every verdict, every ceremony, every “this is what you are thinking” — you cannot know which ones were real and which were random. You were never meant to know. Certainty was the product. Questioning was the problem.

She also told us a story about a client. The woman had come to ask why her husband was cheating on her. The shaman’s response: “Have you seen yourself in the mirror? You’ve gained weight. That’s why.”

She told us this story as though it were ordinary. The husband’s choice, the husband’s action, the husband’s responsibility — none of these is relevant. Only the woman’s body. I said nothing. By that point, the room had been established as one in which objecting proved your stubbornness. But I remember thinking: this is messed up. That thought existed. I filed it somewhere and kept quiet.

I’m taking it out of the file now.

She also told me I ranked people. That I graded them. That this was a character flaw.

She said this while calling people low caste. While telling me my ancestors didn’t match my ex’s rank. While running the most elaborate hierarchy in the room — herself and her chosen ones at the top, fundamentally better, humble and ungreedy and destined for Buddhist nunhood, they hadn’t yet reached. She graded everyone in every session.

I sat there absorbing the accusation and turning it inward. She’s probably right. I do judge people for their earnestness.

It took me a long time to see that the person accusing me of grading people was the one holding the grade book.

I want to be honest about what the sisters were actually responding to — and what I was actually doing in those conversations.

The shaman’s teaching about true intentions was universal: everyone’s surface statements conceal deeper meaning underneath. What you say is never quite what you mean. The real meaning requires reading beneath — inferring, interpreting. Which sounds like emotional intelligence. Which is also, when applied systematically, a framework that makes every direct statement illegitimate. Nothing can be taken at face value.

My therapist had taught us something different: when we talk to each other, put what you need into 온유한 그릇 — a meek container. The smallest, most receivable form possible. Not suppression. Not concealment. Structure. So the content can actually land.

When the sisters told me I was pretending to be a good person, I was using that skill. I was trying to be the therapy-trained, considered version of myself — using the gentlest containers I could find.

But they remembered a different version. The one from before — when I was suffering through illness, grabbing whatever container was closest, putting my needs into whatever vessel was available and throwing it toward the nearest person. Not cruelty. Not character. The behaviour of someone whose resources had been stripped to almost nothing, reaching for whatever was left.

I can say honestly: that version was ungrateful. Not as a permanent verdict — as a description of what chronic illness and isolation and fear produce in a person who has run out of care.

The sisters had seen that version. They had fixed it as the portrait.

The version using gentle containers — the one trying to communicate carefully — they read as performance. As the clever concealment the shaman had already named. The considered version arrived and was read as proof of the uncivilised version they already knew.

I wasn’t pretending to be good. I was trying to become the version of myself that had always existed underneath the illness. But the order of those two things — which version they saw first — meant that the trying looked like acting.

From a temple where I’m learning that the hierarchy was the system, and I was not at the bottom of it — I was outside it entirely,

Emotionally yours,

Suinny

Next week: What it looks like when someone tells you that you are a seed that needs to be replanted — and you believe them.

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The Numbers

Let me start with who was involved.

The five voices.

The shaman. My ex. Her middle sister. Her youngest sister. And me — against myself.

Five people, all agreeing on one thing: I was the problem. Crazy. Fake. Obsessive. Possessed. Selfish. Five voices. One target. And the target believed all five of them.

But here’s the part I couldn’t see from inside it.

At first, you think the correction is clarity. Someone is finally telling you the truth.

Then you begin rehearsing explanations before conversations happen.

Then you start asking whether something will cause conflict instead of whether it is true.

By the end, you are your own prosecutor. The shaman doesn’t need to be in the room. You are doing her job for her.

This Is How You Are Thinking

The shaman would say: “This is how you are thinking. This is how you are feeling.”

Not as a question. As a statement — delivered with the certainty of someone who has spiritual access to your interior world that you yourself don’t have.

In the beginning, I said, “No, that’s not what I meant. That’s not how I was feeling.”

They called that being stubborn. Giving excuses instead of accepting the truth.

My ex put it more precisely: “Even if you don’t feel that way, if there’s even one per cent of it being true, that’s something you have to accept about yourself.”

Think about that logic.

Someone tells you what you’re thinking. You deny it. That denial becomes proof they’re right — you’re just too stubborn to accept the truth. The sign is always the same: the room with no door.

If you deny what they tell you → you’re stubborn.

If you accept what they tell you → you’ve admitted they’re right.

Either way, your internal reality gets replaced with theirs. You cannot win in that room. You can only stay in it until you stop trying to leave.

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The Sister Hair Example

My ex’s youngest sister told my ex that having short hair didn’t look good on her — that she should grow it long. Normal sister opinion. The kind of thing people say.

Here is who she was, before the shaman named her.

She knew about both her sisters’ queerness and accepted them without hesitation. She was, as a heterosexual, a genuine fan of gay culture — enthusiastic, warm, at home in it. She made blunt comments sometimes. That was her personality: direct, unfiltered, not always reading the room. Not hostile. Just herself.

The shaman looked at this girl and said: she is conservative. She doesn’t want her sisters to date women. She wants them to date men.

Then the hair comment arrived, and the shaman had the evidence she needed.

She told the youngest sister, “You’re being jealous. You want your big sister to date men.”

The sister denied it.

My ex scolded her for not accepting her “true intentions.”

The sister couldn’t escape. Deny the interpretation → you’re not accepting truth. Accept the interpretation → you’ve confessed to jealousy and homophobia. The shaman took a blunt personality and assigned it a motive. She took directness and called it concealed homophobia. She took a girl who had accepted her sisters without question and made her the threat inside the family.

The room had no door. The only variable was how long before you stopped trying to find one.

The Complete Isolation

The five-against-one dynamic was just the start. The shaman systematically removed every other voice.

Friends: She gave spiritual reasons. “Some of them are too possessed. Too depressed. Too stubborn. Don’t tell them about the ceremonies — they won’t understand. And if you tell them, the rituals will be tainted. The money you spent on them will be worthless.”

She made me complicit in my own isolation. If I told my friends what was happening, I would ruin the expensive spiritual work we were doing. Then she sent me a blog post. The argument: smart people don’t care about social networks. When you become successful, the network orbits you. Connection is something you earn through achievement.

You have your family. Why do you need friends? People stick around when you are successful.

The isolation didn’t feel like deprivation. It felt like focus. By the time she said you have your family, the family she meant was my ex’s. My parents had been framed as frauds. My ex’s family had been positioned as my real family. My friends had been reclassified as spiritually dangerous or simply unnecessary.

When I finally told my middle school friends what had happened, they said two things. The first: you sound like someone who just got out of a cult. The second was harder. They were not happy that I hadn’t contacted them when it was happening. They felt betrayed — not because I had disappeared, but because when they had tried to reach me, I had defended my ex and the shaman. I had chosen the system’s version of events over what the people who knew me longest could see clearly.

The isolation doesn’t just remove outside voices. It turns you into the instrument of your own removal.

Parents: The shaman told us not to contact my parents. “They abandoned you. And they’re selfish like you.”

She wasn’t entirely wrong. My parents are Christians. When I came out as queer, my mother ghosted me for months while we lived in the same apartment. My father told me I was possessed by Satan. When I was sick, he refused to pay for doctors: if you wanted independence, fix your own problems.

They had rejected me. The shaman knew this. She took that reality and reframed it as a spiritual reason to cut them off entirely. She didn’t lie. She just reframed. And I had already learned I couldn’t rely on my parents. So cutting them off felt like accepting reality, not isolation.

By the time the shaman’s control was complete, I had no family support, no friends, no partner’s family — they were being recruited against me — and no self. I’d been told I was fake and couldn’t be trusted. Just my ex. The only one I could trust. The only one to lean on.

This is why the control was so complete. When you have no one else — when your Christian parents have already told you you’re possessed — you can’t risk losing the one person who stayed. Even when that person is being used to destroy you.

Beyond the isolation, she dismantled how I saw myself. You’re all fake. We’re all truthful. Making it a binary: either you believe us, which is the truth, or you believe yourself, which is lies. You have bad qualities that cannot be borne — not flaws to work on, but qualities so unbearable no one could tolerate them. Your emotions are fake. Happy? Fake. Sad? Fake. Loving? Fake. Any self-esteem you have is just arrogance, making it impossible to defend myself without proving her point.

And the worst part: how the shaman reframed our entire history together.

She had pity. You had an obsession. It was never love.

Every memory of being loved — rewritten as pity. Every moment of connection — rewritten as my obsession. I repeated these words in my unsent letters until they became my truth. This is what it looks like to lose not just a relationship but your entire sense of being lovable inside it.

From a temple where I’m learning that my own account of my own interior is the only one with real authority,

Emotionally yours, Suinny

P.S. If you’ve ever been in a room where agreeing proves the verdict and disagreeing also proves the verdict, you already know what it costs to stay. And you already know the only way out isn’t through the argument. It’s through the handwriting. The accumulation. The case file you build yourself.

Next week: She called me cleverly evil. The distinction mattered to her. I want to show you why.

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There were five months of silence before that conversation. Five months during which I told no one what had happened. This is about why.

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Why No One Could Reach Me

From the outside, the rational question is: why didn’t you leave when people told you it was wrong?

Friends who said cult. Monks who said this doesn’t sound right. Other shamans. The nun. My parents. Her friends. People who heard fragments of the story and said: that sounds off.

I didn’t believe any of them.

Not because I was stupid. Not because I was weak. Because the system had already provided the interpretation for exactly that moment. When someone from outside says it sounds wrong, the system hands you the answer before you need to think: they don’t understand the dynamics. They’re not inside this. They can’t see what you can see from here.

The friends who said cult — they don’t have the full context. The monks — a different spiritual framework. The other shamans — professional jealousy. The nun — she only heard part of the story. My parents — the shaman had already told me they were frauds, their concern was not to be trusted. Her friends — they only know one side.

Every alarm that arrived from outside became, inside the system, confirmation that the system was right. That I was surrounded by people who loved me too much to see me clearly. That only the shaman had the perception to locate what was actually there.

The system had pre-answered every outside voice before it arrived.

Looking back, this was probably Exhibit A.

And underneath all of that was something deeper. I didn’t believe the people defending me because I genuinely believed they couldn’t see what the system could see. The shaman had found the wound: the hollow, the mother’s silence, the classroom where I came first and nobody liked me anyway — and named it with such confidence that their kindness felt like blindness. They were saying something nice. They were trying to protect me. They didn’t understand that the shaman had seen through to the real thing.

I got out the only way it was possible to get out. Not through an external door. Not because someone finally said the right thing. Through my own handwriting, accumulated over months, until it outweighed the verdict. I wrote journals. I built the evidence myself — witness and investigator simultaneously — until the shape of what had happened became undeniable in my own testimony.

This series is that case file. Written from inside. The only direction the truth could travel.

There is something that sits underneath all of this. Something that explains — not excuses — how I got here.

My mum stopped speaking to me for months after I came out. We lived in the same apartment. She moved through the same rooms and pretended I didn’t exist. My father told me I was possessed by Satan for being queer.

My mother is a territorial feral cat. Capable of warmth, until something triggers the territory instinct — then she attacks with whatever stored information she has been holding. The silence after I came out was one long crouch. You never knew which version you were walking into.

Living with her after coming out meant reading the apartment the way you read a room with an animal you cannot fully trust. Not with fear exactly — with constant, exhausting vigilance.

I was so hungry for a mother figure after that.

A friend of mine — a therapist, though not mine — after I’d told her everything, months later, said: “Your mum really should have just hugged you when you came out. Because look what just happened.”

She was right.

What I didn’t know until later was that she had been watching me for years. Worried that someone would come along and use the specific shape of my vulnerability against me. She had a phrase for me in middle school — flower head over clouds — and she named the opening she could see in me to friends, privately, before any of this happened.

She saw it coming. I didn’t know she was watching.

Because in high school she told me I was using her as an emotional trash bin, and I took that lesson and quietly pulled back. The person watching most carefully for exactly this was the one I had decided not to burden. The shaman didn’t create that distance. A fight at sixteen did.

What just happened was: I called the shaman mum. I genuinely did. Because the shaman was warm and certain and told me she would never abandon me, and I was a person whose actual mother had gone silent in the next room, and I needed someone so badly that I didn’t look carefully enough at what I was accepting alongside the warmth.

I told my ex this. That I wanted to call the shaman mum. That I wanted her as a mother figure.

My ex relayed it — on the phone to the shaman, when I wasn’t present. She said she wants you to be her mum.

The shaman was shocked. And then, my ex told me later, she was moved.

I want to sit with that for a moment. The shaman — who had been systematically dismantling me, who had called me hollow and cleverly evil, who had been building the case for my removal — heard that I wanted her as a mother and felt something. Something that, whatever it was underneath, registered outwardly as being touched.

I don’t know what to do with that. I still don’t. It doesn’t exonerate what followed. But it means the shaman was not made entirely of strategy. Somewhere in there, receiving that from my ex, something human responded.

And somewhere in there, I was handing her the most undefended thing I had.

What I Believed vs What She Saw

The nun knew none of this when she spoke to me. She saw only what I presented: a person who had arrived at a temple the day after her breakup, on what turned out to be their third anniversary, still defending the verdict against herself five months later.

What I believed: I was the problem. Two people had tried everything, and I had failed them, and the breakup was the natural consequence of my inability to become what I needed to become.

What she saw: I’d been sent here the day before the breakup as a holding place while they executed a plan to end the relationship.

I remember the conversation where they decided to send me. I was there — sitting right there — and they discussed it as if I were a piece of furniture that needed to be moved before the renovation could begin. My ex asked the shaman, “Will she be fixed after a month? Three months? Six months?”

The shaman shook her head. No.

I sat there with tears running down my face, nodding. I didn’t know where the next correction or scolding would come from if I opened my mouth. So I kept quiet and let them decide.

And then, on the drive to the ceremony the following night, my ex told the shaman: “I feel like she’s been preparing herself for a breakup.”

I wasn’t. I had no idea what was coming. But I was sitting right there when she said it.

The shaman replied, “Well, this isn’t her first breakup, like it is for you. It’ll be easier for her.”

Said about me. In front of me. As if I weren’t present.

The temple wasn’t my idea. The temple was a sentence.

Why I Told No One

The day after the breakup, a friend contacted me.

She asked if I was alright. And I tried to answer her.

What came out of my mouth was not my voice. It was the shaman’s voice. The verdict that had been built over seventeen months and delivered at 3 am on a mountain and absorbed so completely that I couldn’t locate where it ended, and I began.

I told her: I ruined everything. I owed her so much. She tried to help me, but I was just too broken to be fixed. My parents are frauds. I am selfish.

I said these things. They came from my mouth. But I was not the one saying them.

I left out the shamanic rituals entirely — I didn’t want to say something that would sound absurd, that would tarnish the version of my ex I was still somehow protecting. So the story I told had the verdict without the mechanism. The conclusion without the evidence. Of course, it didn’t hold together.

The friend told me I was rambling. She said my story didn’t match. She was right that it didn’t match. She was wrong about why.

She messaged my ex directly. She told her she was sorry she hadn’t been on her side.

My ex called me.

“See? Other people see it too. They can see that you used me.”

Then: “I think you shouldn’t tell anyone what happened. It doesn’t put you in a good position.”

And I — already isolated by seventeen months of systematic separation from my friends, already convinced that my version of events was the unreliable one — I listened. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t tell the story again.

The dead grandmother, at the ceremony, had said I was like a person pulled from drowning who then tried to steal the belongings of the one who saved her. That image was designed to make any attempt at self-defence look like theft. If I were the drowning person who had been saved, then asking for fairness would be ingratitude. Was greed. Was proof of exactly what they said I was.

Those questions are still forming. Because my ex did nurse me when I was sick. The care was real. The 3 am was also real. I am not yet able to hold both in the same sentence without one of them collapsing the other. That is the honest position.

The silence wasn’t weakness. It was the last thing the structure did before it let me go. It made sure I would be alone with it long enough for the brainwashing to feel like my own thoughts.

The case file disagreed.

Filed from the mountain,

Emotionally yours,

Suinny

The letters continue from the mountain.
You’re welcome to subscribe if you’d like to follow the story.

P.S. If you’ve ever tried to tell your story and the words that came out belonged to someone else — that’s not you failing to explain. That’s what it looks like when someone else’s verdict has been living in your mouth.

Next week: The double bind. What happens when accepting a verdict and rejecting it are both evidence of the same crime.

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Before we begin, I would like to enter my plea.

I plead not guilty.

Before the case begins, I want to say something about why I wrote it down at all.

Some people told me to let it go. To discard the memories, the emotions, and what had been done to me. They said I was being held by the past; that reflecting on the time inside the system kept me inside it. That the healthy thing was to turn my back, decide it wasn’t me anymore, and walk forward without the weight of it.

They were not wrong that the weight is real.

But I had spent seventeen months being told what to do with my own thoughts and emotions. What to feel, what to suppress, what to offer up, what to keep quiet. Someone else’s hand on the dial of my inner life — what was allowed to register, what needed to be explained away, what had to be converted into something more acceptable before it could exist.

I decided to write.

Not because I wanted to stay inside it. Because I know what happens when you put things in a closet. They don’t disappear. They rot. And eventually you have a different problem — something living in the dark, feeding on what you refused to name.

So this is the record. Not everything I felt, but everything I can name clearly and honestly. Not performance of healing, not a demonstration of how far I’ve come. Just: this is what happened. This is what it was like inside it. This is what I understand now that I didn’t understand then.

I am still understanding.

There is also a second reason I wrote it, which is smaller and more specific, and I want to name it honestly.

I wrote it for the people still inside. Not inside this particular shaman’s room — though for them too. But inside any system that has told them what their own feelings mean, what their nature is, what they deserve. The systems that use your real flaws to build a false verdict. The ones that know just enough about you to sound credible.

I know what it is like to be inside that and not be able to see the walls. I know what it is like to believe the verdict because it was delivered by someone who had watched you carefully. I know the particular confusion of a system that feels like understanding because it names you accurately in some places.

This is the record of how I got out.

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It happened five months after the breakup.

I was still at the temple — and not in the healing, enlightened way I may have implied in my earlier letters. I was there writing unsent letters at any moment the time was given, performing 108 prostrations before dawn, and earlier in those months, genuinely planning a PowerPoint presentation to show her I’d changed enough to be worth taking back. The original title was more honest than the polished version I later came up with.

Why Should You Keep Suin?

Not a relaunch. A retention argument. I was preparing the case against my own disposal.

I had published twenty-five posts from the temple during those months. I wrote them in real time, from inside the brainwashing, believing everything the system had told me about what had happened. The early ones were the brainwashing at its most complete. I wrote that her clear goodbye was a gift. I wrote that I was grateful for the clean break. I also wrote: I still want to be Venus orbiting your sun. Not as a romantic metaphor. As a description of what the system had made me into — not a person with her own gravity, but an orbit. Something that exists only in relation to another body.

One post astonishes me most, looking back. I wrote it from a café at Seoul Express Bus Terminal, still inside the brainwashing, still framing the breakup as 시절인연 — the natural end of shared time, the clock running out. I hadn’t yet understood that I wasn’t a station at the end of a completed journey. I had been expelled at 3 am with a clutch and a fever while a dead grandmother assured my ex that the disposal was in hand.

And yet — underneath the wrong framework — I found something true.

I’m not luggage left on a platform. I’m the platform itself.

The nun who named the cult in January didn’t create that understanding. She completed it. The platform was already being built in that café, still inside the brainwashing, with cold coffee and the sound of buses departing.

Five months of believing I was crazy, fake, possessed, selfish, and fundamentally unlovable. Five months of believing that two people had done their absolute best to help a broken person — and that the broken person had failed them despite everything.

I was not the victim of this story. I was the villain. I was certain of this.

And then a Buddhist nun said four words that shattered everything.

The Question

I’d arrived at the temple on the 28th of August — our third anniversary, the day after the breakup. Three years to the day, I walked into a temple thinking I was going there to… heal.

A nun approached me one day. She said something about selfishness — that I took what was mine first before considering others. She said it plainly. Not as cruelty. Just as she saw.

And I heard it and agreed immediately.

Yes. Finally. Someone who sees it.

I had been told I was selfish for so long that it had become one of the core charges in the case against myself. One of the things I had agreed to, the way I had agreed to hollow gangjeong and champagne tongue and too greedy and too much. It felt true because it echoed something I already believed. And here was someone outside the system entirely arriving at the same conclusion independently.

So I didn’t push back. I asked her how to fix it.

I told her it wasn’t the first time someone had called me selfish. I explained why I was selfish — the history, the evidence, the case I had been building against myself for five months, and the one I had been helped to build for seventeen months before that. I offered it all up, still entirely inside the verdict, defending the charge even as I described it.

She didn’t engage with the selfishness at all.

She asked: “Why do you want to become a Buddhist nun?”

I told her the truth: “Because I might be happy here. And someone I loved believed so too.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then she asked me to tell her what happened.

So I did. For the first time since the breakup, I told someone the whole story. The shamanic ceremonies. The exorcisms. The accusations of being possessed. The final call where my ex told me to become a nun because I was too greedy.

I told her everything.

And when I finished, she looked at me and said — matter-of-factly, the way you’d tell someone they had spinach in their teeth:

“You were deceived. This person used you and manipulated you. You were in a cult.”

My First Reaction

My first reaction was not relief.

My first reaction was: she’s wrong.

Because if she was right — if I had been manipulated, if I had been the target rather than the problem — then everything I had spent five months believing about myself was wrong too.

I had spent five months believing I was the bad guy. Not in an abstract, self-pitying way. I mean, I genuinely held my ex and the shaman as people with the moral high ground. They had tried so hard to help me. They had invested in me — money, time, ceremonies, energy — and I had kept failing them. I was the one who was broken. I was the one whose bad qualities “could not be borne.”

If the nun was right, that entire structure collapsed.

And some part of me wasn’t ready for it to collapse. Because, as painful as it was to be the villain, at least I understood that story. At least I had a role.

I also thought: I must have fallen into self-pity mode. That is why she is being kind to me. The system had already prepared me for this moment. When someone from outside says it sounds wrong, you already know what that means: they don’t understand the dynamics. They can’t see what you can see from here.

Every outside voice — even the ones saying you were not the problem — got filtered through the same mechanism. The system pre-answered compassion the same way it pre-answered criticism. Both arrived already interpreted. Both neutralised before they could land.

The only voice that eventually got through was my own — written down, accumulated, read back to myself until the shape of what happened became undeniable in my own testimony.

The Question I Couldn’t Answer

After the nun said “you were in a cult,” she asked me something I still can’t fully answer:

“Can you trust your own mind?”

I didn’t know.

For five months, I’d been one of five voices telling myself I was crazy. The shaman said I was possessed. My ex said I was fake. Her sisters said I was the problem. And I agreed with all of them — enthusiastically, gratefully. I thought their criticism was the most honest love anyone had ever shown me.

When five people tell you you’re crazy, and you’re one of the five — how do you start trusting yourself again?

The nun saw something I couldn’t see from inside it.

“They weren’t five separate people arriving at the same conclusion,” she said. “They were one voice — the shaman’s — repeated through five mouths. Including yours.”

I didn’t say anything.

She looked at me for a moment. Then she said:

“We shouldn’t even be talking about this as if it were just an experience. I want to take you to court and file a lawsuit. I’ve seen this. In a Netflix documentary.”

A Buddhist nun in a Korean mountain temple. Recognising it from a screen.

That was when the structure began, very slowly, to crack.

From a temple where I’m learning that being the villain of your own story is still a story someone else wrote,

Emotionally yours (and learning to trust myself),

Suinny

P.S. If you’ve ever been the bad guy in a story that you were also the most hurt by — you’re not alone in that. And the question “can I trust my own mind?” isn’t a weakness. It’s the first step toward trusting yourself again.

Next week: How the shaman found me — and why I was the one who opened the door.

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I didn’t cry. I froze.

And then I thanked her. I meant it completely.

This is where the story ends. Which means it’s where we have to begin.

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I arrived at the temple on the 28th of August 2025 — our third anniversary, one day after the breakup. We had started on August 28th, 2022. Three years to the day, I walked into a mountain and began again.

I told myself I came to heal.

What I was actually doing was preparing a PowerPoint presentation to prove I had changed enough to be taken back. I named it Why You Should Choose This Product. I was version 3.0. New and improved. Ready for relaunch.

Here is the timeline, because the timeline is part of the story:

We moved in together in March 2024. We met the shaman the same month, before any of the patterns had time to form without her influence. The first ceremony was in September 2024. By October, we were living under my parents’ roof while I was at my sickest. We moved into a new apartment in March 2025. Her middle sister arrived in April. The cat ceremony was in May. The 3 am ceremony was the night of August 25th, running into the 26th. The breakup — officially August 27th, though the ending had already happened on a mountain in the dark — was the day before our anniversary.

For several months, I wrote letters I believed were addressed to a reunion. I wrote from inside the verdict. I wrote grateful to the people who had dismantled me, because I believed their dismantling was correction and their correction was care.

I was the villain of my own story. I was certain.

I kept every letter. I thought I would hand them to her when we reunited — look, I wrote to you every day, I never stopped, here. She never came. And the letters I had been keeping for her became something else entirely.

There is a line from Hamilton I keep returning to. Before the finale, when Eliza finally stops performing the role the story gave her:

I’m erasing myself from the narrative.

She takes the letters. She steps back. And then — after everything — she steps forward on her own terms.

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story.

I am telling mine.

January 2026: a conversation with a Buddhist nun cracked something open.

I came home. I read back what I had written from inside it — with some distance, some time, some of my own mind returned to me. And I began to see what had actually happened. Not the version I had been given. The truth.

What you are about to read spans forty-four letters across ten and a half months. It tells the story of a relationship, a shaman, a system that had no door, two sisters, cats abandoned in the night, a house that was never mine, an engine I kept running out to meet — and the 3 am ceremony on a mountain where I finally understood what I had walked into.

The verdict the shaman delivered: cleverly evil. Human affliction. Too broken to fix.

My verdict: not guilty.

Not guilty does not mean blameless. It means the case does not hold.

If you have ever been so convinced you were the problem that you felt grateful to the people dismantling you, this is for you.

It is also for me.

I plead not-guilty.

Emotionally yours — and finally telling the story in my own voice,

Suinny

From a Buddhist temple in the mountains, where I arrived to be corrected and stayed to become myself.

If you’d like to read the rest of this story,

you can subscribe here.

I’ll be publishing the letters slowly.

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I’m writing this from home.

That sentence still feels strange to type. For months, home was a mountain, a bell at 4 am, a small room that smelled of incense and damp wood. Then a Buddhist nun said something to me that I wasn’t ready to hear, and I decided I needed to rest somewhere softer. So I came back. I’m sleeping in a real bed. There are no prostrations before breakfast.

I’m not sure whether leaving was the right decision or the comfortable one. Probably both. But that’s a letter for another Wednesday.

This one is about a phone call I had with my friend.

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The Declaration

We have known each other since middle school. More than fifteen years. She is a therapist now — not my therapist, my friend, which is its own specific category with its own rules — and she knows my patterns the way only someone can who has watched them form in real time, from adolescence, from the beginning.

I avoided her for most of my twenties. Not out of resentment. I love her wit and her sassiness and the sharpness of how she sees things. That was precisely the problem. I wasn’t ready to be seen that clearly. I wasn’t ready to absorb what she would inevitably observe about me, so I kept a careful distance and told myself we had simply drifted, the way people do.

We fought terribly as teenagers, the way girls who know each other too well sometimes do — with words aimed precisely at the places that would hurt most, because we had the map of each other and we weren’t always careful with it. But that’s also how I know she loves me. You only have that map of someone if you’ve been paying very close attention. And the people who have been paying that kind of attention, who still show up after everything, are not people to be kept at arm’s length.

I called her and told her what had been moving through me since leaving the temple. The long view of things. The patterns I could finally see clearly now that I had some distance from them.

And then I said it. With full conviction. With the gravity of someone making a decision that would change everything:

From now on, I renounce calling someone my destiny.

I meant it completely. I had arrived at this conclusion through months of quiet and grief and 108 prostrations and the particular clarity that comes when you strip your life down to almost nothing and can finally see what was underneath. The belief in destiny — the bone-deep, cosmically confirmed certainty that this person was meant for me, that our love was written somewhere before we were born — that belief was the root of everything. The obsession. The inability to let go. The way I had handed over the steering wheel of my own life to a feeling and called it fate.

I was done with it. I was renouncing it. Starting now.

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

And then she laughed.

What She Said

Not unkindly. Not dismissively. The laugh of someone who loves you and also sees you very clearly — and who, it should be said, has her own particular architecture of patterns that she navigates with the same imperfect effort.

That’s like me saying I renounce sacrificing everything for someone I’ve fallen in love with, she said, and then not blaming them for taking the generosity — when they eventually find out about the little lies I told to make them like me more.

She said it so specifically, so matter-of-factly, that we both knew she wasn’t speaking hypothetically. She has her map, and I have mine. We’ve both been building cathedrals in the dark for as long as we’ve known each other.

We say these things, she continued. We mean them completely. It’s a New Year’s resolution. You make it at midnight with absolute sincerity and by February you’ve already forgotten.

I didn’t argue. I didn’t want to. The declaration had come from somewhere real and deep — I wasn’t performing it, wasn’t saying it for effect. But the moment she said it, I knew she was right. I had known before she said it, I think, which is probably why I called her instead of simply writing it in my journal and leaving it there.

The Snail Trail

She said something else, and I’ve been carrying it since.

We all have problems, she said. Sometimes they show, sometimes they don’t. But sometimes you are so hurt that your illness shows like a snail trail. You drag it behind you and it leaves marks everywhere — blood marks, the kind that don’t dry quickly. You can’t help it. People can see exactly where you’ve been.

And you can’t keep something like that to yourself. You can’t hold PTSD inside and expect it to dissolve quietly. It doesn’t work that way. It implodes if you try to contain it.

So you share it. You tell the story, and you tell the story again, and you keep telling it — like a broken tape recorder playing the same passage on loop — until one day something in you shifts, and you think:

Oh.

I am done with this. Why should I let this be my narrative? Until when should I blame everything on something that happened to me? I am so done.

That oh — that’s the thing. Not a dramatic revelation. Not a transformation scene with music. Just a quiet, almost irritable moment of recognition: I have told this story enough times now. I know how it ends. I don’t need to keep playing it.

I don’t know when my oh is coming. I’m still somewhere in the middle of the tape, still finding new ways to tell the same story. But I think — and this feels important — I think I’m getting closer to the end of it. The fact that I can see the loop at all feels like progress. The fact that I called her instead of disappearing back into the silence of my twenties feels like progress.

The fact that when she laughed, I laughed too.

The Thing About Destiny

Here is what I actually believe, if I’m being precise about it: I don’t think the universe arranges meetings. I don’t think love is written in advance. I am not, in any coherent intellectual sense, a person who believes in destiny.

And yet.

When it happens — when the feeling arrives — the certainty is total. It doesn’t feel like a belief I am choosing. It feels like a fact I am recognising. Like the difference between deciding the sky is blue and simply looking up.

This is, I think, the particular cruelty of having a mind like mine. The intensity isn’t a choice. The meaning-making isn’t a choice. My brain takes an experience and immediately, automatically, constructs an entire architecture of significance around it — and by the time I am consciously aware of what’s happening, I am already living inside a cathedral I built in the dark.

Renouncing destiny, then, is not a decision I can make once and have it stick. It is something more like what she described: a practice. An ongoing, daily, frequently-failing attempt to notice the cathedral going up and ask myself whether I actually want to live there.

Some days I’ll catch it early. Some days I’ll already be choosing the curtains before I realise what I’ve done.

This is, apparently, what it means to have a personality and also try to grow.

The temple taught me many things. One of them is that transformation is almost never the dramatic thing you imagine it will be. It happens in the small repeated choices. The morning you don’t send the message. The moment you notice the cathedral going up, sit down for a minute before you start decorating.

I still believe in love with an intensity that frightens me sometimes. I probably always will. I don’t think that’s something I’m meant to remove from myself — only something I’m learning to hold more carefully.

I renounce destiny.

Starting now.

I’ll let you know how February goes.

Emotionally yours (optimistically, this time),

Suinny

From home, where the bed is soft, and the questions are the same

P.S. — If you’ve ever made a declaration to yourself that your own brain immediately started undermining, I’d genuinely love to hear about it. Reply to this letter. It will make me feel better about mine.

P.P.S. — The Buddhist nun conversation is its own letter. It’s coming. I’m still finding the words for it.

I’m writing this from the temple office at half past eight in the morning, the mountain fog still dissolving over the valley outside. It’s the kind of quiet that makes you reflective. Which is, I suppose, why I’ve been thinking about a television show.

Specifically: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

The first time I encountered it, I was at university in Canada. Depressed in the way that has no dramatic inciting incident — just a slow, grey flattening of everything. I was lying in my room with a musical theatre playlist on shuffle, and somewhere between Sondheim and something cheerful, the algorithm dropped You Stupid Bitch into my ears.

I looked it up. I started watching.

And my honest first reaction was: I don’t understand this woman at all.

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The First Time

Who moves from New York City to a small town in California for a man she dated briefly at summer camp? Who discards a career, an apartment, an entire life — for Josh Chan, who is, let’s be frank, neither extraordinarily interesting nor obviously worth the sacrifice? Why is she so obsessed? Why does she keep making choices that are so transparently, almost comically, self-destructive?

I watched the first two released seasons with a kind of detached bewilderment. I could appreciate the music. I could see that it was clever. But Rebecca Bunch was a mystery to me. A cautionary tale about someone else’s particular brand of dysfunction.

I didn’t know I had a personality disorder then. Rebecca didn’t yet have her new diagnosis either. We were both, in our respective ways, completely in the dark about ourselves.

Then I had my breakdown in Montreal. I came back to Korea feeling like a loser — that specific, hollowing kind of shame that comes not just from failing but from failing publicly, from returning somewhere you left with ambition and arriving back with nothing that looks like what you promised. I sat with that for a long time.

And then I watched the rest of the show.

The Second Time

I couldn’t always finish episodes. There were scenes I had to pause and walk away from — not because they were badly written, but because they were too accurate. Watching Rebecca collapse and then feel ashamed of her collapse, watching her cycle through remorse and rationalisation and the particular cruelty she reserved for herself — I recognised something. I recognised it in my body before I recognised it in my mind.

I was going through my first real heartbreak then. And for the first time, I thought: I resemble her a little.

The way she tried to dehumanise the person who left her, in order to survive the leaving. The way she oscillated between I am the wronged party and I am the villain with very little stable ground between the two. The way love felt less like a feeling and more like a gravitational force — something that happened to her, something she had no reasonable hope of resisting.

That was the first time I allowed myself to wonder whether I might have BPD.

It took several more years and several consecutive rounds of therapy before I could actually say it out loud and mean it. I have BPD. Not as an explanation. Not as an excuse. Just as a fact about the architecture of my mind.

“I wanted to be a good person. Yes, it’s true. Be a good person — but better than who?”

Here is what I genuinely believed, for a long time: that love would fix it.

Not fix it in a vague, romantic sense. I mean I had a specific, operational theory. That if I could find the right person — the right love — the illness would become irrelevant. The intensity that had caused so much damage would become a feature rather than a flaw. I would be understood in the way I needed to be understood, and the understanding would stabilise me, and I would finally become the good person I had always been trying to be.

She was my Josh.

And I mean that more literally than it might sound.

Rebecca Bunch moves from New York City to a small town in California — discards her career, her network, her entire built life — to be near someone she loves. I watched that and thought: who does that?

Then I did it.

I ditched my career. I left my network. I moved to her city — her hometown — because we had been long-distance and it was expensive and exhausting, and I told myself the practical reasons, the financial reasons, the sensible reasons. Accommodation costs. The logic of shared rent. The efficiency of proximity.

I told myself, very clearly and with complete conviction, that I was not moving for her. I was moving for myself. For a better future. For practical reasons. For growth. I ran the internal analysis and concluded: this is the right choice, and it happens to involve being near someone I love, which is simply a bonus.

I knew, even then, that I was making excuses. Not consciously — that’s the part that’s hardest to explain to people who haven’t experienced it. The knowing and the not-knowing existed simultaneously. I could sense the shape of the real reason underneath all the rational ones, and I chose, very deliberately, not to look directly at it.

I see it clearly now. I couldn’t afford to see it then.

But underneath all of it, underneath every reasonable justification, was the same cathedral Rebecca builds and I build and every person with BPD builds in the dark: if I can just get there, to the right place, with the right person, everything will finally work.

My relationship with my parents was never simple either. Devoted, controlling, impossible to rest inside — the kind of love that means well and lands hard. Living under their roof was never home. It was just a house, a place I returned to and endured. I thought living with her would solve it. The burnout, the helplessness, the financial pressure, the longing to finally feel stable and free. I thought love in the right location would do what nothing else had managed.

I would be happy. I would be fixed.

I know how that sounds. I know that from the outside, the logic doesn’t hold. But when you have BPD and you fall in love — really fall, the kind that doesn’t feel like a choice, the kind that can only be described in a verb form of crush — the certainty is total. I believed we were destined. Not in the abstract way that people say such things when they’re happy. In the bone-level, cosmically confirmed way. Our meeting felt arranged. Our connection felt singular. I had never loved anyone like this before, which I took as evidence that this was different, that I was different, that the patterns that had undone previous relationships simply wouldn’t apply here.

I wanted to be a good person. I was trying so hard to be the ‘right’ person.

But the goodness was never entirely for its own sake, was it? It was relational. It was contingent. It was for her, which meant it was also, underneath everything, a performance of worthiness. A constant, exhausting audition for the role of someone who deserved to be loved and not left.

The show has a song called Put Yourself First — ostensibly about the male gaze, about women performing self-improvement for an audience of men while calling it self-care. It’s one of the show’s sharpest jokes. But watching it now, I hear something else in it entirely.

I always put myself first — for us. That was how I understood sacrifice: not as self-erasure, but as investment. I was willing to give up the career, the city, the network, the version of myself I had built in other places — because the relationship was the thing I had decided mattered most. I told myself this was love. I told myself this was strength, not fear. The willingness to burn everything down and hand her the warmth.

What I couldn’t see then was that you cannot sustain a relationship on that kind of sacrifice. It curdles. The person receiving it starts to feel the weight of what it cost you, even if you never say it aloud. And the person giving it starts to lose the thread of who they are outside of the giving.

“I’m just a girl in love. I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”

The show performs this number with such precise satirical glee that it's almost painful to watch. Because the alibi is real. Not calculated — that's important. When you're in the grip of a BPD episode, when the emotional intensity has eclipsed everything else, the logic actually holds. This is love. Love is overwhelming by definition. Therefore, my behaviour is simply what love looks like.

I was adorably obsessed. I was just in love.

The harm I caused, the volatility, the need for constant reassurance, the arguments that arrived from nowhere — those weren’t symptoms of an illness that required treatment. They were evidence of how much I cared.

This is one of the most dangerous stories we tell ourselves. Not because it excuses the behaviour — it doesn’t, and the show is very clear on that — but because it delays the moment of reckoning. The moment where you look at the pattern and admit: this isn’t love making me irrational. This is the illness that I haven’t yet learned to manage, causing harm to the person I love most.

“You ruined everything, you stupid bitch.”

Rebecca sings this to herself. At herself. In a mirror.

I did not have words for it the first time I heard it. I had to sit in the dark for a while afterwards.

Because this is the voice. The one that speaks in the small hours, after everything has gone wrong. After the illness has done what the illness does and you are left in the wreckage of your own making, trying to understand how someone who wanted so badly to be good could have caused this much damage. The voice doesn’t argue. It doesn’t reason. It simply states, with absolute conviction: you ruined everything.

The show has another lyric that lands differently — quieter, nastier, more precise. It goes: uprooted everything and said you’d made a switch, but you’re still a poopy little slut who lives in a dream and doesn’t know how to love.

I came to a Buddhist temple in the mountains of Korea. I uprooted everything. I said I’d made a switch.

Some mornings I believe it. Some mornings the bell rings at 4 am and I get up and meditate and I feel genuinely different — lighter, more present, less haunted by the particular ghosts I carried here with me.

Other mornings I wonder whether I am simply the same person, performing transformation somewhere more scenic.

That question doesn’t have an answer yet. But I think asking it honestly — without flinching, without immediately reassuring myself — might be the closest thing to actual change I’ve managed so far.

What I’ve been slowly learning, here in the temple with the bells and the prostrations and the cold mornings, is that the you ruined everything voice is not honesty. It feels like honesty. It has the tone and cadence of a reckoning. But it is actually just another face of the illness — self-destruction wearing the costume of self-awareness.

Real accountability sounds different. It doesn’t obliterate. It says: I caused harm, and I need to understand why, and I need to do differently.

The difference between those two things is not small. I am still learning to hear it.

Rebecca’s defence, in the show, is almost comic in its specificity: I give annually to UNICEF. As if charitable giving cancels out the wreckage. As if one column of goodness balances the other. It’s played for a dark laugh, and I laughed — and then I sat very still, because I have made that exact accounting in my own head more times than I can count.

The difference is that Rebecca’s reckoning comes from herself. Mine came from outside.

On our last phone call, she told me: now that you know that you’re not a good person.

I’ve turned that sentence over every night since. It doesn’t leave. It has lodged somewhere below the ribcage and rings there in the dark, and I don’t know yet whether it is a wound or a truth or both at once. Probably both. The things that stay with us usually are.

What I do know is that it’s not the whole sentence. Now that you know implies there is a before and an after. A version of me that didn’t know, and a version that does. And what I do with the knowing — that part hasn’t been written yet.

“Yes, Josh completes me. But how can that be when there’s no me left to complete?”

This is the line I paused for. Rewound. Played three times.

Because the particular cruelty of BPD — the thing that makes love so devastating, so inevitably weighted — is that we don’t just fall in love. We dissolve into it. Over the course of three years, I assembled a version of myself in the context of being loved by her. The best version, I think. The one I most wanted to be. And when it ended, I didn’t only lose her. I lost the self that had been built inside that love.

Rebecca’s question is the right one, and it has no comfortable answer. If you’ve spent the relationship outsourcing your identity to another person, then losing them isn’t only heartbreak. It’s a kind of structural collapse. You’re not mourning a relationship. You’re mourning the architecture of yourself.

Which is, I think, why I came here. Not primarily for Buddhism, though I’m becoming something adjacent to a believer. But because I needed to find out whether there was a self here — in the quiet, in the routine, in the absence of her — that could exist without being completed by anyone.

The jury is still out. But there are mornings when I think the answer might be yes.

“How could I still not know myself after all that I’ve been through?”

I didn’t understand Rebecca Bunch the first time I watched this show because I hadn’t yet been through enough to recognise her. Or so I thought.

The truth is more uncomfortable. I didn’t recognise her because I wasn’t ready to. Because recognising her would have meant recognising myself, and I wasn’t ready to look at what that meant. I was still in the part of the story where the behaviour is inexplicable, and the person is a mystery, allowing you to sit at a comfortable distance and wonder why someone would make those choices.

Then Montreal happened. Then the first heartbreak. Then the therapy. Then her. Then this.

And now I rewatch it from a Buddhist temple in Korea at half past eight in the morning, and I understand every single choice Rebecca makes. I don’t agree with all of them. But I understand them. The logic is not mysterious to me anymore. It is legible. It is, on the worst days, familiar.

The show’s answer to Rebecca’s final question is honest in a way I admire: she hasn’t been through too little. She’s been moving in the wrong direction. Horizontally, from crisis to crisis, rather than downward. Rather than in. Staying still long enough for the sediment to settle.

That is what this place is doing to me. The stillness is terrifying for a BPD brain — stillness means being alone with yourself, without anyone to reflect yourself back to you. But I’m finding things in it. Small, quiet things. Things that seem to belong to me and not to anyone else.

I don’t know who I am yet. But I am starting to suspect I exist.

That feels, for now, like enough.

A question I haven’t stopped asking

People call BPD an illness. I understand why — it’s a clinical diagnosis, it has a treatment framework, it sits in the same categories as other things we call illnesses. But there’s something about the word that has never quite fit, and I’ve been trying to work out why.

Depression, people say, is like a cold. It can happen to anyone. It arrives, it disrupts, it can be treated, it can lift. You take the pills and wait and eventually something shifts. The illness was visiting. The illness is not you.

But personality disorder? You are not a person who has it. You are it. It is not a weather pattern passing through you — it is the climate. The way I attach, the way I love, the way I fear abandonment, the way I can go from completely fine to completely undone in the span of a single misread text — these are not symptoms I experience. They are the way my mind works. They are me.

So what does fixing it mean? How do you fix yourself without ceasing to be yourself? How do you become a healthy person when you have never once felt like one — when you know how to perform health, how to wear it convincingly enough that most people can’t tell, but you have no idea what it actually feels like from the inside?

Go and search for Cluster B personality disorders right now. I’ll wait.

The comments you’ll find, reliably, across forums and Reddit threads and advice columns, are some variation of: run away. People with personality disorders are dangerous. They will ruin your life.

I have read those comments about myself. About people like me. I have sat with the knowledge that if someone I loved searched for information about my diagnosis, this is what they would find. A warning. A list of red flags. Instructions to leave.

And here is what makes it so suffocating: I knew about my BPD. I tried, genuinely tried, not to act like one. I was in therapy. I was tracking my patterns. I wanted so badly to be the exception — the one who had the diagnosis but managed it, who loved carefully enough that the illness stayed contained, who could be close to someone without eventually becoming too much.

She left because I was too much anyway. The physical illness I went through that year stripped away every coping mechanism I had, and the mental illness that had been quietly managed beneath the surface came flooding up, and I was too much, and she left.

I understand why. I do. Understanding it doesn’t make it easier to live with.

What I can’t resolve is this: I don’t want to hide my diagnosis. Honesty feels like the only dignified way to move through the world. But honesty about BPD hands people a pair of coloured lenses before they’ve even had a chance to see you clearly. The label precedes you. The internet’s verdict arrives before you do.

I don’t know whether I can be loved. Not in the sustained, non-catastrophic way I want to be loved.

I don’t know whether I can be fixed. I’m not even sure that’s the right question.

Rebecca doesn’t get fixed either. The show doesn’t offer that. What she gets, slowly and imperfectly, is self-knowledge. And the quiet suggestion — tentative, unguaranteed — that self-knowledge might be enough of a foundation to build something on. Not what you originally planned. Something else. Something that is actually yours.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend doesn't end with Rebecca healed or partnered or resolved. It ends with her discovering what she loves doing — not who she loves, but what. It's a quieter ending than the show's premise promises, and I think that's entirely the point.

I’m not at an ending. I’m somewhere in the complicated middle. But I watched this show again this week and felt, for a sustained period of time, genuinely seen — which is a remarkable thing for a television programme to do, and perhaps the most honest review I can offer.

If you have BPD, or suspect you might, or simply love with an intensity that has sometimes frightened you: watch it. Not because it will fix anything. But because there is something quietly radical about a story that doesn’t pathologise you, doesn’t make you the villain, and trusts you to sit with the full complexity of what you are.

We are a lot. But we are not nothing.

Emotionally yours (still figuring out which ones),

Suinny

From a Buddhist temple, where the mornings are cold and the questions are slow

P.S. — The show was created by Rachel Bloom, who stars in it and wrote most of the songs. The BPD diagnosis Rebecca receives in the final season was apparently years in the making, narratively. It shows. The care with which the writers handled it shows. Watch all four seasons.

P.P.S. — If this resonated and you’ve been carrying a diagnosis, or a suspicion of one, I’m here. Reply to this letter. I read every single one.

I need to tell you about the badge I wore for thirty years before realising it was burning a hole through my chest.

The badge of burnout. The inheritance of exhaustion. The family tradition of running yourself into the ground and calling it virtue.

My family didn’t teach me to rest. They taught me that survival meant never stopping.

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What My Parents Are Still Doing

My parents are still working even though they know their bodies are malfunctioning.

Their knees hurt. Their backs ache. Their bodies are breaking down in real-time.

Of course, they complain. They talk about the pain. They acknowledge what’s happening.

But giving up was never their option.

Not because they’re stubborn. Not because they don’t want to rest.

Because in their bones, in their blood, in the inherited memory of survival—stopping means death.

And when I was young, watching them push through pain every single day, I thought: This is what love looks like.

Love looks like sacrifice. Love looks like working until your body breaks. Love looks like never, ever stopping.

Because that’s what survivors do.

What Their Parents Wanted

My grandparents wanted my parents to have a better life than theirs.

My parents wanted me to have a better life than theirs.

Each generation sacrificing, pushing, working themselves to death so the next generation wouldn’t have to.

Inheriting earnest devotion to work and career was the best quality they could hand down to their children.

Not money. Not comfort. Not rest.

Work ethic. The ability to survive anything through sheer relentless effort.

That was the inheritance. That was love.

The Generations of Survivors

We were born into the war generation.

The Korean War. My grandparents survived occupation, violence, starvation, and loss. They survived by working. By never stopping. By pushing through impossible circumstances.

The Gwangju Democracy Movement. My parents survived political oppression, violence, and the erasure of entire communities. They survived by keeping their heads down. By working harder. By becoming too valuable to destroy.

My grandparents were survivors.

My parents were survivors.

And they raised me to be a survivor too.

By teaching me the only tool that worked for them: Never. Stop. Working.

What They Actually Passed Down

They thought they were handing down a work ethic.

They thought they were giving me the ability to succeed. To overcome. To build a better life than they had.

And they were. They did.

But they also handed down something else: PTSD through three generations.

The hypervigilance. The inability to rest. The bone-deep belief that stopping means death. The equation of worth with productivity. The terror of having needs.

This wasn’t just work ethic. This was trauma.

Trauma that said: The world is dangerous. People in power will hurt you. The only safety is working so hard they can’t touch you. The only worth is being too useful to destroy.

Generation after generation of survivors, passing down the skills of survival.

Not realising those skills would become a prison when the war was over.

Success as Escape

The oppression and depression my family experienced were supposed to be overcome by becoming “successful” compared to others.

If we could just work hard enough.
If we could just achieve enough.
If we could just become impressive enough.

Then maybe the trauma would go away.

Then maybe we’d finally be safe. Finally be worthy. Finally be allowed to rest.

But trauma doesn’t work like that.

You can’t achieve your way out of inherited PTSD. You can’t work hard enough to make generational suffering disappear.

Success doesn’t heal trauma. It just gives trauma a better address.

And so we kept working. Kept achieving. Kept pushing.

Still running from wars that ended decades ago.

The Unspoken Rules They Taught Me

Here’s what I learned without anyone ever saying it directly:

Rule 1: Stopping means death

Not metaphorically. In their bones, stopping meant starvation, violence, erasure. That belief got passed to me, even though I’ve never lived through war.

Rule 2: Your worth is your usefulness

In survival mode, the useful ones lived. The weak ones died. That equation became: worth = productivity. Always.

Rule 3: Complaining is dangerous

Under oppression, complaints got you killed. Better to endure silently. Better to push through pain. That became: having needs is a weakness.

Rule 4: Rest is for after you’ve earned safety

But you never earn it. Because the trauma says you’re never actually safe. So rest never comes.

These rules kept them alive.

These rules are killing me.

How I Wore the Badge

So I ran myself into the ground.

Teaching. Working. Achieving. Never stopping. Never resting. Pushing through pain.

And I was proud of it.

“Look how hard I work. Look how much I sacrifice. Look how I never complain.”

I thought I was honouring my family. I thought I was proving their sacrifice wasn’t wasted. I thought I was showing that I understood what they gave me.

I thought the badge was beautiful.

I didn’t realise it was the same badge that destroyed them.

When the Badge Became Too Heavy

Eventually, my body broke.

Not burnout—actual physical collapse. The kind where your body says: “I’m done. You didn’t listen, so I’m stopping for you.”

I had to stop teaching.
I had to stop everything.
I had to rest.

And I felt like I was betraying everyone who came before me.

My parents never stopped. My grandparents never stopped. They worked through war, through oppression, through pain, through impossible circumstances.

How could I rest when they never did?

How could I stop when stopping meant death for them?

Resting felt like dishonouring their survival.

Like saying: Your trauma was unnecessary. Your suffering was pointless. You could have stopped, but you were just weak.

The Guilt of Healing

Even now, trying to pause, trying to rest—the guilt is crushing.

Every time I rest, I hear:

• “They survived war and you can’t handle teaching?”

• “They worked through political oppression and you’re tired?”

• “You have it so easy compared to them”

• “You’re weak for needing rest”

• “You’re disrespecting their sacrifice”

Rest feels like betrayal.

Not just of my ex who needed me to be useful.
Not just of myself for “giving up.”

Betraying the generations of people who survived impossible circumstances so I could have this easier life.

And then taking that easier life... and resting? Pausing? Stopping?

How dare I.

The Question I’m Afraid to Ask

What if their survival strategies don’t work for peace?

What if the skills that kept them alive during war are killing me during “normal” life?

What if inheriting devotion to work wasn’t the best quality—it was inherited trauma disguised as virtue?

What if I’m not honouring them by destroying myself the same way?

This question feels like heresy. Like disrespecting everything they survived.

But I’m starting to think: Maybe the best way to honour their sacrifice is to NOT repeat their suffering.

Maybe they survived the war so I could live in peace.

Maybe they worked themselves to death so I wouldn’t have to.

Maybe breaking the cycle isn’t betrayal. Maybe it’s the whole point.

What They Actually Wanted

I don’t think my parents wanted me to inherit PTSD.

I don’t think my grandparents wanted their legacy to be three generations of people who can’t rest without guilt.

They wanted me to have a better life.

Better didn’t just mean more money or more success.

Better meant: You don’t have to survive the way we did.

You don’t have to work through a broken body because stopping means death.
You don’t have to prove your worth through constant productivity because being “useless” got people killed.
You don’t have to run from trauma disguised as demons because you never learned it was safe to stop.

They survived so I could rest.

But I learned their survival skills instead of their dream for me.

What Breaking the Cycle Actually Means

I used to think breaking the cycle meant:

• Working less hard than they did (disrespectful)

• Being “soft” or “weak” (what they survived for me to be?)

• Dismissing their sacrifice (unforgivable)

• Not understanding what they gave me (ungrateful)

But maybe breaking the cycle actually means:

Living the life they wished they could have lived.

Resting when I’m tired—because they never could.
Stopping when my body asks—because they couldn’t.
Believing I’m worthy even when I’m not useful—because they never felt that safety.

Making their survival mean something by actually living, not just surviving.

Maybe the point of their sacrifice wasn’t for me to become an even better survivor.

Perhaps it was time for me to finally stop surviving.

For Anyone Else Wearing the War Badge

If you come from a family of survivors—

War. Political oppression. Poverty. Violence. Displacement. Genocide. Any kind of collective trauma.

If you inherited:

• The belief that stopping means death

• The equation of worth with productivity

• The inability to rest without guilt

• The compulsive need to work harder than everyone else

• The terror that you’re never actually safe

That’s not work ethic. That’s inherited PTSD.

And you’re allowed to heal it.

Honouring your family’s survival doesn’t mean surviving the same way when there’s no war.

They survived so you wouldn’t have to.

Breaking the cycle isn’t dismissing their trauma.

It’s finally, finally being safe enough to rest.

That’s what they wanted for you all along.

The Badge I’m Trying to Remove

I’m not there yet.

I still feel guilty when I rest. I still hear the voices: “They survived war and you’re tired?”

But I’m starting to understand: Those aren’t their voices. Those are the voices of their trauma.

The real them—the ones who survived hell, who sacrificed everything, who wanted better for me—would probably say:

“Rest. Please, rest. We worked so hard so you could rest. We survived so you wouldn’t have to. Don’t waste our sacrifice by carrying our trauma. Be free. That’s what we wanted all along.”

I’m trying to believe that.

I’m trying to take off the badge.

I’m trying to live, not just survive.

And maybe that’s the truest way to honour them.

Maybe choosing peace after they fought for it—that’s not betrayal.

That’s victory.

From a temple where I’m learning that the war is over, even if my body doesn’t know it yet

Emotionally yours (and trying to heal three generations),
Suinny

P.S. - To My Grandparents and Parents

Thank you for surviving.

Thank you for the work ethic, the devotion, the relentless drive that kept you alive through impossible circumstances.

I’m going to honor you by doing what you couldn’t:

I’m going to rest.

Not because your sacrifice was wasted.

But because your sacrifice worked.

I’m safe enough to stop now.

The war is over.

And I’m finally, finally allowed to rest.

Next week: Probably something about learning to live in peace after being raised for war.

Resources:

• On generational trauma: It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn

• On Korean historical trauma: Research on han (한) and collective grief

• On survivor mentality: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

• On post-war generations: I’m still figuring this out myself

Note: This isn’t about blaming our families or dismissing their survival. It’s about recognising that survival skills that worked during trauma can become a prison during peace. They did what they had to do. Now we get to do something different—not because they failed, but because they succeeded. We’re safe enough to rest. That was the whole point.

Last week I wrote about discovering I’m greedy for proof of worth—that I’m running from the belief that I’m worthless, desperately trying to prove I was worth keeping.

This week, I need to tell you what running has actually cost me.

And why the answer isn’t working at a temple, or achieving more, or proving anything.

The answer might be learning to pause. Completely. For the first time in my life.

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The Hamster Wheel

Before I got sick, I was teaching.

Every day felt like running on a hamster wheel—faster and faster, higher and higher speed, but staying in exactly the same spot.

I kept running. Kept trying. Kept pushing.

Because stopping felt impossible. Stopping felt like failure. Stopping felt like proof that I was worthless.

I had responsibilities; students depending on me, bills to pay, a relationship to maintain, and an identity as “someone who has it together” to protect.

If I stopped, what would I be?

Nothing. Just the worthless person I was terrified of becoming.

So I didn’t stop.

Even when my body started sending signals. Even when exhaustion became my baseline. Even when I couldn’t remember the last time I’d rested without guilt screaming at me.

I kept running because I thought running was living.

The Badge I Wore

Here’s what made stopping even harder:

I believed burning myself out was a badge of honour.

My parents lived like that. My grandparents lived like that. Everyone I respected, everyone I wanted approval from—they all ran themselves into the ground and called it virtue.

Self-sacrifice. Hard work. Never complaining. Never stopping. Pushing through pain.

That’s what good people did. That’s what worthy people did.

So I thought I had to live like that too.

Stopping felt like betraying everyone who came before me.

Like saying: “Your sacrifice was pointless. Your suffering was unnecessary.”

How could I rest when they never did? How could I pause when they worked until they broke?

Running myself into the ground wasn’t just about proving worth to my ex or to the world.

It was about proving I was worthy of the people who burned themselves out raising me.

When Your Body Makes the Decision For You

Eventually, I didn’t have a choice.

My body was on the verge of breaking down completely. Not burnout—actual physical collapse. The kind where your body says: “I’m done. You didn’t stop, so I’m stopping for you.”

I had to stop teaching.

I had to stop everything.

And the terror I’d been running from my whole life finally caught up: What happens when you stop?

The Promise That Broke

My ex supported me when I first got sick.

She told me she would never leave. That she’d be there. That I could rest, recover, and take some time.

For a while, she was there.

But 24/7 physical and emotional support—watching someone unable to function, unable to work, unable to be the person they were before—that’s heavy.

It broke her.

And she left.

Not because she was cruel. Not because she stopped loving me. But because it was too much. Because she couldn’t carry both of us. Because watching me collapse was collapsing her too.

I don’t blame her for that.

But it confirmed the belief I’d been running from my whole life: When you stop being useful, people leave.

The Temple Was Still Running

After she left, I needed somewhere to go. Somewhere safe. Somewhere with structure.

I came to a temple.

But here’s what I didn’t realise: Working at a temple is still working.

Coordinating temple stays, managing bookings, leading programs, maintaining appearances—that’s still the hamster wheel.

It’s just a hamster wheel with prayer beads.

I thought I was healing. I thought I’d stopped.

But I was just running in a different location.

Still proving my worth through productivity.
Still terrified that rest equals worthlessness.
Still unable to... pause.

What I Actually Need

A Buddhist nun asked me why I’m in such a hurry.

A monk told me to do 100 days of prayer in one place.

And I kept thinking: They don’t understand. I need to work. I need structure. I need to be useful.

But what I actually need—what I’ve needed this whole time—is a pause.

Not a new job. Not a better temple. Not more achievements to prove my worth.

A real pause.

Doing nothing.
Thinking nothing.
Just living in the present moment.

Not because I’m working toward something.
Not because I’m proving something.
Not because I’m running from something.

Just being. Without justification.

Why Pausing Feels Impossible

The thought of actually pausing—not working, not achieving, not running—terrifies me.

Because without the running, what’s left?

Just me. With my thoughts. With the belief that I’m worthless. With no distraction, no achievement, no proof that I deserve to exist.

What if I pause and discover there’s nothing there?

What if the only thing that made me worth keeping was my usefulness, my productivity, my constant forward motion?

What if I stop and realise: I was right all along. I’m worthless without running.

That’s what I’m afraid of.

The Cost of Never Stopping

But here’s what I’m learning: I’ve never actually tested that belief.

I’ve never stopped long enough to find out if I’m still worth something when I’m not producing, achieving, or running.

I ran from that question my entire life.

And it broke my body. It cost me a relationship. It brought me to a temple where I’m still running, just in monk’s robes.

You can’t outrun worthlessness by proving you’re worthy.

You can only face it by stopping the running and seeing what’s actually there.

What Pause Actually Means

Not this:

• “Productive rest” (still achieving)

• “Self-care” (still optimising)

• Working at a peaceful temple (still working)

• Meditation with goals (still striving)

Actual pause:

• Waking up with nowhere to be

• No responsibilities to justify your existence

• No achievements to prove you deserve space

• Just... breathing. Existing. Being present.

Without the constant need to prove you’re not worthless.

For someone like me, that sounds like death.

Maybe it is. Maybe the death of the person who thought that worth had to be earned.

Why I Can’t Do It Yet

I don’t have money for a real pause. I can’t just stop working and exist without income.

So I’m still at the temple, still coordinating programs, still proving my worth through usefulness.

But at least now I know: This isn’t the answer.

The healing I’m seeking won’t come from temple work. Won’t come from Buddhist practice. Won’t come from achieving enough spiritual insight.

It will come from learning to stop. Completely.

And trusting that I’m still worth something—still worth space, still worth breathing, still worth being—even when I’m not running.

The Question I’m Sitting With

What would I discover if I paused for 100 days?

Not working. Not achieving. Not proving.

Just being present. Just existing. Just breathing without justification.

Would I discover I’m worthless? Or would I discover that worth was never about the running in the first place?

I’m terrified to find out.

But I’m also starting to realise: The running is killing me.

My body already broke once trying to sustain it. My relationship collapsed under the weight of it. My peace is impossible because I won’t stop long enough to find it.

For Anyone Else Still Running

If you’re on a hamster wheel—job, relationship, achievement, productivity, constant forward motion—ask yourself:

What are you running from?

What would happen if you stopped?

What are you afraid you’d discover about yourself if you weren’t constantly proving your worth?

For me, the fear is: I’d discover I’m worthless without the achievement.

But maybe—maybe—the truth is: I was never worthless. I just believed I was, and ran my whole life trying to disprove it.

And you can’t disprove worthlessness by achieving.

You can only disprove it by pausing. And realising you’re still here. Still breathing. Still taking up space.

Still worthy. Even without the running.

The Pause I Haven’t Taken Yet

I don’t know when I’ll be able to actually pause.

I don’t have the money for it. I don’t have the circumstances for it. I don’t have the courage for it yet.

But I know this: What I need isn’t another achievement. It’s the absence of achievement.

What I need isn’t better work. It’s no work at all.

What I need isn’t running faster. It’s finally stopping.

And trusting that when I stop—when I finally, actually stop—I won’t disappear.

I’ll still be here.

Still worthy of space, of breath, of existence.

Even without the running.

From a temple where I’m learning the difference between rest and pause

Emotionally yours (and trying to stop running),
Suinny

P.S. - The Hardest Question

If your worth isn’t in your productivity, your achievement, your usefulness—where is it?

I don’t know yet.

But I think the only way to find out is to stop running long enough to look.

I’m not there yet. But I’m getting closer.

Next week: Probably something about what happens when you’re too terrified to pause but too exhausted to keep running.

Resources:

• On rest vs. productivity: Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey

• On pausing: Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

• On whether I’ll actually stop: Still figuring that out

Note: This isn’t about judging people who work hard or love their jobs. This is about recognising when work has become a way to run from the belief that you’re worthless without it—and whether that’s sustainable or slowly killing you.

I was having tea with a Buddhist nun last week.

We hadn’t been talking about my plans or my goals. We were just sitting together, drinking tea, being quiet.

And then, out of nowhere, she asked:

“Why are you in such a hurry?”

I was stunned.

I hadn’t said anything about being in a hurry. I hadn’t mentioned my timelines or ambitions or the things I’m trying to accomplish.

She saw it just by watching me.

“I’ve been observing you,” she said simply.

I thought I’d changed. I thought after months at the temple, I’d learned patience. I thought I’d slowed down, learned to reflect, stopped rushing through life.

She could see I hadn’t.

And then she said: “Impatience comes from greed.”

I felt something crack open in my chest.

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The Word I Couldn’t Escape

Greedy.

I’ve been called that before. By someone I loved. By the mentor we both trusted.

At first, I thought “greedy” meant ambitious. Wanting things. Having goals.

So I came to the temple to let it all go. To release my ambitions. To stop wanting to be special. To put myself in a lower position.

Because for years I’d been told I was nothing.

And I’d started to believe it.

But here’s what I couldn’t figure out: If I’m supposed to be humble, and I believe I’m completely incompetent—isn’t that the same thing?

Where’s the middle ground between humble and worthless?

I couldn’t find it. I kept swinging between “I’m special and deserve recognition” and “I’m disgusting and deserve nothing.”

No centre. No balance. Just extremes.

The Meditation Question

The nun gave me what’s called a hwadu (화두)—a meditation question to sit with. A koan to crack open.

“Why am I so greedy?”

She told me to take this question into Seon meditation. And she gave me specific instructions:

“Memories will flash through your mind. Let them flow. Let your emotions flow through like a river. Don’t hold onto anything. Just watch.”

So I did.

After the dawn ceremony the next morning, I sat for Seon meditation. 5 am, still dark outside, the meditation hall quiet except for breathing.

I asked myself: Why am I so greedy?

And then: What’s making me so impatient?

Why am I in such a hurry?

The Face That Appeared

Her face flashed through my mind.

My ex.

And suddenly I understood.

It felt like a cold shower. Brutal but refreshing.

The memories came exactly as the nun said they would—flowing like a river. I didn’t hold onto them. I just watched.

And underneath all of it, clear as ice water:

Even though I’ve been telling myself for months that I wasn’t abandoned—that the breakup was ‘mutual’, that it was for the best, that I’m healing—the belief system running underneath is completely different:

I am worthless.

Nobody loves me.

I need to prove myself to be worthy.

I need to prove to those who hurt me and abandoned me that I was worth keeping and they were wrong to let me go.

That’s it.

That’s the root of everything.

How It All Connects

Every goal I’m chasing. Every timeline I’ve set. Every achievement I’m desperate for.

None of it is actually about the goal itself.

It’s all about proving I wasn’t worthless after all.

The ambition isn’t ambition—it’s compensation.

The greed isn’t greed for success—it’s greed for proof of worth.

The impatience isn’t about wanting things quickly—it’s about needing validation now before I disappear into the worthlessness I believe I am.

I’m not running towards something.

I’m running away from the belief that I’m nothing.

And I’m running towards the fantasy that if I achieve enough, accomplish enough, become impressive enough, the people who abandoned me will realise they were wrong.

They’ll see what they lost.

They’ll regret letting me go.

And somehow that will prove I was worthy all along.

The Greedy Truth

That’s why I’m greedy.

Not because I want things for my own sake.

But because I need constant proof that I exist, that I matter, that I’m worth keeping.

Every achievement is another piece of evidence against the verdict that I’m worthless.

Every goal reached is another appeal against the abandonment.

And it’s exhausting.

Because no matter how much I achieve, the belief doesn’t change.

The worthlessness isn’t about what I do. It’s about what I believe I am.

So I can accomplish everything on my list and still feel empty. Because I’m trying to solve an internal problem with external solutions.

I’m trying to prove worth to people who’ve already decided I don’t have it.

And even if I could prove it to them—what about proving it to myself?

What I Told Myself in That Meditation Hall

Sitting there at 5 am, watching this realisation unfold, I tried something different.

I told myself: You don’t need to prove anything.

You don’t need to be impressive to be worthy.

You don’t need to win anyone back to validate your existence.

If you’re going to run towards goals, let it be because you genuinely want to do those things. Because they make you happy. Because they’re interesting.

Not because you’re trying to prove you weren’t worthless after all.

The Question I’m Sitting With Now

But here’s what I don’t know:

How do you separate genuine desire from need for validation?

When I want to accomplish something, how do I tell if it’s because:

• A) I actually want this for itself, or

• B) I’m trying to prove I’m not worthless?

When I feel impatient, how do I know if it’s because:

• A) I’m genuinely excited about the thing, or

• B) I’m desperate for proof of worth before the worthlessness swallows me?

How do you do things for yourself when you don’t believe you have a self worth doing things for?

I don’t have the answer yet.

The Pattern I’m Starting to See

Being told you’re greedy when you’re actually just trying to prove you’re not worthless—that’s a mindfuck.

Being told to be humble when you already believe you’re nothing—that’s not humility. That’s just reinforcing the wound.

Being told to slow down when you’re running from a belief that you’re about to disappear—that feels impossible.

You can’t slow down when you’re running for your life.

Even if the threat isn’t real. Even if it’s just a belief system installed by people who hurt you.

It still feels like survival.

What the Temple Is Teaching Me (Slowly)

I thought I came here to let go of ambition.

But what I actually need to let go of is the belief that I’m worthless without it.

I thought I came here to become humble.

But what I actually need is to find some ground between “I’m special and deserve everything” and “I’m disgusting and deserve nothing.”

I thought I came here to stop being greedy.

But what I actually need is to stop trying to earn worth from people who’ve already decided I don’t have it.

The greed isn’t the problem. The worthlessness underneath it is.

The Uncomfortable Question

If I genuinely believed I was worthy—just as I am, without achievements or validation—would I still want the things I’m chasing?

I honestly don’t know.

And that terrifies me.

Because it means I don’t actually know what I want. I only know what I think will prove I’m not worthless.

Who am I without the desperate need to prove myself?

I have no idea.

What I’m Trying (Without Much Success)

When I notice myself in a hurry, I try to pause and ask:

Am I excited, or am I desperate?

Am I doing this because I want to, or because I need to prove something?

Would I still want this if no one would ever know I did it?

Would I still want this if she never found out?

That last one is the hardest.

Because so much of what I want is specifically designed to be visible. To be impressive. To be something she’d regret missing.

If I’m honest, I’m not building a life. I’m building evidence.

Evidence that abandoning me was a mistake.

And that’s not the same thing.

For Anyone Else Running on Empty

If you’re chasing things you’re not sure you actually want:

If every achievement feels hollow because it’s not bringing the validation you’re desperate for:

If you’re in a constant hurry but you don’t know what you’re rushing towards:

Check underneath.

You might not be greedy. You might not be ambitious.

You might just be trying to prove you’re worthy to people who’ve already decided you’re not.

And you can’t win that game.

Because the problem isn’t your lack of achievements.

The problem is the belief that you’re worthless without them.

That belief is a lie.

But knowing it’s a lie doesn’t make it feel less true.

What I’m Learning to Ask Instead

Not: “How can I prove I’m worthy?”

But: “What if I’m already worthy?”

Not: “How can I accomplish enough to be valuable?”

But: “What if value isn’t earned?”

Not: “How can I make them regret abandoning me?”

But: “What if their opinion isn’t the measure of my worth?”

I don’t believe these questions yet.

But I’m sitting with them.

And maybe that’s enough for now.

From a meditation cushion where I’m learning that greed and worthlessness are closer than I thought

Emotionally yours (and trying to slow down),
Suinny

P.S. - The Shift I’m Attempting

I’m trying to notice the difference between:

Running FROM worthlessness (desperate, exhausting, never enough)
vs.
Walking TOWARDS something (curious, energising, enough just to try)

I fail at this most of the time.

But occasionally, for a few minutes, I can feel the difference.

And in those moments, I’m not trying to prove anything.

I’m just being.

And maybe that’s what it feels like to believe you’re already worthy.

I’m not sure yet.

But I’m staying to find out.

Next week: Probably still impatient. Possibly less greedy. Definitely still working on believing I’m worthy without proof.

Resources:

• On hwadu practice in Korean Seon Buddhism: Look up Seung Sahn or Chinul

• On worthlessness core beliefs: Schema therapy, specifically “Defectiveness/Shame” schema

• On doing things for genuine desire vs. validation: I’m still figuring this out, honestly

Note: This is one meditation session’s realisation, not enlightenment. I still feel worthless most days. I’m still impatient. I’m still greedy for proof. But now I know why. And maybe that’s the first step.

There’s a saying about married life in Korea:

“When you get married, be deaf for three years, blind for three years, and mute for three years.”

It’s advice about keeping your head down, learning before speaking, and not causing friction in a new family.

At temples, they say: “All three. For three years. At once.”

Deaf, blind, and mute. Simultaneously. For years.

And here’s the fun part: after a Buddhist nun—my new boss—explained this to me, she immediately added:

“But actually, you have to listen to everything. Every conversation, even when they’re not talking to you. You have to read the room before anyone tells you what’s wrong. You have to know what people need before they ask.”

So.

Be deaf. But hear everything.
Be blind. But see everything.
Be mute. But know exactly when to speak.

Be numb to the outside world when meditating. But be hyper-sensitive to every social nuance when living daily life.

Cool. Cool cool cool.

This is my life now.

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How I Got Here

After my relationship ended, I came to a temple thinking: This is where I heal. This is where I rebuild my shattered self-worth. This is where I learn to value myself again.

And then, within weeks, a woman I’d grown close to—a laywoman at the first temple—pulled me aside with some advice:

“You should pretend you can’t speak English as well as you do. Your skills make people feel threatened. It’s better to hide what you can do.”

I stared at her.

I’d spent months being told I was disgusting, manipulative, worthless. I came here specifically to rebuild my sense of self-worth. To remember I had value. To learn, maybe… I wasn’t the monster I’d been convinced I was.

And now: Dim your light. You’re too much. Be smaller.

The whiplash nearly broke my neck.

The Impossible Standards

Here’s what temple life actually requires:

Be humble. But not so humble you don’t notice what needs doing.
Don’t stand out. But be exceptional at your work.
Don’t gossip. But know everything happening in the community.
Don’t be nosy. But be so attuned to others that you anticipate needs before they arise.
Efface yourself. But be competent enough that your absence would be noticed.

It’s not just contradictory. It’s designed to be impossible.

Because every word you say in this tiny community can become a disaster you can’t control. Someone mishears. Someone misinterprets. Someone reports to someone else. Suddenly you’re in trouble for something you didn’t mean, said to the wrong person, at the wrong time, in the wrong tone.

The solution, apparently, is to develop supernatural social awareness whilst simultaneously pretending you’re oblivious.

I’m exhausted just writing this.

The Westernised Mind Problem

I was raised to believe:

• Mind your own business

• Don’t be nosy—it’s intrusive and tiring

• Respect people’s privacy

• Focus on your own work

• Independence is a virtue

Temple life requires the opposite:

• Everyone’s business is your business

• You must notice everything about everyone

• You must keep your mouth shut

• Your work affects everyone; everyone’s work affects you

• Interdependence is everything

And look—I get it. I understand the philosophy. Community over individual. Harmony over personal expression. The collective good.

But I’m trying to rebuild a self here.

How do you reconstruct your sense of worth in a system that explicitly tells you: your individual self matters less than the group’s comfort?

How do you heal from being told you’re worthless by learning to… make yourself smaller?

The English Incident (And What It Revealed)

When that laywoman told me to hide my English skills, my first reaction was defensive:

Why should I pretend to be less competent? Why is my ability threatening? Why should I diminish myself to make others comfortable?

But then I thought: Is she right that I’m inconsiderate?

Because maybe it wasn’t about my English skills at all. Maybe it was about how I used them. Did I show off? Did I make others feel inadequate? Was I so focused on “rebuilding my self-worth” that I wasn’t noticing how my behaviour affected people?

I genuinely don’t know.

And that’s the problem with temple feedback: Is it wisdom about humility, or is it the same pattern of “you’re too much, be less” that broke me in the first place?

How do I tell the difference?

What “Humility” Started to Feel Like

After a few weeks, I noticed something:

Every time I did something well, I felt anxious.
Every time I spoke confidently, I second-guessed myself.
Every time someone complimented my work, I minimised it immediately.

“Oh, it’s nothing.”
“Anyone could have done it.”
“I was just lucky.”

I was becoming smaller again.

The same smallness I came here to escape.

Except now it was wrapped in spiritual language: humility, egolessness, self-effacement.

But it felt suspiciously like the same self-erasure that left me unable to function after my breakup.

The Contradiction I Can’t Resolve

Here’s what I can’t figure out:

I came here because I was broken down.

Someone I loved convinced me I was disgusting, manipulative, and worthless. I believed them. I spent months in crisis, unable to work, writing unsent letters, genuinely considering whether I should exist.

Temple life was supposed to help me rebuild.

But temple life also says: Don’t shine too bright. Don’t stand out. Don’t make others uncomfortable with your competence. Read every social cue. Absorb every criticism. Make yourself smaller for the collective good.

So… am I healing? Or am I just finding a spiritual framework for the same self-destruction?

Is “humility” teaching me healthy self-awareness, or is it just a more socially acceptable way to hate myself?

I genuinely don’t know.

What My Westernised Brain Keeps Screaming

My individualistic, Western-raised mind keeps rebelling:

You don’t owe anyone your dimness.
Your competence isn’t an offence.
You’re allowed to take up space.
Rebuilding self-worth means actually valuing yourself.

But then I think: What if that’s exactly the arrogance I need to shed?

What if my “self-worth” is just ego dressed up in therapy language? What if my resistance to “being small” is actually resistance to genuine humility?

What if the temple is right, and I’m just too Western, too individualistic, too self-centred to see it?

Or.

What if the temple culture is just another system that asks women, foreigners, newcomers to make themselves smaller for everyone else’s comfort?

How do I know which it is?

The Questions I’m Living With

I don’t have answers. I’m just sitting with these questions:

1. Is there a difference between humility and self-erasure?

Can you value yourself whilst also considering your impact on others? Or is that contradiction impossible?

2. Is “rebuilding self-worth” incompatible with community living?

Maybe you can’t have both. Maybe healing your sense of self requires a kind of individualism that temple life can’t accommodate.

3. Am I being asked for humility or compliance?

When they say “be smaller,” are they asking me to shed ego—or just to stop being inconvenient?

4. Can a westernised mind ever truly adapt to this?

Or am I just fundamentally unsuited to collective living because I was raised to value independence?

5. Is the exhaustion worth it?

Constantly reading rooms, monitoring reactions, anticipating needs, never relaxing—is this spiritual practice or just surveillance culture with prayer beads?

What I’m Trying (Sort Of)

I don’t have this figured out. But here’s what I’m attempting:

Notice the difference between:

• “I shouldn’t show off” (humility)

• “I shouldn’t be competent” (self-erasure)

Ask myself:

• Am I hiding my skills to avoid ego, or am I hiding them because I’m scared of taking up space?

• Am I considering others’ feelings, or am I making myself smaller to avoid conflict?

Look for the pattern:

• Does this feedback help me grow, or does it just make me smaller?

• Am I learning or am I shrinking?

Be honest about the cost:

• Constant vigilance is exhausting

• Anticipating everyone’s needs whilst suppressing my own is unsustainable

• Maybe I’m just not built for this

The Pattern I Can’t Ignore

Here’s what keeps stopping me when I want to dismiss all this as “just a cultural difference”:

I’ve been told I’m inconsiderate. Repeatedly. By multiple people.

Not just by my ex. Not just by the mentor we both trusted. But now by people at the temple who have no connection to that relationship.

The laywoman who told me to dim my light? She wasn’t being cruel. She was sincere. I could feel that she cared about me, that she didn’t want to see me break down again.

She’s lived at Buddhist temples for over 60 years. She was honestly sharing what she’d learned, trying to help me avoid the mistakes she’d seen destroy others.

And she told me more than just “hide your English skills.”

She told me I make others uncomfortable because I can be impolite and selfish.

Specific examples: I sit incorrectly on the floor. I cross my legs in ways that show my feet to elders—which is apparently quite rude. Small things I had no idea about because no one taught me.

Things my Western friends never mentioned because they’re not rude in Western contexts.

But here? They matter.

What I’m Slowly Realising

I want to believe the problem is “temple culture is too restrictive.”

But the truth might be simpler and harder:

I’m too radical. Too direct. Too thick about what’s going on around me.

I don’t naturally notice social cues. I don’t think about how my actions affect others unless someone explicitly tells me. I do what feels authentic to me and call it being genuine, without considering whether it’s actually just being oblivious.

Western individualism taught me to value authenticity over harmony.

But maybe “authenticity” has just been my excuse for not learning to consider others.

My Western friends never called me inconsiderate because in individualist cultures, what I do is fine. Mind your own business. Express yourself. Don’t worry about others’ comfort unless they explicitly say something.

But every mentor from collective cultures—Korean, deeply Buddhist, community-focused—has said the same thing: You’re inconsiderate. You’re selfish. You don’t think about how you affect people.

At what point do I stop dismissing this as a cultural mismatch and start accepting it as accurate feedback?

The Truth I Don’t Want to Face

I can’t just escape to somewhere “more accepting.”

There’s no heaven where I can live exactly as I am without ever having to adapt, change, or consider others.

If I leave the temple saying “it’s just not my path,” I’m avoiding the real issue: I genuinely don’t know how to live in harmony with others.

Whether they’re from individualist cultures or collective ones.

The temple is just making it visible in ways Western spaces don’t.

What I’m Actually Trying to Do

My goal isn’t to escape this discomfort.

My goal is to centre myself.

To find some balance between:

• Valuing myself AND considering others

• Authenticity AND appropriateness

• Self-worth AND humility

• Western directness AND Eastern sensitivity

Right now, I feel oppressed by the rules and values of this sacred place. Crushed by impossible standards. Exhausted by constant vigilance.

But maybe that’s what growth feels like.

Maybe the fact that it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s wrong—it means it’s the exact place I need to be.

I need to face this difficulty now, or I’ll never learn how to navigate it.

There’s no shortcut. There’s no “better fit” community where I magically know how to be considerate without trying.

I need to actually learn this. Even though it’s crushing me.

The Uncomfortable Middle Ground

So here’s where I actually am:

Not “temple life is wrong.”

Not “I’m perfectly fine and just culturally mismatched.”

But somewhere messier:

The temple standards feel impossible AND I genuinely need to grow.

The constant vigilance is exhausting AND I’ve been oblivious to how I affect people.

Being told to be smaller feels like self-erasure AND I’ve been inconsiderate, calling it authenticity.

I’m being crushed by these expectations AND they’re teaching me things I need to learn.

Both things are true.

And I have to sit in that tension without escaping to either extreme.

For Anyone Else Caught Between Worlds

If you’re navigating the space between:

• Individual worth and collective harmony

• Healthy self-esteem and spiritual humility

• Personal healing and community demands

• Western individualism and Eastern collectivism

Here’s what I’m learning:

You’re not broken for struggling with this.

These are genuinely contradictory value systems. Of course, you’re confused. Of course, you’re exhausted.

BUT also: the difficulty might be the point.

If it feels crushing, that doesn’t automatically mean it’s wrong. It might mean you’re learning something essential.

“Humility” that feels like self-hatred probably isn’t humility.

Real humility should be liberating, not crushing. But also—if everyone in a culture tells you you’re inconsiderate, at some point you have to consider they might be right.

You might genuinely need to change.

Not because you’re broken, but because you’ve never learned to live in harmony with others. Individualism protected you from that lesson. Now you’re learning it the hard way.

But the standards can still be oppressive.

Both things can be true. You need to grow AND the expectations are overwhelming. You need to learn consideration AND constant vigilance is unsustainable.

There might not be an easier path.

The fantasy of finding a “better fit” community might just be avoidance. Maybe the work is here, in the discomfort.

Trust your exhaustion, but also question your resistance.

Your nervous system telling you something is hard doesn’t automatically mean it’s harmful. Sometimes hard is just... hard.

From another new place where I’m learning that growth and crushing pressure can look disturbingly similar

Emotionally yours (and staying put even though I want to run),
Suinny

P.S. - The Question I Can’t Shake

If I’m being completely honest: I don’t know if I’m resisting humility or resisting harm.

I don’t know if I need to learn to be smaller or if being asked to be smaller is itself the problem.

I don’t know if the temple is teaching me wisdom or if it’s just another place telling me I’m too much.

What I do know:

I’m too tired to figure it out right now.

But I can’t escape it either.

I need to stay. I need to learn this. Even though it’s crushing me.

Because if I leave now, I’ll just take my inconsiderate, oblivious, too-radical self somewhere else and repeat the same patterns.

The work is here. In the discomfort. In the confusion.

And that’s the most honest thing I can say.

Next week: Probably still confused. Possibly more humble. Definitely still exhausted.

Resources:

• If you’re struggling with collectivist vs individualist values: The Culture Map by Erin Meyer

• On healthy self-esteem vs ego: Probably therapy, honestly

• On whether temple life is right for you: I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out

Note: This isn’t anti-temple or anti-Buddhism. It’s one person’s honest struggle with cultural adaptation, genuine character flaws, and the question of whether crushing pressure means you’re growing or being crushed. I don’t have the answer yet. I’m staying to find out. Your path might be completely different. That’s okay.

The last real conversation we had, she said something that’s been replaying in my head for months:

“Now that you know you’re not ‘a good person,’ you should rethink everything you’ve told yourself.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

Not “you did some unkind things.” Not “you need to work on this behaviour.”

Everything you’ve told yourself.

Every thought. Every perception. Every memory of our relationship. Every belief about what happened. Everything.

With one sentence, she didn’t just criticise me—she invalidated my entire internal reality.

And because I have BPD and can’t trust my own perceptions anyway, I believed her.

I genuinely believed I was playing the victim. That my entire healing story was a lie I’d constructed to avoid facing how terrible I am.

So I went to Myanmar and prayed for an answer to a question I was already convinced I knew:

Am I falling into a victim narrative?

Not “was I gaslit” or “was I manipulated.” I’d already decided the answer: Yes. I was playing the victim. She was right. I was wrong about everything.

This post is about what happened when I actually tried to examine that belief.

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The Prayer I Couldn’t Stop Saying

Kyaiktiyo. Bagan. Yangon. Three sacred sites, endless prostrations, and the same prayer on loop:

“Please give me the strength to walk the right path. Please help me centre myself. Please show me what’s true.”

I wasn’t praying for her to come back. I wasn’t praying for the pain to stop.

I was praying for clarity about whether I’m lying to myself.

Because what if all those journal entries about being torn down—what if that’s just my victim script? What if every time I think “I was made to feel small,” I’m actually avoiding the truth that I just couldn’t handle honest feedback?

What if the person who loved me most was telling me difficult truths, and I’ve rewritten it all as abuse because accepting reality was too painful?

Or maybe she had to tell me in brutal ways because I was too thick to accept and understand her sincere criticisms before?

The Impossible Task

After Myanmar, I did something I’d been avoiding for months.

I made a list.

Two columns:

• What I Was Told

• The Facts

The goal: separate my feelings from reality. Examine each criticism as if it were said to a friend, not to me. Be brutally honest.

Here’s what I found:

What I was told: “You have a dual personality.”

The facts: I can’t hold my centre. My emotions swing wildly. But dual personality? I don’t know. Is emotional instability the same thing? Or was this character assassination disguised as observation?

I still can’t tell.

What I was told: “You used me.”

The facts: I depended on her financially and emotionally because I couldn’t stand on my own. That’s true. But did I use her? I didn’t date her for money—I actually hated asking for help. But the impact was the same, wasn’t it? If dependence looks like exploitation from the outside, does intent matter?

I still can’t tell.

What I was told: “You’re selfish.”

The facts: This one’s true. I think of myself first. It’s a habit. It needs changing. Full stop.

What I was told: “You’re cunning.”

The facts: Also true. I can be manipulative when I want something. I know how to play situations. That’s not a defence mechanism—that’s a character flaw.

See the problem?

Some of it was accurate. Some of it I can’t assess. Some of it might have been unfair. And I have no idea which is which.

What the Temple Taught Me (Before I Left)

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable.

Working at the temple showed me my flaws in real-time, and I couldn’t rewrite the narrative because other people were watching.

My coworker worked hard—obsessively hard. She did tasks no one asked her to do, worked invisibly, and seemed genuinely dedicated.

I did what I was told and then checked my phone.

She told me I didn’t “seem sincere” about the work. And honestly? She was right about that.

But here’s what I’ve realised since: She was also someone who couldn’t stand watching others not work as hard as she did. She had her own issues. It wasn’t a simple case of “perfect coworker vs lazy me.”

Still, the core observation was valid: I wasn’t fully committed to that work. I was treating it like a job, not a practice. That’s true.

Another woman told me I should have pretended I can’t speak English as well as I do, that my skills made people feel threatened, that I was “inconsiderate” about how I made others feel.

My first reaction was defensive: Why should I dim my light? Why is my competence the problem?

But then I thought: Is she right about the inconsiderate part?

Do I actually think about how my actions affect people? Or do I just do what feels natural to me and call it authenticity?

When I “considered” someone’s feelings in my last relationship, was I actually considering them—or was I considering my idea of consideration, which might have been completely tone-deaf?

How would I even know?

(I’ve since moved on from that temple—life keeps shifting, as it does. But those questions remain.)

The BPD Complication (Or: How One Sentence Can Destroy You)

Here’s why this is so hard with BPD:

I can’t trust my own perception of reality.

When someone says “you’re selfish,” my brain offers two options:

1. They’re 100% right and I’m irredeemably terrible

2. They’re 100% wrong and just trying to hurt me

There’s no option 3: “They have a point about X, but Y was unfair.”

So I either collapse into shame and accept EVERYTHING, or I reject EVERYTHING as manipulation to protect myself.

Both responses are useless for actually assessing truth.

And that line—”you should rethink everything you’ve told yourself”—was perfectly designed to exploit this vulnerability.

Whether she knew it or not, she handed me a weapon and told me to aim it at my own head.

Because people with BPD already don’t trust themselves. We already question our memories, our perceptions, our right to feel hurt. We’re already doing the work of invalidating ourselves.

That sentence just gave me permission—no, a directive—to finish the job.

For months, I genuinely believed I was wrong about everything. That every hurt I felt was imagined. That every moment of pain was just me being “too sensitive.” That the entire narrative of our relationship was a fiction I’d created to avoid facing my own awfulness.

That’s what makes this question so dangerous for people like me.

It’s not an intellectual exercise. It’s existential quicksand.

What I’m Trying Instead

The monk at Jang-eomsa told me something that’s been helpful—and infuriating.

I asked: “But what if the harsh words were true? What if they were valid criticisms that I just didn’t want to hear?”

She said: “If you can’t digest it, it’s not yours yet. Set it aside. When you’re ready, you’ll know whether to pick it up again.”

Which sounds wise, but also feels like a cop-out.

How do I know if I “can’t digest it” because:

• A) It’s genuinely harmful and wrong, or

• B) I’m just too fragile to handle truth?

Her answer didn’t help: “Trust will come with practice.”

Great. So I just... keep existing in uncertainty until someday I magically know? Cool. Cool cool cool.

The Terrifying Possibility

Here’s what scares me most:

What if I’m using “healing” as an excuse to never examine my actual flaws?

What if every time someone gives me hard feedback, I categorise it as “trauma” or “gaslighting” or “manipulation” so I never have to actually change?

What if my entire Substack is just an elaborate victim narrative that protects me from accountability?

The thought makes me nauseous.

Because if that’s true—if I’m just avoiding growth by calling it “healing”—then I’m doing exactly what was said about me: I’m manipulative, self-centred, and unwilling to actually do the work.

What I Know (Sort Of)

After weeks of sitting with this, here’s what I think I know:

1. Some criticism was valid.

I am selfish. I do think of myself first. I did depend too heavily on someone who loved me. These are facts.

2. Some criticism was probably excessive.

Being called “disgusting,” “snake-like,” “evil”—those feel like they crossed a line from feedback to attack. But I’m not certain. Maybe I was that bad and just can’t see it.

3. The cumulative effect was harmful.

Even if every individual criticism was valid, hearing negative assessments constantly for months left me genuinely unable to function. That happened. I have evidence: I couldn’t work, couldn’t eat, spent a month writing nearly a hundred unsent letters in crisis.

Whether that makes me “the victim” or just “someone who couldn’t handle reality” remains unclear.

4. I’m terrified of both possibilities.

If I were genuinely mistreated, that’s awful. If I’m rewriting honest feedback as abuse to protect my ego, that might be worse—because then I’m the problem and don’t even know it.

The Question I’m Living With

I don’t have neat answers. I’m not going to end this with “and then I realised...”

Because I haven’t realised anything yet.

I’m just sitting with the question: How do I take responsibility for my real flaws without accepting character assassination? How do I honour valid criticism without swallowing poison?

The best I can do right now is:

Accept the specific behaviours I know need changing.

I think of myself first → Working on that.
I was financially dependent → Working on that.
I struggle with emotional regulation → Working on that.

Postpone judgment on the character attacks.

Was I “disgusting”? “Evil”? “Manipulative to my core”?

I don’t know. I can’t assess that objectively yet. So I’m putting those words in a box and saving them for when I’m strong enough to evaluate them without either collapsing or rejecting them defensively.

Keep showing up.

Temple work was humbling. I saw my selfishness daily. I also saw that I was trying, and that counted for something.

Now I’m somewhere new again, and the lesson continues: showing up imperfectly is still showing up.

For My Fellow Questioners

If you’re also stuck in this terrible question— “Am I the victim or the villain?”—here’s what’s helping me:

1. Write it down

My feelings lie to me. But if I write down what was actually said and what actually happened, I can look at it later with more distance.

2. Ask: “What would I tell a friend?”

If your friend told you someone called them “disgusting” repeatedly, what would you say? Probably not “well, maybe you deserved it.”

But if your friend said, “I was financially dependent and complained when they asked me to contribute more,” you might say, “yeah, that sounds hard on them.”

3. Accept partial truths

“You’re selfish” can be true while “you’re evil” is false. These don’t have to be all-or-nothing.

4. Watch your behaviour, not your narrative

Am I actually changing? Am I treating people around me better than I treated my ex? Am I learning consideration?

If yes, that suggests I’m not just playing victim—I’m actually working.

If no, that’s information too.

5. Get comfortable with “I don’t know yet”

This might be the hardest part. But rushing to judgment either way (I’m innocent! I’m terrible!) short-circuits the actual work of self-examination.

The Answer I Don’t Have

I still don’t know if I was genuinely mistreated or if I’m just reframing harsh truths as abuse.

I don’t know if I’m courageously healing or cowardly avoiding accountability.

I don’t know if this Substack is an authentic recovery or elaborate self-deception.

What I do know:

• I’m trying to change specific behaviours

• I’m examining my flaws honestly (even though it’s excruciating)

• I’m not rushing to absolve myself or condemn myself

• I’m sitting in the discomfort of not knowing

And maybe that’s the only honest place to be right now.

Maybe healing doesn’t mean figuring out who was right. Maybe it means doing the work regardless of the narrative.

I’m not sure. But I’m here, in the uncertainty, trying.

From wherever I am this week (I’ve moved again—hence no newsletter last week—because temple life keeps teaching me that nothing is permanent, including temple arrangements)

Emotionally yours (and genuinely confused),
Suinny

P.S. - If You’re Here Too

Some questions that are helping:

The Self-Examination Check:

• Am I changing behaviour, or just defending my story?

• Would I accept this behaviour from someone else?

• What would I tell a friend in my situation?

• Can I separate “this criticism was valid” from “I’m a terrible person”?

• Am I avoiding all feedback or genuinely protecting myself from harm?

Resources helping me:

• Journaling: “What was said” vs “What is factually true”

• DBT “Checking the Facts” (helps separate feeling from reality)

• Therapy (DO NOT navigate this alone)

• Community living (nothing reveals selfishness like sharing space with others)

What’s not helping:

• Rushing to conclusions

• All-or-nothing thinking

• Asking “am I the victim?” instead of “what behaviours need changing?”

• Reading articles that either confirm I was wronged OR confirm I’m terrible

Next week: “When Humility Becomes Self-Erasure: Being Told to Shine Less at the Temple”

A note: This is me genuinely not knowing. I’m not fishing for validation or “no, you were definitely wronged!” responses. I’m sitting in uncertainty because that seems like the only honest thing to do. If you’re here too, be gentle with yourself. Not knowing is hard. But it might be the only way forward.

Dear fellow travellers,

I’m writing this from my temple room after spending weeks trying to answer a question that’s been eating me alive:

What if the person who claimed to love me was actually gaslighting me? Or what if they were just telling me difficult truths I didn’t want to hear?

And here’s the part that makes my BPD brain want to explode: I genuinely cannot tell the difference.

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The Question That Broke Me

Months ago, I told someone I loved that certain things they said felt like gaslighting. Their response was immediate and furious: “If you think I’m gaslighting you, why are you even with me?”

I couldn’t answer. Because I didn’t know.

Were they gaslighting me? Or was I so fragile that any criticism felt like an attack? Was I playing the victim? Or was I actually being manipulated?

Even now, after months of meditation and therapy and writing these letters, I still don’t have a clean answer.

What I Was Told vs What I Felt

Here’s what happened in that relationship: I was told I needed to change. Repeatedly. Sometimes gently, sometimes not. Things like:

“You’re too dependent.”
“You don’t think about others.”
“You’re selfish.”
“You have a dual personality.”
“You’re fake.”

Each time, I tried to accept it. Tried to become better. Tried to fix whatever was broken in me.

And you know what? Some of it was probably true. I was dependent. I do struggle with thinking beyond my own needs. I am working on being less self-centred.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped being able to tell where “constructive feedback” ended and “systematic dismantling of my self-worth” began.

The BPD Complication

Here’s where having BPD makes this impossibly complicated:

I don’t trust my own perceptions.

My brain does this fun thing where everything is either 100% true or 100% false. Someone is either completely right about me or completely wrong. I’m either entirely the victim or entirely the problem.

There’s no middle ground. No nuance. No “they had a point about X, but Y was unfair.”

So when someone I loved said harsh things about me, I had two options:

1. Accept everything they said as absolute truth (which destroyed me)

2. Reject everything as gaslighting (which felt like denying reality)

Neither option felt right. Both felt dangerous.

What I’m Learning to Ask

After months of sitting with this confusion, here are the questions I’m finally learning to ask:

Question 1: Am I Becoming Smaller?

In healthy relationships—even when someone gives harsh feedback—you generally feel like you’re growing. Learning. Expanding into a better version of yourself.

In unhealthy relationships, you shrink. You become smaller. You start watching their moods constantly, terrified of doing something wrong.

I became very small.

Question 2: Can I Disagree Without Consequences?

Healthy feedback allows space for dialogue. You can say “I see your point, but I think...” without it turning into a war.

Gaslighting shuts down disagreement. Any pushback is met with anger or the accusation that you’re being “difficult” or “not listening.”

I learned to stop disagreeing.

Question 3: Do They Name the Behaviour or Attack My Character?

“You left dishes in the sink again” = behaviour
“You’re disgusting and inconsiderate” = character attack

One can be fixed. The other becomes who you are.

I was told repeatedly who I was. And it wasn’t good.

Question 4: Is There Room for Context?

Healthy criticism considers circumstances: “I know you’re stressed, but this behaviour is affecting me.”

Gaslighting removes all context: “You always do this. This is just who you are.”

My context was rarely considered.

Question 5: Do I Feel Crazy?

This is the big one.

Gaslighting makes you question your own reality. Makes you think “maybe I’m remembering wrong, maybe I’m too sensitive, maybe I’m the problem.”

I spent months thinking I was crazy.

The Buddhist Perspective (Sort Of)

One of the Buddhist nuns told me something that’s been helpful:

“When you put a package in the post, if no one claims it, it returns to the sender.”

Meaning: not all feedback is yours to accept. Just because someone offers harsh words doesn’t mean you have to receive them, hold them, or let them define you.

If someone calls you disgusting, fake, manipulative—and those words don’t reflect who you actually are—you can refuse the delivery.

But here’s the hard part: you need to know yourself well enough to make that call.

And that’s what I’m still learning.

What I Know Now (Sort Of)

I think—think—this is what happened:

Some of what I was told was accurate feedback delivered poorly. I do need to work on considering others more. I am working on emotional regulation.

But some of it crossed a line. Being called “snake-like,” “disgusting,” “evil”—those aren’t constructive criticisms. Those are character assassinations.

And the cumulative effect of hearing negative things repeatedly—even mixed with moments of love—left me genuinely unable to trust my own judgment.

Which might have been the point.

For My Fellow BPD Travellers

If you’re in this confusion too—unable to tell if you’re being helped or harmed—here’s what I’m trying:

1. Write down what was said, not how it felt

My emotional memory is unreliable. But if I write down actual words? I can assess them later with more distance.

2. Ask: “Would I say this to a friend I loved?”

If the answer is no, that’s information.

3. Notice the pattern, not just the moment

One harsh comment during a stressful time? Probably not gaslighting.
Months of hearing you’re broken/wrong/too much? Different story.

4. Trust the “becoming smaller” test

Are you growing or shrinking? That’s often clearer than trying to assess individual comments.

5. Get outside perspectives

I couldn’t see clearly from inside. My therapist helped. These temple monks helped. Distance helped.

What I’m Still Working Out

I don’t have neat answers. I’m still unpacking whether I was genuinely manipulated or just couldn’t handle difficult truths.

Maybe it was both.

Maybe they truly thought they were helping me while simultaneously tearing me down.

Maybe I was so fragile that normal relationship honesty felt like attacks.

Maybe—and this feels important—intent doesn’t erase impact.

Even if every harsh word came from a place of love, if the cumulative effect was that I lost myself entirely... does the intention matter?

I’m not sure yet.

The Question I’m Living With

Here’s what I ask myself now:

“If I could go back to that relationship with the self-worth I’m building now, would I accept how I was spoken to?”

The answer is no.

And maybe that’s all I need to know.

Not that they were evil. Not that I was blameless. Just that the dynamic was harmful, regardless of intentions.

Moving Forward

I’m learning to hold complexity. To acknowledge my real flaws whilst refusing to accept character assassination. To be open to criticism whilst maintaining boundaries about how I’m spoken to.

It’s exhausting. My BPD brain wants clean answers: victim or villain, gaslit or oversensitive.

But real life is messier than that.

And maybe healing means learning to live in that mess without needing to solve it completely.

From a temple where I’m rebuilding a self I’m not entirely sure I know

Emotionally yours (still figuring it out),
Suinny

P.S. - If You’re in This Confusion

Some resources that are helping me:

The Gaslighting Reality Check:

• Do you constantly apologise even when you’re not sure what for?

• Have you stopped trusting your own memory or perceptions?

• Do you feel like you’re “walking on eggshells”?

• Do they deny things you clearly remember happening?

• Do they tell you you’re “too sensitive” when you express hurt?

If yes to several: that’s information worth considering.

Resources:

• “Psychopath Free” by Jackson MacKenzie (controversial title, but helpful on manipulation)

• Your therapist (seriously, don’t navigate this alone)

• DBT’s “Checking the Facts” skill for separating feelings from reality

• Trusted friends who knew you before the relationship

Crisis support:

• If you’re questioning your reality regularly: that’s urgent

• If you feel you can’t leave but can’t stay: that’s dangerous

• Please reach out to professionals

Next week: “The Weight of Prayers I Don’t Believe In Yet” — what happens when you kneel before Buddha but your heart is still kneeling before someone else

I’m writing this from a café at Seoul’s Express Bus Terminal, halfway between the temple and a seminar that doesn’t really matter. Around me, people rush past with that distinctive urgency of travellers—late, anxious, clutching tickets to somewhere else.

I’ve been here before. Many times, actually. Met my former tutee here. Said hello and goodbye to friends here. And yes—countless meetings with her, back when “us” was still a word that meant something.

The terminal hasn’t changed. Same platforms, same café, same announcements echoing through the halls. But the people who once stood beside me have all moved on to different destinations.

Sitting here with my coffee getting cold, something shifted. A realisation that’s been trying to surface for weeks finally broke through.

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The Word That’s Been Destroying Me

For months, my BPD brain has been screaming one word on repeat: abandoned.

She abandoned me.
My parents had abandoned me.
Anyone could and will abandon me.

Because apparently, I’m the kind of person who gets left behind. Who isn’t worth keeping. Whose value someone recognises and then decides isn’t enough.

I’ve spent weeks at this temple trying to let go of her, trying to become someone “better,” trying to fix whatever made me so easy to discard. The 4:00 am bells, the 108 prostrations, the endless dharma readings—all of it aimed at transforming myself into someone no one would ever abandon again.

Except I’ve been asking the wrong question entirely.

What Terminals Taught Me

Watching people rush past to catch their buses, something clicked.

Do we ever say someone “abandoned” a tree?

The trees lining the mountain paths near my temple provide shade to whoever passes beneath them. Shelter from rain. A resting place for the occasional temple cats. People stop, take photos, and maybe rest for a bit. Then they move on.

The tree doesn’t feel abandoned.

Same with this terminal. Thousands of people pass through here daily. Some stay for hours. Others just rush through on their way to somewhere more important. The terminal provides what it can—shelter, connection, a transition space between journeys.

Then people board their buses and leave.

And the terminal simply... remains. Fulfilling its purpose through the act of existing.

The Shift That Changes Everything

Here’s what finally made sense, sitting among strangers going everywhere and nowhere:

I’m not anyone’s property. Therefore, no one can abandon me.

It’s not that connections don’t matter—they matter enormously. But the entire framing was wrong. I’ve been thinking of myself as something to be kept or discarded, owned or thrown away.

But I’m not luggage left on a platform.

I’m the platform itself.

We were each other’s stations. A place to rest, to refuel, to find shelter during a particular phase of the journey. She found what she needed—stability I couldn’t provide then. I found what I needed—discovering I could exist independently, without wrapping my entire identity around being chosen by her.

Our connection ran its course. That’s not abandonment. That’s just the natural end of shared time.

What This Actually Looks Like

This realisation doesn’t make the grief disappear. I still miss her. The cooler weather reminds me of her perfume mixing with the scent of her coat. I still catch myself wanting to share things with her—this café, that sunset, the way the mountain fog looked this morning.

But the nature of the pain has shifted.

Instead of: “Why did she abandon me?” (which makes me the problem, the broken thing, the not-enough person)

I can ask: “What was this connection teaching me? What purpose did our time together serve?”

One question destroys me. The other teaches me.

She needed to move on to a destination I couldn’t help her reach. I needed to learn I’m not defined by being chosen. Both things can be true simultaneously.

Buddhist Stations

The monks talk about impermanence constantly, and I think I finally understand what they mean.

Impermanence doesn’t make the pain stop. It repositions it.

Everything changes. The thing I wanted to stay the same forever changed overnight. That’s not a personal failing—it’s just how time works. The date that became a grief day might someday become just… a day.

The mountains around my temple have stood for centuries. Dynasties rose and fell. Wars came and went. Countless people walked these paths, found shelter in these halls, rang these same bells, then continued their journeys elsewhere.

Were the mountains abandoned?

Or did they simply continue being mountains?

Maybe I can do the same.

Learning to Be a Station

So here’s what I’m practising instead of catastrophising about abandonment:

Exist with intention. The terminal doesn’t randomly offer services. It has clear purposes: shelter, connection, transition. I’m learning what I genuinely offer—honesty about the mess of healing, someone who’ll laugh at the darkness instead of pretending it isn’t there, a willingness to sit with uncomfortable truths.

Remain available without chasing. When someone’s bus comes, the terminal doesn’t run after them, begging them to stay longer. It simply remains. Ready for the next arrival. This is the hardest part for my BPD brain, but I’m practising it daily through these temple routines.

Find meaning in the passing through, not just the staying. Some of my most important teachers stayed in my life for a single conversation. Some connections that felt permanent ended suddenly. Both mattered. Both served their purpose.

Trust that the right people will find their way here when they need to. The terminal doesn’t advertise itself to every passing traveller. It exists, and those who need what it offers will arrive.

The Empty Space Beside Me

Day after tomorrow I’ll take the bus back to the temple, past those highway signs we used to shout together: “Paltan, Ujeong, Joam!” The roads remain the same. The rest stops haven’t moved.

Only I’m different.

Not abandoned. Not discarded. Not left behind.

Just a station—one specific, imperfect place where certain travellers might find exactly what they need, for exactly as long as they need it.

And then they’ll go. And I’ll remain.

Not destroyed by their leaving. Just... here. Solid. Available. Purposeful.

The kitchen laywoman who drove me to the sea when she saw I’d been crying—she gets this. “You can’t control who stays,” she told me whilst watching the sunset. “You can only control how present you are whilst they’re here.”

She’s right. And maybe that’s enough.

For Fellow BPD Travellers

If your entire sense of worth comes from being kept, chosen, held onto—this shift feels terrifying. I know because I’m still in the middle of it.

It’s easier to blame yourself for being “too much” than to accept that sometimes connections simply reach their natural terminus. But here’s what I’m discovering through the daily grind of temple life:

Being a station is actually more stable than being someone’s possession.

Possessions can be discarded. Stations just... are. They serve their purpose whether anyone’s currently using them or not.

The temple bells ring at 4 am regardless of whether I’m drowning or floating. The mountains stand whether I’m heartbroken or healing. And I can learn to exist with that same steady presence.

Not perfectly. Not without tears. But honestly.

The Practice of Being a Station

It’s been nearly four months since August 27th. Some days, I manage this station mindset for hours. Other days, I collapse back into “abandoned” thinking and spend my lunch break spiralling.

Both are okay. Both are part of the process.

The monks keep reminding me that enlightenment isn’t a destination—it’s showing up for practice even when you don’t feel enlightened. Even when you feel like a complete mess who’s getting everything wrong.

So tomorrow: 4:00 am bells. Temple cleaning. Writing these letters. Practising being a station even when every cell screams to chase after buses that have already left.

The mountains weren’t abandoned when those people left. They simply continued being mountains.

Maybe I can do the same. Continue being a station—one specific, imperfect, honest place where certain travellers might find exactly what they need, for exactly as long as they need it.

And then they’ll go. And I’ll remain.

Not abandoned. Just... here. Solid. Available. Purposeful.

Isn’t that enough?

From a café table at the terminal, where everyone is leaving, and I am learning to stay

Emotionally yours (learning to exist without chasing),
Suinny

P.S. - When Abandonment Thinking Spirals

If you recognise yourself in the catastrophic “everyone will abandon me” thinking—especially those of us with BPD or attachment trauma—please know you’re not broken. Your brain is doing exactly what it was trained to do by past experiences.

But that doesn’t mean you have to believe everything it tells you.

Resources that are actually helping me:

• DBT Skills Training (specifically: Radical Acceptance, Opposite Action)

• Temple routine (structure when the internal world is chaos)

• Honest conversations with a therapist about the difference between processing and ruminating

• This community—your messages remind me I’m not alone in this

Next week: “The Weight of Prayers I Don’t Believe In Yet” — what happens when you kneel before Buddha but your heart is still kneeling before someone else

There’s an image from Myanmar I can’t get out of my head.

Not the golden pagodas. Not the jade Buddha. Not the sunset over Shwedagon.

A Dior scarf. Laid on the ground. Folded into a neat square. For a monk to sit on because the floor might be cold.

I watched a devotee place it there—this designer scarf that probably cost more than I make in a month—and carefully arrange it so the head monk could sit comfortably. And something in me recoiled.

I don’t know exactly why it bothered me so much. Maybe because I’ve spent the last few months watching monks be treated like royalty whilst workers like me are told overtime pay is a “luxury.” Maybe because I’ve been carrying bags up hundreds of stairs whilst devotees in luxury brands pose for photos at sacred sites.

Or maybe because that Dior scarf on the temple floor crystallised a question I’ve been avoiding: Is devotion without sincerity still devotion? Is kindness performed for approval still kindness?

And once I started asking that question, I couldn’t stop seeing the answer everywhere.

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What Sacred Service Actually Looked Like

Let me be clear about what I was doing in Myanmar: I was working.

Not on a spiritual retreat. Not on a pilgrimage for my own growth. I was serving the head monk as part of my job at the temple.

What that meant:

• Ensuring he was comfortable with food, filling his water cup before it emptied

• Carrying his bags everywhere (heavy bags, up pagoda stairs, in the heat)

• Anticipating his needs without being told, retrieving items before he asked

• Preparing ceremonies, interpreting for monks and laypeople

• Making sure every detail was perfect because anything less would reflect poorly on everyone

It was stressful. Exhausting. And I was grateful for the opportunity—genuinely grateful to see Myanmar, to be chosen for this role, to serve.

But gratitude doesn’t erase the other thing I was noticing: the uncomfortable truths about how sacred service actually works.

The Scene That Won’t Leave Me

That Dior scarf.

The devotee who placed it there wasn’t being cruel. She was being devoted. Caring. Making sure the monk was comfortable.

But something about it stuck in my throat like a thorn.

Maybe it was watching monks be treated like princes. Waited on. Catered to. Their every comfort was prioritised whilst the people serving them worked twelve-hour days without overtime pay.

Maybe it was the way devotees competed for the head monk’s attention. Trying to impress. To be noticed. To be seen as more devoted than others.

Maybe it was this question that wouldn’t stop circling: Why are you doing this? Is it for him? For the Dharma? Or is it so he’ll think well of you?

Is kindness performed to gain favour still kindness? Is devotion without sincerity still devotion?

I don’t know. But that Dior scarf on the temple floor—expensive, designer, laid out for someone who’s supposed to embody non-attachment—it felt like the perfect symbol of something I couldn’t articulate.

Devotion that resembles a status display. Service that feels more like performance.

The Patterns I Started Seeing

Once you notice it in one place, you start seeing it everywhere.

The pilgrims on this journey: wearing designer clothes to temples. Luxury brands to sacred sites. Not just nice clothes—recognisable luxury. Labels visible. Status on display.

And the way they interacted with local Myanmar people—with the vendors, the temple workers, the communities we visited—there was something in the tone that made me uncomfortable.

Pity. Condescension. A kind of charitable superiority.

They gave money. They gave items. They were generous, technically. But the way they gave...

It wasn’t eye-to-eye. It was looking down.

There was contempt for local customs. Dismissiveness towards Myanmar culture and habits. A sense that “we’re helping these poor people” rather than “we’re guests in this sacred place.”

And the worst part—the part that made me feel physically ill—was when someone articulated what I’d been sensing:

“We should feel grateful for seeing that we’re better than them.”

Not: “We should feel grateful for what we have.”

“We should feel grateful for seeing we’re better than them.”

As if poverty is meant to make you feel superior. As if the point of charity is to reinforce your own elevated status. As if devotion means performing generosity whilst maintaining your position above those you’re “helping.”

I wanted to say something. But what do you say? How do you challenge that in the middle of a pilgrimage when you’re the staff, not the pilgrim? When your job is to facilitate, not to critique?

So I stayed quiet. And felt complicit. And that feeling hasn’t left.

The Irony That’s Eating Me

Here’s what makes this all so disorienting:

These are people who talk about Buddhist teachings constantly. Karma. Compassion. Interconnection. The twelve links of dependent origination. Non-attachment. Loving-kindness.

They can quote sutras. They attend ceremonies. They make offerings. They’re devoted.

But somehow, the people who speak most about Buddhist principles seemed to have less peace, less ease, less actual compassion than people who’ve never heard of the Dharma.

The people who talk about non-attachment are the most attached to status.

The people who speak about interconnection treat others as fundamentally separate—better or worse, worthy or pitiable.

The people who emphasise compassion practice a kind of charity that feels more like power display.

And I don’t say this from a place of superiority. I say this as someone who sees my own face in their flaws.

Because I do this too. I judge. I perform. I measure my worth by comparison. I want to be seen as good, as devoted, as better than.

When I look at their faults, I see my own patterns. And I feel ashamed. And I try to do better. And I fail. And the cycle continues.

The System That Makes It Possible

But this isn’t just about individuals. It’s about the system that makes this kind of devotion not just possible but expected.

Here’s what working at a temple has taught me about how sacred institutions actually function:

We talk about precepts and respect. But at work? There are no boundaries. No lines that can’t be crossed.

Contracted working hours? Ignored. We work until the work is done, however long that takes.

Overtime pay? That’s a luxury. A “nice to have.” Not a right.

Proper handover of responsibilities? Doesn’t exist. You’re just supposed to figure it out. And if you can’t, if you ask questions, you’re not trying hard enough.

The monks who don’t understand the practical work make decisions anyway. And we can’t push back. We can’t say “that won’t work” or “that’s unreasonable.” We say “Yes, Sunim” and then break ourselves trying to make it happen.

The people who’ve worked at temples for years—they think this is normal. The monks think this is normal. The exploitation isn’t intentional cruelty; it’s just how it’s always been done.

There’s a Korean saying: “절이 싫으면 중이 떠난다” (If you don’t like the temple, the monk leaves).

It’s an expression about how temples never change. The institution stays. If you can’t handle it, you’re the one who leaves. The temple remains exactly as it is.

And the people who stay—who work in this closed, insular environment—they start to seem a bit... off. Unscrewed. Like something vital has been worn down by the system until they accept the unacceptable as normal.

And I’m terrified I’m becoming one of them.

When You Stay Too Long, Your View Narrows

Here’s what frightens me most: when you stay in one place too long, your field of vision shrinks.

You start thinking the way things are done here is the way things are done everywhere. The abnormal becomes normal. The exploitative becomes “just how it is.”

You stop questioning. You stop seeing clearly. You adapt to survive, and adaptation means accepting.

I see this in the long-term temple workers. I see this in the monks who’ve never left. I see this in devotees who’ve spent decades in this ecosystem.

And I’m starting to see it in myself.

When I first arrived, I noticed everything. The lack of boundaries. The unpaid labour. The way devotion gets performed rather than embodied.

Now? Now I catch myself thinking: “Well, that’s just how temples work.”

That’s how you know you’re being absorbed. When you stop being shocked. When you start making excuses. When the narrow view feels normal and you forget there’s a wider world outside these walls.

Going to Myanmar pulled me out of that narrowing vision just long enough to see clearly again. And what I saw disturbed me.

The Complexity I Can’t Escape

Here’s the part that makes this hardest to write:

My relationships on this trip were good. Really good.

The head monk was kind to me. The devotees were friendly. The prayer monk was wonderful to work with. We laughed together. Shared meals. Had genuine moments of connection.

I’m not trying to condemn people. I’m trying to understand a system—and my own complicity within it.

Because I’m part of this too. I carried those bags. I served with a smile. I didn’t challenge the Dior scarf moment or the “better than them” comment.

I participated in the system even whilst feeling uncomfortable with it. I performed my role. And that performance makes me complicit.

So when I critique the devotion-as-performance, I’m also critiquing myself. When I question sincere service, I’m questioning my own motivations.

Why do I want to do this work well? To serve the Dharma? Or to be seen as competent, valuable, worthy of keeping around?

Is my service sincere? Or am I also performing, just in a different way?

I don’t have clean answers. Just uncomfortable questions that keep me up at night.

What I’m Learning to See

When I look at the devotees placing designer scarves on temple floors, I see:

• People trying to show devotion the only way they know how

• People shaped by a culture where status and display matter

• People who genuinely love the monks and want to care for them

• And people who’ve been taught that worth comes from being “better than”

When I look at the monks accepting this treatment, I see:

• People trapped in roles they didn’t necessarily choose

• People shaped by a system that elevates them whether they want it or not

• People who might be uncomfortable with the reverence but don’t know how to refuse it

• And people who’ve come to expect this treatment as normal and deserved

When I look at myself, I see:

• Someone trying to navigate this system without being consumed by it

• Someone who judges others whilst doing the same things differently

• Someone who wants to believe her service is sincere whilst knowing it’s also strategic

• And someone whose vision is narrowing every day she stays

None of us are villains. We’re just people shaped by systems that were broken before we arrived. And trying to be good within those systems is more complicated than it looks from outside.

The Questions That Won’t Leave

Is devotion without sincerity still devotion?

Is service performed for approval still service?

Is compassion that maintains superiority still compassion?

Can you work within an exploitative system without becoming complicit?

Can you judge the system whilst participating in it? Or does participation disqualify your critique?

How do you know if your own service is sincere? How do you know you’re not just performing too, just with different props?

When does adaptation become absorption? When does surviving the system become accepting it?

I don’t have answers. Just a Dior scarf on a temple floor that I can’t stop seeing. And questions that won’t leave me alone.

What Myanmar Taught Me (That I Didn’t Want to Learn)

Sacred spaces are full of very human problems.

Devotion can coexist with performance. Generosity can coexist with superiority. Service can coexist with exploitation.

The people who speak most about spiritual principles aren’t necessarily the ones embodying them. And pointing that out doesn’t make you exempt—you’re probably failing in your own ways too.

Systems that appear sacred still run on labour, hierarchy, and unexamined assumptions. And if you stay long enough, you stop seeing the problems. You become part of the architecture.

And sometimes the most devoted gesture—a designer scarf laid carefully on the ground for a monk’s comfort—can reveal more about power, performance, and unexamined privilege than any amount of chanting ever could.

For Anyone Else Serving in Sacred Spaces

If you’re reading this because you also work in religious institutions, spiritual communities, or “sacred service” roles:

You’re allowed to feel conflicted.

You can be grateful for the opportunity and disturbed by the system. You can respect the individuals and critique the structure. You can serve sincerely whilst questioning whether your service is truly sincere.

The discomfort isn’t a sign you don’t belong. It might be a sign you’re still seeing clearly.

When everyone around you says “this is just how it is,” that’s when you need to hold onto your questions most tightly. Because adaptation is easy. Staying awake is hard.

You don’t have to have answers. You don’t have to fix the system single-handedly. You just have to keep asking: Is this right? Is this sincere? Is this service or is this something else?

And when the questions get uncomfortable, when you start seeing your own face in others’ flaws—that’s not failure. That’s the beginning of something more honest.

The View From Here

I’m back at my temple in Korea now. Back to the routine. The structure. The work.

And I’m trying to hold onto what I saw in Myanmar. The clarity that comes from distance. The questions that arise when you step outside the narrowing field of vision.

That Dior scarf is still there in my mind. Perfectly folded. Laid on the temple floor with such care.

And I still don’t know if what I witnessed was genuine devotion or performance. Sincere service or status display.

Maybe it was both. Maybe all devotion is complicated. Maybe we’re all performing and sincere simultaneously, and the question isn’t which one is real—it’s whether we’re honest enough to notice both.

I’m grateful I went to Myanmar. I don’t regret it. The relationships were good. The temples were beautiful. The experience was valuable.

But I came back with questions I can’t answer. Discomfort I can’t shake. And a designer scarf on a temple floor that’s become the symbol of everything I’m still trying to understand about sacred service, sincere devotion, and who we’re really serving when we serve.

Maybe that’s the real pilgrimage. Not finding answers. But learning to sit with the questions. And hoping that sitting with them makes you just a little more honest. A little less complicit. A little more awake.

Even when staying awake is uncomfortable. Especially then.

These letters from the temple are how I’m learning that sacred spaces don’t exempt us from human problems—and sometimes the most devoted gestures reveal the most uncomfortable truths.

Next week: Still figuring out what needs to be written

Still questioning, still serving, still uncomfortable,
Suinny

For anyone navigating service in religious institutions:

You’re allowed to critique the system whilst working within it. Participation doesn’t disqualify your questions. Discomfort isn’t disloyalty. Sometimes seeing clearly means staying uncomfortable. That’s not failure. That’s integrity.

Resources for religious workers experiencing burnout or exploitation:

• Religious Workers’ Rights organisations

• Therapy specialising in religious trauma

• Communities for people deconstructing whilst still practising

The questions are valid. The discomfort is data. Your observations matter. Keep asking. Keep seeing. Keep staying awake.

I need to tell you about Myanmar. About a pilgrimage that wasn’t supposed to be a pilgrimage. About a sceptic who found herself moved by something she doesn’t quite believe in.

I’m not a religious person. Never have been. I live at a Buddhist temple, yes, but I came here for structure, not spirituality. For survival, not salvation.

I’m sceptical. Cynical, even. I want to think positively, but my brain always jumps to: “What will go wrong? What bad thing is coming next?” I’m anxious. I doubt everything.

And yet.

Last week I went to Myanmar. Four nights, five days. It wasn’t a trip—it was work. I served the head monk on a pilgrimage program. And something happened there that I’m still trying to understand.

Something that moved me even though I don’t believe it should have.

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This Wasn’t a Vacation (This Was Work)

Let me be clear: I didn’t go to Myanmar for spiritual awakening. I went because it was my job.

My role: serve the head monk. Make sure he’s comfortable. Anticipate his every need without being asked.

What that actually meant:

Food service: Ensuring his meals were appropriate. Filling his water cup before it was empty. Making sure the temperature was right, the portions correct, everything exactly as needed.

Logistics: Carrying his backpack and bags everywhere. Heavy bags. All day. Up the pagoda stairs. Through crowded temples. In the heat.

Anticipation: Taking things out of bags before he asked. Having items ready before he needed them. Reading his mind about what would be required next.

Ceremony preparation: Setting up for rituals. Making sure everything was in place. No mistakes allowed.

Interpretation: Translating for monks and laywomen who joined the pilgrimage. English, Korean, back and forth, constantly.

It was stressful. Every detail had to be perfect. The head monk needed to be pleased. One mistake could reflect badly on the temple, on me, on everything.

I wasn’t there to find myself. I was there to make sure the head monk’s water glass never got below half-full.

And yet. I loved that I got to see Myanmar.

The Contradiction of Serving While Witnessing

Here’s the strange thing about working a pilgrimage: you’re so focused on the work that the sacred moments catch you off-guard.

I’m carrying bags up hundreds of stairs to another pagoda. Exhausted. Sweating. Focused on not dropping anything. And suddenly I look up and there’s a golden Buddha sixty feet tall and my breath catches.

I’m preparing for a ceremony. Laying out offerings. Making sure incense is lit properly. Entirely focused on the task. And suddenly the monks start chanting and the sound fills the entire space and something in my chest tightens.

I’m standing next to the head monk, professional mode, just in case he needs me, and a laywoman is asking questions about her life. And suddenly I’m hearing the answer too and something about it lands differently than it ever has before.

You can be working and still be moved. You can be stressed about logistics and still experience wonder.

I didn’t expect that. I thought: either you’re working (practical, grounded, focused) or you’re experiencing spirituality (open, receptive, present).

But somehow Myanmar was both. Simultaneously. All the time.

Shwedagon Pagoda: When Gold Sounds Like a Fairy Tale

On our last day in Myanmar, we went to the Shwedagon Pagoda.

I’d seen pictures. I knew it was famous. I expected it to be impressive in the way tourist sites are impressive: “Wow, that’s big. That’s shiny. Okay, what’s next?”

I was not prepared for what it actually felt like.

The sound: Golden bells and charms in the wind. That specific sound—you know the one in animated movies when they show treasure? When gold coins spill and jewellery cascades? That exact sound. But real. Everywhere. Constant.

The feeling: Warm marble under bare feet. Not hot enough to burn, but warm enough that you feel it. Solid. Real. You’re walking on stone that thousands of people have walked on for hundreds of years and you can feel it.

The colours: Gold. Everywhere. Not just on the main pagoda—on everything. Statues, small pagodas, decorative elements. All gold. Catching the light. Reflecting moonlight. Almost too much. Almost overwhelming.

The smell: Incense so thick you could taste it. Not delicate temple incense—intense, heavy, everywhere.

The sound (again): Not just bells. Monks chanting. People praying. Murmured mantras. The constant low hum of devotion.

We had an evening ceremony there. Next to a Buddha made of jade. As the sun set and the moon rose, I walked through the complex looking up at the stars. And everything—the shiny pagodas, the Buddha statues, the wizard figures, the golden light, the chanting—all of it felt surreal.

Like I’d walked into a fairy tale. Like reality had shifted slightly to the left and I was in some in-between place where the physical and the mystical overlapped.

And I’m a sceptic. I don’t believe in mystical in-between places.

But I felt it anyway.

Three Months at a Temple and I Still Doubt Everything

Here’s what I need you to understand: I’ve been living at a Buddhist temple for three months. And I still doubt everything.

Three months is long if you think it’s long. Short if you think it’s short. Either way, it’s enough time to have done things the “original me” would never have done:

Dawn prayers at 4:30 AM. Every day. For months.

108 prostrations. Full-body bows. When I can manage them.

Meditation sessions. Sitting. Breathing. Trying to quiet my mind.

Evening prayers. Chanting in a language I barely understand.

Has it helped? Yes. Absolutely. The structure. The routine. The practice of showing up even when I don’t want to.

Do I believe in it? I... don’t know.

Do I doubt it? Constantly.

I doubt the teachings. I doubt the practices. I doubt whether any of this matters. I doubt my own doubts.

Even now, if you ask me: “Do you have no doubts about what you’re thinking, your questions, your opinions?”—the answer is: I doubt everything up until now.

I was told: “There’s no help in looking at the past. Live in the present.”

But sometimes the questions that come up lead me straight into worry and affliction anyway.

I want to believe. I want to trust. I want to just accept and move forward.

But my brain doesn’t work that way. It questions. It doubts. It picks apart every experience looking for evidence it means nothing.

And yet. Something happened at Shwedagon Pagoda that my doubting brain can’t fully explain away.

The Buddha I Wasn’t Looking For

The four nights and five days in Myanmar passed so quickly. Too quickly.

Standing at Shwedagon Pagoda on that last evening, I thought: I want to come back here as a free traveller. Spend all day meditating. Just sit and be present with whatever this feeling is.

I’ve been learning about Buddhism’s dependent origination. The law of karma and connections. How everything is interconnected. How people and moments come into your life for reasons.

I wanted to find my connection.

We had fifteen minutes before we needed to leave. I decided: I’m going to wander and find a Buddha statue that speaks to me. One that I feel drawn to. And I’ll pray there.

I walked through the complex. Looking. Waiting to feel... something. Some pull. Some sign.

And then a local person—a stranger—suddenly called me over.

He led me to a cave-like place. Sat me down in front of a large golden Buddha statue.

“This one is very efficacious for women,” he said.

I felt... something. Not a voice. Not a vision. Just a sense of: Yes. This is where I’m supposed to be right now.

So I sat. I closed my eyes. And I prayed.

I prayed even though I don’t know what I believe about prayer. I prayed even though my sceptical brain was saying: “This is just ritual. Just superstition. It doesn’t mean anything.”

I prayed anyway. For about ten minutes. And I made an offering—gave all my remaining kyat to the local man, who turned out to run a Buddhist school.

I was supposed to use that money the next day before flying out. But I didn’t need it. And maybe it could be useful somewhere else. Maybe that’s its own form of connection.

Later, I looked up the statue. Bo Bo Aung. A practitioner. The description said: prayers related to connections and karma are particularly well-answered here. The “prayer efficacy” is strong.

Of all the things I saw in Myanmar—Buddha’s genuine relics, historically significant temples, massive golden pagodas—that Bo Bo Aung statue is what stays with me most.

The one I wasn’t looking for. The one I was led to by a stranger. The one that somehow felt right even though I don’t fully believe in “feeling right” as a reliable guide.

The Gap Between Intellect and Experience

Here’s the tension I can’t resolve:

My intellect says: This was a coincidence. Pattern-seeking. Emotional vulnerability is making me read meaning into random events. The stranger probably directs lots of tourists to that statue. The “feeling” of connection was just exhaustion and overwhelm in a beautiful place.

My experience says: Something happened there. Something I can’t fully explain. A moment where I felt... aligned? Connected? Drawn to something larger?

My intellect says: You’re a sceptic. You doubt everything. Don’t abandon critical thinking just because something feels meaningful.

My experience says: But it did feel meaningful. And maybe meaning doesn’t require belief to be real.

I don’t know how to reconcile these.

I doubt the teachings. I doubt the practices. I doubt whether prayer “works” in any measurable way. I doubt whether karma and connections are real or just comforting stories we tell ourselves.

But I can’t doubt that I felt something in front of that Bo Bo Aung statue. That I was moved by the Shwedagon Pagoda in a way I didn’t expect. That Myanmar left something in me that I’m still processing.

Maybe you can doubt the metaphysics while still honouring the experience. Maybe you can be a sceptic and still be moved.

Maybe faith and doubt aren’t opposites. Maybe they’re just two ways of engaging with the same mystery.

What the Pilgrimage Taught the Sceptic

I went to Myanmar to work. To serve the head monk. To do my job correctly and not mess up.

What I got instead:

Permission to hold contradictions. You can doubt everything and still be moved. You can be sceptical and still pray. You can question the meaning while experiencing it.

The realisation that beauty matters even if it’s “just” beauty. Maybe the golden pagodas don’t connect to anything cosmic. Maybe they’re just beautiful. Maybe that’s enough.

Evidence that you can be led somewhere without understanding where you’re going. That stranger was directing me to Bo Bo Aung. I don’t know why. But I’m glad I followed.

Proof that experience transcends belief. I don’t have to believe in prayer efficacy to honour that I prayed. I don’t have to believe in karma to notice that moment felt significant.

The understanding that doubt doesn’t disqualify wonder. My sceptical brain didn’t prevent me from being awed by the Shwedagon Pagoda. The doubt and the wonder coexisted.

I’m still a sceptic. I still doubt everything. I still question whether any of this means what people say it means.

But I went to Myanmar as a cynic and came back... something slightly different. Not a believer. But maybe a sceptic who’s willing to be surprised.

For Anyone Else Who Doubts Everything

If you’re reading this because you also live in the tension between scepticism and spiritual experience:

You don’t have to resolve it.

You can doubt the teachings while appreciating the practice. You can question the metaphysics while honouring the experience. You can be critical and still be moved.

Scepticism isn’t the opposite of spirituality. It’s just a different way of engaging with it.

You’re allowed to:

• Doubt everything and still pray sometimes

• Question meaning while experiencing moments of connection

• Be cynical about ritual while participating in it anyway

• Not believe in karma while noticing patterns

• Think it’s all superstition while still being moved by beauty

Your doubt doesn’t disqualify your experience. Your questions don’t invalidate your wonder.

Maybe the point isn’t to resolve the tension. Maybe the point is to live in it. To hold both. To doubt and to experience. To question and to be moved.

Maybe that’s what pilgrimage actually is: not finding answers, but learning to hold questions differently.

The View From Here

I’m back at the temple now. Back to my normal routine. Dawn prayers. Work. Evening prayers. Sleep. Repeat.

Myanmar feels like a dream. Did I really see the Shwedagon Pagoda that evening? Did I really sit in front of Bo Bo Aung and pray? Did any of it really happen?

But I have the memory. The warm marble under my feet. The sound of golden charms clashing. The feeling of being led to something I wasn’t looking for.

I still doubt everything. Still question. Still can’t tell you whether prayer works or karma is real or connections mean anything.

But I know I felt something. And I know I’m different for having felt it, even if I can’t explain how.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe the sceptic’s pilgrimage isn’t about finding faith. It’s about finding room for mystery even in doubt.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s its own form of belief.

These letters from the temple are how I’m learning that you don’t have to stop being a sceptic to be moved by beauty—and sometimes the experiences you don’t seek are the ones that stay with you longest.

Next week: Still figuring out what needs to be written

Still doubting, still wondering, still here,
Suinny

For anyone else holding scepticism and spirituality in tension:

You’re not doing it wrong. The doubt is part of the practice. The questions are valid. You don’t have to choose between critical thinking and spiritual experience. You can hold both. The tension itself might be the point.

Resources for sceptical spiritual seekers:

• “A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment” podcasts

• Secular Buddhism podcasts

• Stephen Batchelor’s work on Buddhism without beliefs

You don’t need faith to be moved. You don’t need belief to experience wonder. You just need to show up and let yourself be surprised.

Let me tell you exactly how much money I had when my relationship ended:

Zero.

Not “not much.” Not “enough for a few weeks.” Zero.

I’d been too sick to work for over a year and more. She had supported me financially through everything—the illness, the recovery, the endless medical appointments, the daily survival. I had no income. No savings. Nothing. Depts, depts, and depts.

And then on August 27th, that support ended. Not gradually. Not with transition time. Immediately.

One day I had someone taking care of me. The next day I had nothing.

And I had to figure out how to survive.

This is that story. Not the inspiring “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” version. The real version. The one where you’re broke, broken-hearted, and making decisions based purely on “what keeps me alive and housed.”

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The Financial Aftermath Nobody Talks About

Here’s what happens financially when a relationship ends and you were dependent:

Immediate loss of:

• Housing (I couldn’t stay in her space)

• Food (she had been buying groceries)

• Healthcare support (she had been managing my medical needs)

• Daily financial security (every small expense had been covered)

• Future plans (the NYC trip we’d planned and paid for)

Immediate gain of:

• Absolutely fucking nothing

I went from having my basic needs met to having nothing. No safety net. No plan B. No emergency fund because there had been no income to save from.

Just me, my broken heart, and zero won in my bank account.

And the bills didn’t stop. The $3,000 cancellation fee for our NYC trip? It was still coming along with phone bill and basic existence costs.

With zero income.

The Privilege I Need to Acknowledge

Before I go further, I need to say this: I had options that many people don’t.

I could go to my parents’ house (even though I didn’t want to). That’s privilege. Not everyone has parents who can take them in.

I could work at a temple for room and board. That’s privilege. Not everyone has access to communities that offer housing in exchange for work.

I’m educated. I speak English fluently. I can do temple stay coordination. These are all forms of privilege.

Many people in my situation would be homeless. Would be truly destitute. Would have no options at all.

I was broke and heartbroken, but I had escape routes. And I’m aware that makes me lucky, even in crisis.

This isn’t a “look how I overcame impossible odds” story. This is a “here’s how I survived when I had limited resources and even more limited choices” story.

When Acknowledging Privilege Gets Misunderstood

Here’s something painful: I tried to acknowledge my privilege to her. And she thought I was bragging.

I told her: “I know I’m privileged. I have English skills. I’m educated. I have parents who might support me. These things give me options that not everyone has.”

Her response: “You think too great of yourself.”

That’s not what I meant. At all.

I wasn’t saying “look how amazing I am.” I was saying, “I recognise I have advantages that not everyone has, and I’m aware that makes survival easier for me than for others.”

But something got lost in translation. In tone. In a cultural context. In a language barrier between what I meant and what she heard.

To me, acknowledging privilege meant: “I’m aware of my advantages and I don’t take them for granted.”

To her, it sounded like: “I’m so great, I have all these special qualities.”

And that misunderstanding—that gap between what I was trying to say and what she heard—it still stings.

Because I wasn’t bragging. I was trying to be self-aware. Trying to recognise that I have resources others don’t. Trying to acknowledge the luck of my circumstances.

But it came across as arrogance. As I was thinking I’m special. As I was overestimating myself.

And maybe that’s a cultural difference. Maybe that’s a language barrier. Maybe that’s just another way we couldn’t fully understand each other.

But it hurts to have an attempt at humility interpreted as pride.

So let me be clear now, in a way that maybe couldn’t be clear then:

I’m not special. I’m just lucky. Lucky to have been born into circumstances that gave me an education. Lucky to have learned English. Lucky to have parents who can help in a crisis. Lucky to have access to temple communities that offer work-exchange.

None of that makes me better than anyone. It just makes me luckier than some people. And I’m aware of that luck even as I’m struggling.

I’m broke. I’m heartbroken. I’m starting from zero financially.

But I have options. And having options—even when you’re desperate—is privilege.

That’s all I was trying to say. I’m sorry it sounded like bragging. I’m sorry it seemed like I thought “too great” of myself.

I was just trying to acknowledge: I’m struggling, but I’m not struggling as much as someone without these advantages would be. And that matters.

Decision-Making When Money Decides Everything

When you have money, you make decisions based on: What do I want? What’s best for my growth? What aligns with my values?

When you have no money, every decision becomes: What can I afford? What keeps me housed? What keeps me fed?

After the breakup, I asked myself:

Where should I go to heal?

Answer based on wants: Somewhere peaceful, with therapy, with support.

Answer based on reality: Wherever will take me for free. My parents’ house (where I can’t just stand, but hey, still an option), then a temple.

What kind of work should I do?

Answer based on wants: Something meaningful, something I’m passionate about.

Answer based on reality: Whatever pays. Whatever provides housing. Whatever I can get hired for immediately.

Should I invest in my mental health?

Answer based on wants: Yes, therapy, proper treatment, and medication management.

Answer based on reality: Can’t afford therapy. Temple is free “therapy.” Make do with books and journaling for now.

What about my future career?

Answer based on wants: Design school. Sweden, Canada, Italy. Follow my dreams.

Answer based on reality: Survive first. Dream later. Save money now, plan for the future when you’re not in crisis.

Money—or lack of it—made every decision for me.

Working at a Temple: The Reality vs. The Romance

People hear “working at a Buddhist temple” and think: How spiritual. How peaceful. How meaningful.

Here’s the reality: I’m working for room and board because I have nowhere else to go and no other way to survive. I feel like suffocating whenever I go down the mountain. Full of memories and remorse.

This isn’t a gap year finding myself experience. This isn’t a spiritual retreat I chose. This is employment because I was desperate and this job came with housing.

What I do:

• Temple stay coordination

• Answering phones, booking reservations

• Giving English tours to foreigners and Korean participants

• Cleaning guest rooms

• Managing spreadsheets

• Laundry. So much fucking laundry.

What I make: Enough to save a little. Enough to pay my phone bill. Enough to start building toward independence. Not enough to move out. Not enough to be truly independent. Not yet.

What it provides:

• A room to sleep in

• Meals every day

• Structure when I’m falling apart

• A reason to get up at 4 AM

• Something to put on my CV that isn’t a year-long gap

What it doesn’t provide:

• Passion or purpose

• Long-term career prospects

• Enough money to build real independence quickly

• The freedom to leave when I want

But it keeps me alive. Fed. Housed. And right now, that’s enough.

The Shame of Being Broke at 29

Here’s what nobody tells you about financial dependence in your late twenties:

The shame is crushing.

I should have savings by now. I should have career stability. I should be independent. I should have my shit together.

Instead, I’m 29 years old, working at a temple for room and board, with basically zero savings, no career trajectory, and no plan beyond “survive this month.”

I feel like a failure. Not just in relationships. At being an adult.

My peers are:

• Buying apartments

• Getting promotions

• Building retirement funds

• Planning weddings

• Investing in their futures

And I’m counting the money I’ve saved working at a temple and feeling proud when I have enough for next month’s phone bill.

The shame of it. The absolute fucking shame.

Not ashamed about the temple work—that’s honest work, and I’m doing it well.

Shame that I’m 29 and starting from zero, or maybe below. Shame that I was dependent. Shame that I don’t have the financial foundation most people my age have built.

Making Decisions with Limited Resources

When you have no money, even small decisions become calculated risks:

Should I take a day off?

People with savings: “I need rest, I’ll take a personal day.”

Me: “If I take a day off, do I lose pay? Can I afford that? Or do I push through because I need every won I can save?”

Should I go to the doctor?

People with money: “I should get that checked out.”

Me: “Is this serious enough to spend money on? Or can I just tough it out and hope it resolves on its own?”

Should I buy this book I want to read?

People with disposable income: “Sure, treat yourself.”

Me: “That’s ₩15,000. That’s half a week of saved money. Is the book worth delaying financial independence by three days?”

Should I get coffee at a café?

Normal decision: “I could use the caffeine and change of scenery.”

My decision: “That’s ₩7,000. That’s real money. Make coffee at the temple. Don’t waste resources on non-essentials.”

Every small choice is a financial calculation. And it’s exhausting.

Building Independence from Zero

Here’s what building independence looks like when you start with nothing:

Month 1 (September/October):

• Arrived at the temple with zero savings but debts

• Started working for room and board

• First paycheck: finally, money that’s MINE

• Enough to feel like maybe I’m not completely helpless

Month 2 (November):

• Still working, still saving

• Every won feels like an achievement

• Planning to take English certification exam for salary increase

• Starting to think: maybe I can actually build something from this

Month 3 (December - now):

• Small savings accumulating

• Still not enough to move out

• Still not enough for real independence

• But more than I had in August: zero

The goal:

• Save enough to have options

• Get English certification → higher salary

• Keep building until I can afford: therapy, my own place, actual independence

• Eventually: design school? (Sweden? Canada? Italy? Who knows. Can’t think that far ahead yet.)

The reality:

• This will take time

• I’m building from absolute zero

• Every small amount saved is progress

• Independence is measured in tiny increments

But I’m building. Slowly. From nothing.

The Financial Freedom I Don’t Have Yet (But Am Working Toward)

Right now, I can’t:

• Afford my own apartment

• Pay for therapy

• Leave this job even if I wanted to

• Make big decisions about my future

• Take financial risks

• Have real freedom of choice

But I’m working toward:

• Enough savings to have options

• Enough income to be independent

• Enough security to make choices based on what I want, not just what I can afford

• Enough stability to plan for a future beyond survival

I don’t know when I’ll get there. Maybe six months. Maybe a year. Maybe longer.

But every day I work, every won I save, I’m one tiny step closer to actual independence.

Career Pivoting While Grieving (Or: How to Build a Future When You Can Barely Function in the Present)

People ask: “What’s your plan? What’s next? What about your career?”

And I want to scream: I’m just trying to survive today. I can’t think about career trajectories when I’m still crying during evening prayers.

But I have to think about it. Because time doesn’t stop. Because I can’t work at a temple forever. Because I need to build toward something.

So here’s what “career pivoting while grieving” actually looks like:

The dream:

• Design school

• Spatial design and branding

• Working internationally

• Building something meaningful

The reality:

• Can’t afford design school yet

• Can’t even think clearly enough to research programs

• Need to save money first

• Need to heal enough to function first

• Need to survive first, dream later

The compromise:

• Work at temple (provides housing, saves money)

• Take English certification exam (increases earning potential)

• Research design schools when brain isn’t completely occupied by grief

• Build skills where I can (coordination, event management, public speaking)

• Accept that career building happens slowly when you’re also rebuilding yourself

I’m not passionate about temple coordination. It’s not my calling. It’s not my dream career.

But it’s what I can do right now. And it’s building toward something. Even if that something is still unclear.

The Privilege and the Desperation

Here’s the complicated truth:

I’m privileged to have this option. Many people don’t have access to temple work. Don’t have parents to fall back on. Don’t speak English well enough to coordinate international temple stays.

And I’m desperate. I took this job because I had no other options. Because I needed housing immediately. Because I was broke and broken and had nowhere else to go.

Both things are true. I’m lucky to have this escape route. And I’m desperate enough to need it.

The privilege doesn’t make the desperation less real. The desperation doesn’t make the privilege disappear.

I’m grateful for what I have. And exhausted by what I’ve lost. And working as hard as I can to build something from the wreckage.

What Nobody Tells You About Starting Over

When you have to rebuild your life from zero, here’s what you learn:

Progress is measured in tiny increments. Saving ₩10,000 feels like victory. Getting one paycheck feels like achievement. Having enough for phone bill feels like stability.

Independence is expensive. You don’t realize how much financial dependence was supporting you until it’s gone and you’re counting every won.

Survival mode is exhausting. Making every decision based on financial necessity. Never having the luxury of choosing based on desire. It wears you down.

Building takes longer than falling. The relationship ended in one conversation. Financial independence will take months, maybe years.

Small victories matter. First paycheck. First month of savings. First bill paid by myself. Each one is proof: you’re building something.

You can be grateful and struggling simultaneously. Grateful for temple housing. Struggling with no real independence. Both are true.

The shame is real but shouldn’t be. Being broke at 29 feels like failure. But starting over after crisis takes courage, not stupidity.

For Anyone Else Starting From Zero

If you’re reading this because you’re also broke, heartbroken, and trying to figure out how to survive:

First: Assess what you actually have.

• Housing options? (Parents? Friends? Work-exchange programs?)

• Skills that can get you work immediately? (Even if it's not your dream job)

• Support systems? (Even imperfect ones)

• Any privilege you can leverage? (Education? Language skills? Access to resources?)

Second: Survival first, dreams later.

• Get housed. Get fed. Get stable.

• Take work that provides necessities, even if it’s not your passion

• Build foundation before building future

Third: Make peace with starting over.

• You’re not failing at life because you’re starting from zero

• Building from nothing takes time

• Small progress is still progress

• Every won saved is one more than you had

Fourth: Accept help where it’s available.

• This isn’t the time for pride

• If someone offers housing, take it

• If there’s work that provides room and board, take it

• You can build independence later; survive now

Fifth: Recognise your privileges and use them.

• If you have education, use it

• If you have language skills, leverage them

• If you have family who can help, accept it

• Privilege isn’t shameful; not using it when desperate is just stupid

The path from zero to independence is long. But it’s possible. One small paycheck at a time. One month of savings at a time. One decision at a time.

You’re not failing. You’re rebuilding. And rebuilding takes time.

The View From Here

I’m writing this during my break at work. In a few minutes, I’ll go back to coordinating temple stays, answering phones, doing laundry.

It’s not glamorous. It’s not my dream. It’s not what I imagined for my life at 29.

But it’s keeping me alive. Housed. Fed. And slowly, very slowly, building toward independence.

I have more money now than I did on August 27th: zero.

I have more options now than I did then: none.

I have more independence now than I did then: complete dependence.

I have a clearer mind now than ever: maybe the first time in a year.

The progress is small. But it’s real.

And someday—maybe six months from now, maybe a year, maybe longer—I’ll have saved enough to make real choices. To afford therapy. To apply for design school. To live somewhere I choose, not just somewhere that takes me.

Someday I’ll have financial independence. Not just survival.

But today? Today I’m just grateful I have a room to sleep in. Meals to eat. Work that provides both. And a tiny amount of money that’s mine, that I earned, that I’m building with.

It’s not much. But it’s more than zero.

And when you start from zero, more than zero feels like everything.

These letters from the temple are how I’m learning that building a life from nothing doesn’t happen in inspiring montages—it happens in tiny increments, one saved won at a time.

Next week: Still figuring out what needs to be written

Building from zero (one day at a time),
Suinny

If you’re starting over with no money:

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
Find work-exchange programs: Workaway.info, WWOOF, HelpX
Temple volunteer opportunities: Various Buddhist temples offer room/board
Free financial planning resources: r/povertyfinance

Starting from zero isn’t failure. It’s just your starting point. Every small amount saved is progress. Every day you survive is victory. You’re not failing at life. You’re rebuilding it. And that takes time. Be patient with yourself. You’re doing better than you think.

I need to confess something that’s been eating me alive:

I no longer constantly think about her. But I constantly think I’m a failure.

The obsessive thoughts about her—what she’s doing, if she misses me, replaying our conversations—those have faded. They still pop up, sudden and intrusive, like advertisements I can’t close on a website. But they’re not constant anymore.

What’s constant now is the voice that says: “You failed. You’re not normal. You’re not healthy. You’re broken. And that’s why she left.”

I thought I’d feel relief when I stopped thinking about her every moment. And there is relief—my brain has some space back.

But that space got immediately filled with something worse: relentless, crushing self-judgment.

And I’m so tired. Not of missing her anymore. Of hating myself for losing her.

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The Pop-Up Thoughts I Can’t Block

She doesn’t occupy my mind constantly now. But she appears in flashes. Intrusive. Unexpected. Like pop-up advertisements I never asked for and can’t permanently close.

I’m working. Focused. Present. And suddenly: flash of her face.

I’m eating dinner. Calm. And suddenly: memory of something she said.

I’m walking to evening prayers. Mind clear. And suddenly: wondering what she’s doing right now.

These thoughts aren’t a constant occupation anymore. They’re intrusions. Pop-ups that appear without warning, disrupt whatever I’m doing, and then disappear—leaving behind a residue of pain I have to shake off.

I can’t predict them. Can’t prevent them. Can’t permanently block them.

They just appear. Random. Unwanted. Like my brain is a website with malware I can’t fully remove.

And every time one pops up, it’s not just “I miss her.” It’s: “You failed. You lost her. You weren’t good enough. You’re still not good enough.”

What’s Actually Eating Me Alive

Here’s what I’ve realised: the thoughts about her aren’t the real problem anymore.

The real problem is what those thoughts trigger: the overwhelming belief that I’m a failure.

Every pop-up thought about her becomes evidence:

Flash of her face → “You failed her.”

Memory of her voice → “You weren’t enough.”

Wondering what she’s doing → “She’s happier without you because you’re a failure.”

Seeing something she would have liked → “You failed to keep someone who saw beauty in the world with you.”

The thought of her is just the trigger. The real wound is the belief that I’m fundamentally broken, fundamentally not enough, fundamentally a failure.

And that belief doesn’t just pop up. It’s there all the time. Underneath everything.

The Failure Narrative I Can’t Escape

Here’s the story my brain tells me on repeat:

“She left because you’re a failure.”

Not because you were incompatible. Not because the timing was wrong. Not because relationships sometimes end even when people love each other.

She left because you failed. As a partner. As a person. As someone worthy of being chosen.

And the evidence is everywhere:

You have BPD. Failure to have a “normal” brain.

You were too intense. Failure to be easy to love.

You needed too much. Failure to be self-sufficient.

You exhausted her. Failure to not be a burden.

You’re still not okay. Failure to bounce back. Failure to heal at an acceptable pace. Failure to be resilient.

You’re still processing this breakup months later. Failure to let go. Failure to move on. Failure to be “over it” by now.

You’re still angry at yourself. Failure to forgive yourself. Failure to practice self-compassion. Failure at the very healing you’re supposed to be doing.

The proof of your failure is that she’s gone and you’re still here, broken.

And I can’t escape this narrative. It colours everything.

Not in a “Normal Healthy” Mental State

One of the things that crushes me most: I’m not bouncing back the way “normal” people do.

Normal people have a breakup. They’re sad for a while. They process. They heal. They move on. They get back to baseline.

I’m not at baseline. I don’t know if I have a baseline.

With BPD, my baseline is already unstable. My sense of self is already fragile. My emotional regulation is already compromised.

So when a relationship ends—especially one where I made someone my entire anchor—I don’t just bounce back. I fracture.

And then I judge myself for fracturing. For not being resilient. For not healing faster. For not being “normal” about this.

I see other people go through breakups and within a few months they’re fine. Dating again. Happy. Whole.

And here I am, months later, still working at a temple because I can’t trust myself to function in the regular world yet.

Still needing structure because my internal world is too chaotic. Still crying during prayers sometimes. Still having intrusive thoughts. Still angry at myself.

Failure to be normal. Failure to be healthy. Failure to bounce back.

The Past I Can’t Let Go Of

I know I’m supposed to let go. Everyone says it: “Let go. Move forward. You can’t change the past.”

But I can’t let go. Because the past is proof of my failure.

If I let go of the past, I let go of the evidence. And if I let go of the evidence, what do I replace it with?

Right now, the narrative is: “I failed. The proof is in the past. If I just analyse it enough, maybe I can understand exactly where I failed and fix it for next time.”

But if I let go of analysing the past, then what? Then I’m just... a person who failed, with no understanding of why, no way to prevent it from happening again.

The past holds all the data. All the moments I could have done better. All the mistakes I made. All the proof that I’m a failure.

How do you let go of that? How do you stop analysing when every memory is evidence that you weren’t enough?

I’m stuck in the past because the past is the only place where I can try to make sense of why I failed. And if I stop trying to make sense of it, then I’m just... broken, with no explanation, no fix, no hope of doing better next time.

I can’t let go because letting go feels like accepting that I’m just fundamentally not enough, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

The Anger I Turn Inward

Here’s what’s really eating me up: I’m so angry at myself.

Angry for every mistake. Angry for not being better. Angry for having BPD. Angry for being too much. Angry for not seeing this coming. Angry for not fighting harder. Angry for not being someone she could keep choosing.

And I know I’m supposed to forgive myself. I’m trying. I’m really trying.

The monks talk about self-compassion. My therapist talks about self-forgiveness. Every healing resource says: “Be gentle with yourself. You did the best you could.”

But I don’t believe it. I don’t believe I did the best I could. I believe I failed, and I’m angry at myself for failing.

And then I’m angry at myself for being angry at myself. Failure to even practice the self-compassion I know I need.

It’s a loop: failure → anger → more failure → more anger.

And I don’t know how to break it.

The Belief That I’m Letting Everyone Down

It’s not just her. I feel like I’m letting everyone down.

The monks who are trying to help me heal. I’m still broken. Still struggling. Still crying. Failure to heal at the pace they expect.

My friends who I’m letting down because I’m too depressed to function at full capacity. Cancelling every promise and schedule that I promised I’d attend. Failure to be reliable.

My family who don’t understand why I’m still not okay. Who ask when or if I’m coming home. Who want me to “live like a normal person.” Failure to be the person they remember.

Myself. The person I thought I was. The person I want to be. Failure to become whole. Failure to be enough. Feels like I don’t even know myself anymore.

And her. Even though she’s gone. Even though it’s over. I feel like I’m still letting her down by not being okay yet. By not having learned from this. By not being better.

Everyone is disappointed in me because I’m a failure. And I’m most disappointed in myself.

What I Know vs. What I Believe

I’ve read the books. I know the counter-narratives. I can recite them to myself like mantras:

“You’re not failing. You’re measuring yourself against an impossible standard and punishing yourself for not meeting it.”

I know this. I’ve read it in every self-help book, every BPD resource, every article on self-compassion.

“She left because she chose to. Not because you failed some cosmic test. She made a choice based on what she needed. That’s not evidence of your failure.”

I know this too. I understand it intellectually. I can explain it to others.

“Having BPD isn’t a moral failure. It’s a brain that works differently. Some people can hold that. Some people can’t. Neither answer makes you a failure.”

Yes. I’ve highlighted this passage in three different books. I’ve journaled about it. I understand the logic.

“You’re not broken. You’re healing. And healing isn’t linear. It doesn’t follow timelines. You’re exactly where you need to be in your process.”

I know. I KNOW. I can tell myself this. I have told myself this. Repeatedly.

But here’s the problem: I don’t believe any of it.

Deep down, underneath all the books and the therapy language and the rational counter-arguments, there’s a voice that’s been there my whole life—the one that BPD amplifies to deafening levels—and it says:

“These are just nice words. People say them because they’re supposed to. They don’t know your true ugliness. They don’t see what you really are. If they did, they’d know: you’re a failure, and they’ll leave like she did. And no amount of self-help books will change that truth.”

The Standard I’m Measuring Myself Against

Here’s what I’m realising: I’m measuring myself against an impossible standard and then using my failure to meet it as proof that I’m fundamentally not enough.

The standard is:

• Be mentally healthy (I have BPD)

• Don’t be too much (my baseline is intense)

• Heal quickly (I’m healing slowly)

• Don’t need support (I need a lot of support)

• Bounce back easily (I fractured)

• Let go of the past (I’m still processing)

• Forgive yourself (I’m still angry)

• Be enough to keep someone (she still left)

I can’t meet that standard. Nobody could. But I keep trying, and keep failing, and keep using that failure as proof that I’m broken.

What if the problem isn’t that I’m a failure? What if the problem is that the standard itself is impossible?

The Practice of Self-Forgiveness (That I’m Failing At)

I’m trying to forgive myself. I really am.

Every morning I sit with the intention: “Today I will be gentler with myself. Today I will practice self-compassion.”

And every day, within hours, I’m right back to: “You failed. You’re not enough. You’re letting everyone down.”

The monk taught me a practice: When the failure thought comes, meet it with: “I’m doing the best I can with what I have right now.”

But my brain immediately argues: “No you’re not. You could do better. You’re just not trying hard enough.”

How do you forgive yourself when you genuinely believe you failed? When the evidence seems so clear? When the person you love left because you weren’t enough?

I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out.

The Pop-Up I Can’t Permanently Close

Here’s what actually happens now:

I’ll be working. Focused. Present. And a thought pops up: her face, her voice, a memory.

And immediately behind it: “You failed her.”

I notice it. I try the monk’s teaching: “I’m doing the best I can.”

The thought closes. Like an ad I finally X out of.

But it pops up again later. Different memory. Same message: “Failure.”

And again. And again. And again.

I can close each individual pop-up. But I can’t stop them from appearing. And I can’t remove the malware—the core belief that I’m a failure—that keeps generating them.

So I keep closing them. One at a time. Notice, redirect. Notice, redirect.

Thought: “She’s happier without you.”
Response: “I’m doing the best I can.”
Close.

Thought: “You’re broken and always will be.”
Response: “I’m healing. It’s not linear.”
Close.

Thought: “You’re letting everyone down.”
Response: “I’m showing up. That’s enough for today.”
Close.

Close, close, close. All day. Every day.

What I Actually Need a Break From

I don’t need a break from missing her anymore. The missing is manageable now.

I need a break from hating myself.

I need a break from the voice that says I’m a failure.

I need a break from measuring myself against impossible standards.

I need a break from the anger I turn inward.

I need a break from believing that everyone is disappointed in me.

I need a break from the exhausting work of trying to forgive myself for being human.

But I don’t know how to take that break. Because the voice doesn’t stop. The pop-ups don’t stop. The self-judgment doesn’t stop.

So I just keep closing them. One at a time. Notice, redirect. Notice, meet with compassion. Notice, try to forgive.

Thousands of times a day.

Hoping that eventually, maybe, the malware will weaken. The pop-ups will slow. The voice will be quiet.

But right now? Right now I’m just tired. Not of missing her. Of failing myself over and over in my own mind.

For Anyone Else Fighting the Failure Narrative

If you’re reading this because you also believe you’re a failure, I want to tell you something I don’t yet believe myself:

You’re not a failure. You’re measuring yourself against an impossible standard.

Having a mental health condition isn’t a failure. Being “too much” for one person isn’t a failure. Healing slowly isn’t a failure. Needing support isn’t a failure. Still processing pain months later isn’t a failure.

None of that is a failure. That’s just being human.

The pop-up thoughts will come. The self-judgment will come. The anger will come.

Notice it. Meet it with compassion if you can. And keep going anyway.

You’re not failing. You’re healing. And healing doesn’t follow timelines or look “normal” or happen on anyone else’s schedule.

You’re doing the best you can with what you have right now. And that has to be enough.

Even when the voice says it isn’t. Even when the pop-ups keep appearing. Even when you can’t forgive yourself yet.

Keep closing the pop-ups. Keep trying. Keep showing up.

You’re not a failure. You’re just human. And being human is hard enough without adding self-hatred to the weight.

The View From Here

I’m writing this after evening prayers, sitting in my room at the temple.

A thought just popped up: her laughing at something I said. And immediately: “You failed to keep that joy in your life.”

Notice. “I’m doing the best I can.” Close.

Another will pop up soon. Maybe in five minutes. Maybe in five seconds.

And I’ll close it again. And again. And again.

Not because I’m healed. Not because I’ve forgiven myself. Not because I believe I’m not a failure yet.

But because that’s all I can do right now. Keep closing the pop-ups. Keep trying to meet myself with compassion. Keep showing up even when I believe I’m letting everyone down.

The malware is still there. The core belief that I’m a failure. I don’t know how to remove it yet.

But I’m learning to manage the pop-ups. One at a time. Notice, compassion, close. Notice, compassion, close.

It’s exhausting. But it’s better than constant self-hatred. It’s progress, even if it doesn’t feel like enough.

And maybe someday I’ll actually believe: I’m not a failure. I’m just human. And that’s enough.

But today? Today I’m just closing pop-ups. And trying to survive the voice that says I’m not enough.

One intrusive thought at a time.

These letters from the temple are how I’m learning that the hardest person to forgive is yourself—and sometimes healing means just closing the self-hatred pop-ups one at a time until they eventually slow down.

Next week: Still figuring out what needs to be written

Still trying (even when I believe I’m failing),
Suinny

If you’re struggling with self-blame and feeling like a failure:

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
BPD-specific therapy: behavioraltech.org (DBT)
Self-compassion resources: self-compassion.org

You’re not a failure. You’re measuring yourself against impossible standards. Having BPD isn’t a failure. Healing slowly isn’t a failure. Still processing pain isn’t a failure. You’re doing the best you can. And that’s enough. Even when the voice says it isn’t.