| name | value |
| location | Melbourne |
| date | 2025-10-31 |
| dateFormat | dd-mmm-yyyy |
| slug | 2025October |
十月一日
A lot has happened today, a lot, and I want to write them all down before they dissolve in this haze. I already was losing them.
It is always in hindsight, do I realise I have been having a mania episode. Utterly disoriented, dissociated, I for multiple moments could not even make out where I am. The reality has become unreality, and I feel it.
The last three weeks or so I felt I was out of the cloudiness and was perfectly lucid. I feel I am losing that lucidity again.
Luckily, my new GP is actually knowledgeable and I feel I can trust him. I am ready to tackle my mental ailments with a different approach—a scientific one (after all these years) rather than just a philosophical one on its own.
Noodz liked my stories.
From that point on I think my reality started to get muddled and I started dissociating. In Sean’s van I told him I for a moment really could not tell where I was and what my reality was.
十月二日
As I was leaving my apartment, I told A the reason I agreed to this was that I wanted to be there, I wanted to help. I think if I could be of any help I would feel better myself as well, even though I already got over it—especially after that dream therapy my brain conducted for itself. Reading her posts filled me with empathy but partly also guilt.
I was firmly reminded that I shouldn’t feel guilty—it was Lawrence who withheld the information from both of us.
We sat in the empty living room of my new apartment, eating the food I paid for from a place I picked. Somehow I felt this sisterly urge to do these things for her.
After we sat down and talked more, I understood why—I noticed quite some parts of my younger self in her, and I could clearly also see the difference. Just as a week ago I eventually clocked in the fact that Lawrence is nearly three years younger than me, and is a man—should I even be surprised? Even if he truly loved me as so he claimed a million times, he could still be this man-child, immature and irresponsible.
In the eight and a half hours we sat there and talked, I have finally gained enough information to solve the puzzle. The question that has long bothered me, has a clear answer now.
Another lesson learnt: when it comes to people, I should actually always, always trust my intuition and analytical skills, lean on my sensitivity, even though sometimes the person is so well performed that no surface-level evidence can be found. Or, no solid evidence hasn’t been found only because I haven’t started looking as I haven’t decided to stop trusting.
It put things into perspective seeing the person Lawrence had spent the last four years with.
As she told me the things about Lawrence, his true colour I suspected but never could prove, finally revealed.
I felt blessed that I decided to steer away from romantic relationships after ZY and spent those developmental years on nothing but educating myself. The things I have seen and learnt shaped and consolidated me. I felt blessed that when life got challenging and rocky, I had turned to books, and I had friends to help when I really needed them.
At one point I was so worried that I was becoming someone like S. With all the information now having understood Lawrence‘s true colour it turned out he was just like S, only worse, this whole time. No wonder he had to run away. He could not keep up with his lies, his performance of pretending to be someone he wasn’t, of hiding himself. He could not keep up especially not in front of me, my discernment, my directness. I called him out, didn’t let any of his bullshit slip.
All the lies, one by one, now finally with evidence to prove that they were nothing but really lies. One by one, unfolding right there in front of me.
From listening to Noodz all my suspicions were validated. The way she spoke and texted, the things she talked about—Lawrence and her are almost just one person.
At times when she said the same things as Lawrence once mentioned but failed to elaborate, I refrained my urge to challenge her or correct her like I did Lawrence—she is not my enemy and she did not need education from me. I called out Lawrence‘s bullshit because we were friends and because I could not stand mansplaining.
Despite that I at multiple times felt very sorry for myself that I didn’t have the privileged support system as they did, it was only today from talking to her I very vividly realised that the privileged they had were birth rights, but my privileges stand longer throughout my adulthood in my education, in the resources I actively seek for myself. I’m self made, yes. But I am self made and I’m very proud of this self. I am glad that alternative to their lives, I spent the last decade educating myself, improving myself in every aspect, in maths, through reading, through seeing the world and immersing myself in arts.
I cannot be fooled by fools. My knowledge bank is abundant that unlike Noodz, I cannot even be wooed by Lawrence‘s so-called talents because honestly, he doesn’t have even a distinctive style, let alone talents. I cannot romanticise him in this way and his intelligence is way below me. These are all my privileges. I usually don’t even pay attention to them as I view everyone equally and I respect individual‘s learning and living experiences. It’s only when their own sense of inferiority gets in the way am I forced to recognise it.
That’s sad.
Because I actually never looked down at him for these reasons. But now I kind of have to.
I realised that because of these things I didn’t even like him that much, and that was why I let us get into a romantic relationship because he was turning out to be actually boring.
He lied about reading. That’s one of the first lies I could easily tell but decided to let slip. It was only a tip of the iceberg.
I didn’t fear losing him, so we got into a romantic relationship. And now I lost him. Rather, he lost me.
十月三日
I try to understand all this complicated negative emotion. Besides anger, why am I still feeling a strong angst; where is it coming from?
Is it guilt? Why do I immediately want to blame things on myself again, when every single evidence has proven me right and him in the wrong, handling things in the worst way possible? If so, then I should really stop feeling guilty because there is nothing I’m guilty of.
Is it shame? Am I worried about my self-image? Somehow that the fact that I actually had done nothing wrong but have been used and now antagonised and certain people involved would thing I was the crazy, horrible one? Maybe. But do I really care? Not really. The people would think this way would be at most Lawrence himself, his flatmate who I didn’t quite like anyway given his treatment of me as of late, Noodz potentially for whom I have more empathy than anything, Eli perhaps, the kid who has lied to me also several times anyway. Then actually I don’t care. Also if it’s only my self image, I know I am not a person who’s so egoistic that hurting a self image would really get to me. My mora compass is so grounded I know what is right and what is wrong. I don’t need to prove anything.
十月四日
I wish the drug has already started working because I’m seeing myself going through this mania episode, speaking too much, trusting people who I shouldn’t have trusted, and then regretting.
十月六日
Big beach walk The day before the full moon— tides rushing ashore tides rising in my body. ice cream melting in the city heat, Indonesian food so spicy it numbs thoughts. None of it was ever special. It was the one who romanticised it all who made promises wrapped in that romance— then betrayed every word he spoke. Every single word, was nothing but lies.
He now could not even pick up the phone More lies in silence
十月七日
My heart is full.
In spite of all my dissatisfaction with our life together, the profound trust I placed in her had remained alive in me until the day when, deranged and sick, in an at of sudden desertion and wild rebellion, she abandoned me. And I realised how much I must have loved her, how deeply I must have trusted her for her breach of trust to have such a grave and lifelong impact on me.
Did I ever experience such level of fulfilment when I was with Lawrence? Over and over again I asked myself this question. Even during the best days, I would rather have a meaningful deep conversation with A about absolutely everything, than checking my phone for his messages.
Though I did form a habit of checking for his messages.
I remember the day J and I were having a writing session and I had to leave J for Lawrence as we were going to climb together. I was fuelled by the stimulating discussion with J and was so happy. Even though I did still want to see Lawrence and want his accompany, I never really got the same level of stimulation from him. At least not of the intellectual type.
It seemed to me that Maria was the first woman I had really loved. I had always demanded a degree of intellect and education from the women I loved, without ever fully noticing that even the most intellectual and relatively best-educated woman never responded to the Logos in me, but rather clashed with it. I used always to take my problems and ideas along with me to my rendezvous with women, and it would have seem quite impossible for me to spend longer than an hour loving any woman who had scarcely read a book, hardly knowing what reading meant, or was unable to tell the difference between a Tchaikovsky and a Beethoven. Maria had no education. She had no need of such diversions or surrogate words because all her problems were directly sensuous in origin. Her art, her mission in life, consisted in striving to achieve as mush as sensual and sexual happiness as was humanly possible, in seeking and enticing from her partner in love — by means of the senses she had been endowed with, her exceptional figure, her colourings her hair, her voice, her skin, her vivacity — a sympathetic response and a lively, gratifying counter-play to everything she was capable of, to every apple adjustment of her curves, every extremely delicate modulation of her body.
I always knew that Lawrence didn’t read and he lied about it all the time. I knew he felt inferior in spite of my actively trying to not ever make general erudition and perspicacity in arts even remotely a big deal. He always lied about having seen or heard of the things I brought up. How pathetic. I never even needed him to be my intellectual equal.
Though yet again, rereading Steppenwolf this time confirms that my life is nowhere near being original. Also again, I am grateful that a writer like Hermann Hesse had written about these experiences and thoughts in such a refined and accurate way that I know where to go if I seek understanding.
The sensual experiences with Lawrence were indisputably new and wonderful. I didn’t know I wanted them until I have now lived those moments and I do still crave that tenderness in our caresses. He told me nobody had kissed him the way I did. I didn’t tell him that I also never kissed anybody the way I did him.
Undeniably it was thrilling to love this way and I could never forget how it felt. Imagine now loving a healthy person.
Noodle called Lawrence an easy-to-love person. I didn’t think I agreed, but I also couldn’t fully disagree for the mere fact that I did love him so dearly and deeply.
If anything I think N is easy to love. I am easy to love—am I not?
I am so grateful that N and Y entered my life at the start of this year and slowly we built and deepened our friendships.
After I recounted some parts of the conversation with Noodle, N exclaimed that how unloved she must have been, to still fall back into the same pit, calling him her soulmate after all of this bullshit. Then I again saw it very clearly: I was once also this utterly unloved person, concerningly troubled and lost. Though fortunately, Fei has been the one who showed me love and told me over and over again that I will have more love, more people will love me, and she never betrayed me.
N pointed out to me that very likely Lawrence was trying to boost his ego for precisely how smart he sewed I am and to him conquering a person like me would help him overcome his sense of inferiority. I agreed with her and was glad that she also saw it this way, because that was exactly how I felt later in our relationship when he kept bringing up the whole “I don’t have a single degree” thing. I told him not to worry at the time and say between us the average number of degrees is still very decent.
It is interesting to see how at this stage of life, men are more afraid of me rather than me them, just because how discernible I am and how outspoken and grounded my moral compass is. Narcissists and psychopaths alike very quickly learn that they can not control me like they do others using their usual ticks and tactics, and they cannot get away with things with me calling out their nonsense and bullshit pretty much always immediately. So they always run away. I kind of enjoy this, even though the actual journey is painful but at the end of the day, I like how my education and self awakening have equipped me with these soft powers and I feel truly independent as a person of my own. This is also something certainly coming from age. I enjoy being (nearly) 30.