Living On

By Clarence Singam

Breaking up can be a tumultuous experience for some while others might even describe it as being worse than losing a partner to death. Clarence Singam shares why we need to take the time to tend to ourselves after a breakup, and how not to be prisoners of our past.

To move on means we cherish the good and the beautiful that was there but recognise too that we need not be prisoners of our past. But we to forgive them and even ourselves and grieve our losses. Otherwise we run the danger of repeating the same cycle all over again.

Han and I were sitting at the back of the taxi on our way to a poetry reading by one of his friends. As he placed his feet on my lap, I asked, “What are three things a person should bear in mind when recovering from a breakup?”

As usual, wanting to provoke my thinking process, he didn’t give a straight answer and we nearly descended into one of our we can’t work together disagreements. But we managed to steer clear this time as he answered, “The first thing I’d tell a person is, it’s going to be more painful than you ever thought.”

I had just come back from work. We were living in Pasir Ris then but I would be moving out soon. Teng had already moved to Eunos. It was six years ago that I had moved in with Teng. I opened my cupboard drawer to start packing my things. The first thing I saw was a pair of green boxers. It was my favorite boxers but I had only worn it once. Teng had bought it for me when we were in Sydney, where we had met. Since then he had always worn it. But the night before he left the house he decided he did not want it anymore and slipped it into my drawer before he left.

The finality of our parting did not hit me until that moment. I stopped the packing I had hardly started and sat on the floor examining the boxers as if scrutinising its texture and its threads would give me some clues of why he couldn’t build a life with me. I don’t remember how long I sat there. I do remember being so stunned I could not even muster a tear. I finally managed to get up and take a long shower. Then I put on the boxers, switched off the lights and curled up embryo-like on Teng’s empty bed.

I opened the envelope. It smelled of disinfectant. The letter was written in pencil, in beautiful childlike block letters. It just had four lines and three long diagonal streaks of red smeared along the length of the A4 sized page. The disinfectant masked the odor of Tristan’s blood. I had just told him that I could not be in a relationship with him. Unable to bear the pain, he took a penknife and scraped it across the length of his entire forearm, smeared the blood on a paper and wrote me his letter. He wanted me to know how excruciating it was for him to realise that I was breaking up with him. It was an act that has scarred him for life.

There were nights when Tristan would just call me and listen silently to my voice in the voice mail greeting. Not to trouble me but to just be close; to prolong our connection just a little bit longer.

I remember one of the first times I met Han, he told me that prior to meeting me that day he had waited for over three hours for a friend who did not turn up. He looked dejected as he held a present he had bought for that friend lifelessly in his hands. I only realised much later that this friend was in reality his boyfriend who had just broken up with him. It was a relationship that Han had put a lot of effort into including even preparing to move to another country for the sake of the relationship. It took him over eight months to come to grips with his loss.

Breaking up can even be worse than losing a partner to death. There is a finality to death. But in a breakup, especially in a community as connected as ours, is common. Friends have to decide how to manage their relationships with you and your ex and every now and again you risk running into your ex. Every time your paths cross, you wonder if it could have been different. Then if you see him or her move on before you are able to, another stab of searing pain pierces through.

I am fortunate to have come from a family that is expressive. We have never felt the need to hide our pain. Having seen my dad and mum cry numerous times has been a blessing for me. I never saw it as a weakness. In fact, I once read that a true sign of strength is the ability to cry in a way that allows our grief to surface to be dealt with. Too many of us bury it deep inside and pretend it doesn’t hurt or propel ourselves into the next available relationship. But in doing that we harden ourselves and lessen our ability to feel. Then after a few more breakups, a jadedness sets in.

After a breakup you need to find someone who can stand with you. It can be a friend or a counselor. Just make sure it is someone who is gay affirming and who is not uncomfortable with grief. You will need your friends. But then eventually a few will tire and tell you to get over it. To move on. To stop clinging on. To stop pining. But it is never that simple. In fact, it is impossible to force yourself to move on. Nowadays I almost never tell people to move on. They will move on when they are well and ready not when I want them to. I don’t have to be afraid of their anguish I just need to be there with them knowing that they will live on. Just not at my pace.

I got nudged back into the present as Han shared his second thought: “The next person will never replace your ex.”

It is two years into our relationship and I am having another major disagreement with Han. Our exchanges intensify and I want to make a point. I almost always mention the name of the person I am arguing with out loud when I want to do this. Just as I am about to press home my point, I nearly blurt out, “Tristan!” This has kept happening throughout the last two years. Each time I am able to stop myself just in time with a tremendous sense of relief and some guilt. Calling your partner with your ex’s name in the middle of an argument is just tempting disaster. But yet for more than two years after we got together, every time we argued I almost always nearly called Han, “Tristan.”

I missed Tristan. Had we been a bit more mature, things may have been different between us. Sometimes, after our parting, when I needed to have a sexual fantasy, it was often Tristan who visited me in those fantasies. I still remember vividly, the night we spent doing nothing but kiss throughout the night. The one and only time my jaw ached after kissing someone and yet it was one of the key turning points in my life. It was the night I realised that something that made me feel so whole could not be wrong or unnatural. It was the night I began to start trusting myself.

I can still picture embracing Tristan and feeling the texture of his hair and his dry lips as if he was here with me right now. I miss his scent. I miss his introvertedness and sometimes even the silly arguments we would have about whose turn it was to buy the condoms because we were so closeted then. (Invariably I always lost this argument. Tristan, partly out of a desperation for connection, was willing to go raw. I wasn’t. The risk just wasn’t worth it even if I loved him a lot.) And then that smile. The glimpse of a mischievous cheekiness within him that broke out on his serious demeanor every once in a while.

But I missed Teng too. Sometimes when I struggle to balance my budgets, I wish he could be here with me. He took care of all the finances in a way that I am totally inept at. He was the most rational of my partners. It was always such a turn on to watch him manage a work crisis; in a split second the drama queen transforms into a cold steely negotiator. I miss the way he apologised each time after we quarrel. He never ever said, “Sorry.” Instead he would ask if I would like a coffee, something he only ever did for me after a quarrel. And he always made sure the coffee was made so badly that I would never ask him to make me one at any other time. And I always accepted the apology. And perhaps most of all I miss his annual reminders of his impending birthday. A month before it arrives, he makes sure I remember in the most endearing of ways, playfully suggesting a range of presents I could get him.

Some people will say that this is a sure sign that I do not love Han as much as I loved Tristan or Teng. I don’t think so. It just means that they are not substitutes for one another and that we can choose to cherish the good without being chained to it. Fact is, we have to work at creating our own heavens and I wouldn’t trade away where I am today with Han for what I had then.

Of course I know too that there were others before me, who Han felt and perhaps still feels would have made a better partner than I do. Better in bed, better looking, having more of a life, smarter, less temperamental, more sensitive towards him, more interesting, and the list can go on. Initially it was difficult to deal with my own sense of inadequacy when we started our relationship knowing that with some of them there was still a longing for lost connections.

Our exes are irreplaceable. Doesn’t mean our eventual life partner is less than the ones before. He or she is just different and special in that way. To move on doesn’t mean to erase the memories of our exes. It doesn’t mean to demonise them into people we are glad to be rid of. To move on means we cherish the good and the beautiful that was there but recognise too that we need not be prisoners of our past. But we must each take the time to tend to ourselves after a breakup; to come to terms with the mistakes made, to forgive them and even ourselves and grieve our losses. Otherwise we run the danger ofrepeating the same cycle all over again.

Looking back now, I have learnt that while the future may be different, it doesn’t mean it can’t be just as good or even better. If you come to our home, you will see a shelf of photographs in the dining area. The top two shelves are photos of our families. The third shelf has photos of me with a number of different people. And the last shelf has Han with a number of different people.

Our friends are sometimes surprised when we tell them that the two bottom shelves are our ex-shelves. Some find the idea of having pictures of your exes in the home you share with your life partner hilarious. Others think it is downright weird. At the very least, it makes for interesting conversation. I am not sure how we came to the decision to do this. I suppose it helped that we already had their pictures. These relationships mattered to us. They were a key part of our growing up as gay men. Without them we would not be at this point in our lives with one another. I suppose somewhere along the line we decided that if we loved each other we would honour each other’s past and tend to each other’s wounds from that past.

I never did catch Han’s third point about recovering from a breakup. My mind was wondering how Tristan was doing these days while I massaged Han’s tired feet.

I did not know how much I love him, until he had to break my heart for me to know what true love really is.
Little Dove