2 Years Later, I Finally Moved on from My Ex, Thanks to a Kdrama TV Series

It’s okay to run from your pain

“The beauty of a story is this: If you involve yourself with a story, without going through the pains of life, you can go through life.” — Sadhguru.

I was suffering through the story at this point. I went on and on as if someone had forced me to endure all 25 episodes of Tempted — the Korean drama TV show I was watching.

“This shouldn’t be happening,” I contested. “This is terrible writing.”

I wanted a particular story arc to bloom. I wanted the dreamy, male lead to end up with my actress. Yes, she was mine. She is mine. I claim her. No, I identified with her. This was my mistake.

I don’t know much about story psychology. I don’t know how genius storytellers woo us into falling in love with, and endlessly rooting for their protagonists, but I know something about the mechanics of love: Whatever you love becomes a part of you. Whatever you love becomes you.

So yes, I fell in love — with the villain in this random Korean TV Series. I unknowingly identified with the character. I swallowed and absorbed her and made her a part of myself. And because I was wrestling with how her narrative was unfolding, I was in so much pain. Because I was resisting her story, I was re-living pain from a breakup I thought I’d moved on from two years ago.

Let me explain.

Here Is the Thing About Grief

Here is the thing about heartache and pain: Human beings are weird — weird and otherworldly. We don't look like much. We appear to be lumps of transmuted dirt: An arm here, a leg there; A nose, an ear, an eye, hair … a human being.

We vary of course. In shape and size and color, but the basic template is the same — at least on the outside. The inside is a whole other story. On the inside, we are mesh baskets — amoeba-shaped baskets of infinite size, self-woven out of our life experiences: our breakups, our pain, our joy, everything we’ve ever learned, all the people we’ve ever met, all our hopes and our dreams.

My mesh basket, I feel, would stretch across the entire cosmos, if it were flattened out. And yet, it chooses to be smaller. To shrink and lie beneath my skin. To sit perfectly still — almost glued — underneath my body, so that I can access it whenever I need it.

It sits perfectly still so that I can re-live my lover’s first kiss if I want to. So that I can re-immerse myself into the blissful ocean that is my father’s smile. So that I can dream. So that I can remember, no matter where I am, how to be alive — how to be me. So that I have a home within myself — a place I can retreat to in the darkest of times.

Except, one day I woke up, and my father was gone. One day I woke up to find that my lover — that giver of passionate kisses — was now (for lack of a better word), my Ex. And I tried to reach for my mesh, to retreat into my home, only to find it disappearing.

I found my mesh gracefully untangling the vertices of my broken hopes and dreams. I found a gaping hole of pain where there used to be warmth, so I fought and resisted this inner repair job.

And then:

Eventually, I started walking around in patches — with parts of myself fighting each other, fighting my new reality. I walked around with splinters in my heart and despondent boulders in my stomach. And still, I fought back with equal force.

I plastered over my pain with new experiences. I made a new mesh out of the new places I went to, all the food I ate, and the new friends I made. And for a long while, I was fine. Except, two years later, I watched a Korean TV Series in which the actress I loved didn’t end up with the sexy male lead. And it all came rushing back to the surface.

But there was a twist this time.

Speaking of Unprocessed Pain

All this sentiment reminds me of a conversation I had with one of my friends. He was nursing a heartbreak at the time.

“If you want to move on from her, feel your emotions,” I said to him. “Sit with your pain. Take your attention into whatever you’re feeling.” I blubbered on.

He and I are no longer friends.

I am a hypocrite. I was a hypocrite.

I remember what it felt like the first few days — no the first few weeks — no, the first six months — after my own serious relationship ended. I was burning from the inside out. My body was the last place I wanted to be. My feelings were the last thing I needed to feel. Every thought, every memory, the accidental sniff of my ex’s cologne were all matches — cherry bombs— that kept on setting me aflame over and over again.

So no, I didn’t feel my feelings. I ran. I distracted myself. I watched movies. I hang out with everyone that the laws of physics (and chemistry) allowed me to. I suppressed and suppressed and suppressed. And yet, here I was telling my friend to feel his emotions. No wonder, we don’t talk anymore.

But here is the thing, when it comes to negative emotions, whatever you do not feel, whatever you resist, persists. At least that’s what everyone says. That said, here is what I’ve learned:

It’s Okay to Run

Yes. It’s okay to run. Mainly because you can’t run away from your pain, no matter how hard you try. You always feel it — in one way or another: Buzzing constantly in the background of whatever you’re doing, reminding you at every chance it gets that you’re not whole. That you’re broken. That you’re less-than. That your internal mesh basket has craters in it.

At least this is what it feels like in the beginning.

Over time, the pain contracts. It shrinks and wraps itself only around particular events. Triggers, we call them. And if you’re careful enough to stay away from them long enough, You heal. No, you appear to have healed.

I appeared to have healed.

But on that day, while wrestling with that Korean Drama’s storyline, I realized I’d been wrong. The shivers in my stomach, the raptures in my heart — the pain I felt was indistinguishable from how I’d felt after my breakup. It carried the same frequency but there was a twist (the twist I’ve been baiting you with throughout this story):

The pain, my grief, my heartache, had shrunk in size.

I realized I could finally sit with my fire. That I could wrap myself around the broken vertices of my mesh basket, and tear, and throw out the smelly gunk I’d repressed for two years. I found that I could feel my feelings. That I didn’t have to run anymore. That I could look back on everything without hiding from myself, from my memories, from my thoughts, from perfumes of random strangers, from life itself — Everything.

I realized I had truly moved on.

That’s the Power of Beautiful Storytelling

Stories (movies, songs, books) are intimate. In order to enjoy them, you have to be with them completely. You have to allow their creators into yourself. You open yourself up. You unknowingly surrender your emotions, your thoughts, your pain, your hopes, and your dreams over to the story. And when your guard is down. When we least expect it…

The stories — good stories anyway — tear us open. They agitate whatever fragments of pain we’ve repressed, bringing them to the surface for us to process, and then they stitch us back together all in a space of two hours.

That’s what that Korean Drama did for me.

Assumpta Nalubowa is a professional feeler of emotions. Every time she feels an emotion — any emotion —, a leaf on the lemon tree outside her bedroom window turns into a one hundred dollar bill. Check out more of her work here. If you’re not a medium member, join Medium today to read more of her stories.