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PaulBKK
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PathStep 1 Compassion hearts9 Forum posts1 Forum upvotes4 Current upvotes4 Age GroupAdult Last activeAugust, 2025 Member sinceAugust 14, 2025
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Dealing with divorce
Depression Support / by PaulBKK
Last post
 August 15th, 2025
...See more I made a thread earlier but for some reason, it didn't seem to appear. Basically, I got divorced 5 months ago. I didn't want it but I guess she didn't love me anymore. It was all over and done with so quickly. She moved out on a Saturday, and a week later we were divorced. It's as simple as that, here in Thailand. It wasn't a contentious divorce and there was no dispute over anything. I thought time would heal, but I'm really struggling. I travelled for the last month, but as soon as I returned to Bangkok, the depression hit again. I don't know what to do. I'm so tired of crying and the feeling of being alone. I'm hurting badly. I wrote a three part poem (below). The second part from the perspective of our cats. I hope some of you can relate: I. BANGKOK HAS ME NOW I was a cathedral once. A breathing, trembling monument, built for worship and for holding two names in the same mouth. I stood for years— stone on stone, oath on oath— until the wind came in wearing your perfume. Until your hands found the locks on my ribs and pressed in, pressed in, pressed in until every bell inside me cracked. Now my heart is a barstool in the corner of some midnight that doesn’t end. My faith? Sold for the price of a drink in a room with red light and cheap applause. I’ve been touched by strangers who didn’t know they were touching a man already ghosted. Every hand feels like a shadow now, and every kiss tastes like it’s apologising for someone else’s sin. Bangkok breathes on me— a long, humid whisper that says, You’ll never leave me the way she left you. The rain falls sideways here, and even the sky looks drunk. And I love it. Because it’s the only thing that doesn’t pretend to be sober while I’m falling apart. I was hers once. Now I’m the city’s. It owns my mornings, my sick little evenings, my dreams that smell of sweat and candle wax. Bangkok doesn’t ask me to be okay. She just keeps the lights on, keeps the music loud enough to stop the thoughts from forming. She says, I’ll take the pieces, all of them. And I let her. Because you’re gone. And Bangkok— Bangkok has me now. --- II. WE WATCHED YOU BREAK (From the Cats) We were there. Always there. On the bed, on the floor, in the doorway— in the quiet violence of your breathing when you didn’t want to be awake. We’ve heard the way you swallow a sob like it’s poison, seen your hands shake when the night presses in too close. We remember her voice. Soft, like the morning light before it burns. We remember the day that air left, the slam of the door, the sound you made after— a sound not meant for daylight. You think we don’t understand. But we do. We smell the ghosts on your clothes. We taste the salt on your skin when you hold us too long. We’ve curled beside you when you didn’t move for hours, our bodies trying to anchor you when the tide of your grief tried to pull you under. We’ve purred into the hollow of your chest, hoping the sound could stitch you back together. But it’s not enough, is it? We can’t bring her back. We don’t care if you’re broken. We just want you alive. Because Bangkok may have you now— but we had you first. --- III. WHERE TIME GOT ITS DOCTORATE It’s 6 a.m. I think I’ve had ninety minutes of unconsciousness, if you can call it sleep. The kind where you close your eyes but your heart is still awake, still pacing the corridors of your skull, still whispering her name like a prayer nobody answers. They said time heals. But I want to see the certificate. I want to know what fraudulent university gave time its doctorate, because all it’s done is tighten the screws. Nan was the love of my life. She is the love of my life. Almost six months now, and she’s still in every corner of the room. I still dream of her walking through the door, looking at me like we were both safe. Every day I think about death. I hold it up to the light like a piece of glass, study the sharpness. I think about the quiet it would bring. The relief. But I can’t do it. Not out of hope—hope’s gone— but because I just don’t have the nerve to make that final, irrevocable cut. So I drift instead. Half-man, half-shadow, pretending the hours are moving me somewhere. But they’re not. They’re just another form of gravity, dragging me further into this sleepless pit. And maybe tomorrow will be worse. But right now— with the sun creeping over Bangkok, and the streets still slick from a night I d idn’t join— I’m just here. Breathing. Wondering what it’s all for. And trying to convince myself that the answer isn’t nothing.
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