In the Mood for LOVE

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

My first kiss was with a girl. I was 19 and studying at a private college in Jakarta. Coming from a small village, I naively thought that a relationship only happened between men and women. But after moving to the capital city, I learned that a relationship could happen between any genders and in the case of my classmate, Samantha, it was both with men and women! A bisexual, Samantha was very open with her sexuality. Although I felt annoyed that she couldn’t make up her mind and choose between men or women, judged her for being opportunistic, greedy, and wanting to have it all, I found her very interesting and intriguing. This encounter made me reflect on my own sexuality. I went out with boys but never really had a boyfriend and only had two crushes – a boy with cute freckles in middle school and the smartest boy in high school. It seemed to me that I was overly selective. And although I found women to be beautiful creatures and definitely more interesting than men, I never had any crushes on them. As I posed my sexuality doubt and crisis to Samantha, she quickly suggested that we should kiss. At least I would find out if I was a lesbian or not. Samantha was damn hot so I agreed to the idea. And so came my first kiss, in the girl’s toilet, between our classes. Samantha was a great kisser and the kiss was really nice. But to our disappointment, I didn’t feel sexually aroused and knew instantly that I was straight. Years later when I heard Katy Perry’s song "I Kissed I Girl", I smiled so broadly and whispered loudly to myself: “Ah, yes Katy, me too! I kissed a girl and I liked it”.

Soundtrack: I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry

I kissed a girl and I liked it, the taste of her cherry chap stick. I kissed a girl and I liked it… I liked it!

When I was 21, I decided that I no longer wanted to remain a virgin. Enough virginity for 21 long years! At that time, I taught Indonesian language to expatriates living in Jakarta and had an American student named David. We immediately knew we were attracted to each other. As I never mixed business with pleasure, I told David that if he liked to go out with me, I had to fire him as my student but could promote him as my boyfriend. David gladly accepted the promotion and we started dating. David was young, tall, and handsome, with beautiful piercing blue eyes and blonde hair, highly intelligent, a graduate of Yale University, and a CEO of a major company. A perfect candidate to lose my virginity to. After all, I wouldn’t want to lose my virginity to a dumbass. And so came my first sex and it was horrible! Sex with David was awkward, nerve wrecking, and painful. Some of us may resonate with this, when “sex equals pain”. The relationship wasn’t going well and sex wasn’t great either so it came to an end pretty shortly.

Soundtrack: Love Hurts by Nazareth (I couldn’t find a song with “sex hurts” in the lyrics so this song is the closest that represents the sentiment.)

Love hurts, Ooh love hurts, Ooh love hurts…

My first love came into my life when I was 25. At that time, I lived in the US to teach Indonesian language at a university in Florida. Shortly after I moved there, I met and fell in love with Amir, a handsome and smart Indian boy with kind brown eyes. Sex with Amir was easy, natural, and nice. Goodbye to “sex equals pain”, hello to “sex equals pleasure”! We were madly in love and finally tied the knot. When I was in love with Amir, I felt safe, protected, and untouchable as if nothing could ever go wrong in my life. I thought Amir was the love of my life and that we would grow old and spend the rest of our lives together. But the marriage fell apart for various reasons including a significant third party. And after being together for more than 7 years, we separated and divorced. When the person I loved the most told me that he no longer loved me, it was probably the cruelest statement I’ve heard and the most painful experience I had to endure. It deeply affected my self-worth. Perhaps after all, I was not worthy of love. The separation was extremely painful and traumatic and I went through another phase of a major depression. And so I left the US with a major heartbreak and returned to my home country, Indonesia, and decided to close and lock my heart and my vagina too.

Soundtrack: Love of My Life by Queen

Love of my life, you've hurt me. You've broken my heart and now you leave me. Love of my life, can't you see? Bring it back, bring it back. Don't take it away from me because you don't know, what it means to me.

Love of my life, Love of my life, Ooh, eh…

For many years after the divorce, not wanting to get hurt again, I built many more invisible walls and probably even had an invisible sign on my forehead, all in capital letters: “NOT INTERESTED, PLEASE GO AWAY!” to repel men who were interested in approaching me. I was pleased they worked pretty well and I was left alone in my solitude. But the isolation was certainly one of the darkest periods in my life.

Soundtrack: The Lonely by Christina Perri (Warning: this song is highly depressing!)

Broken pieces of, a barely breathing story. Where there once was love. Now there's only me, and the lonely…

At the age of 39, I suffered from ongoing multiple health issues. I was on the search of alternative healing and it brought me to the first taste of spirituality when I attended ALIVE FEST in August 2018 in Surabaya, a wellness event that was organized by The Golden Space Indonesia. Several months later in February 2019, I participated in “Awaken ~ the Divine You”® Program in Jakarta, conducted by the founder of The Golden Space worldwide, Master Umesh H. Nandwani. It was a life changing experience and so I began my spiritual awakening and journey.

After walking the path of spirituality and practicing meditation regularly for almost a year and healed from the wounds of past relationships, I was finally able to break all my invisible walls and open my heart again. I finally felt ready for a new relationship. I even announced this to the audience who came to my talk at The Golden Space Indonesia and expressed this to the universe that “I am now single and available”. Shortly after, I paused and panicked. “Where do I find men?” I was out of the dating game for so long and felt a bit lost. But the universe listened and it manifested rather quickly. Ten days after my public announcement, James came to the picture. He was handsome, with gorgeous grey eyes and cute Scottish accent. And best of all, I didn’t have to look too far. He was my neighbor at my apartment building and lived exactly two floors on top of me. I felt simply relieved that he didn’t live exactly on top of me. Now that would have been too much to handle. We kept bumping into each other for the past few years and I knew he had checked me out numerous times but I ignored him. So by divine timing, we ran into each other again several times within a week and could no longer ignore these coincidences, started talking, and seeing each other.

It was a sweet beginning. After so long, I was reminded of the excitement of a new relationship: the nervous feeling, checking for his messages on my phone multiples times, food didn’t taste quite right, difficulty in sleeping, and couldn’t get him out of my head. But at the same time, all my fears about a relationship also surfaced: fear of painful sex, fear of betrayal and abandonment, and fear to trust love again. The new relationship moved fast and we had our first kiss. Initially, I wasn’t ready and didn’t want to kiss him as he was leaning to kiss me as I left his apartment. But soon after that, there was a day when the Scottish energy was so strong and I felt that I had to embrace it. I created a narration for this kiss with us going back to the sacred forest in the Isle of Skye, Scotland. And so surrounded by the energy of the sacred forest, after the rain, under the moon and the stars, we gave each other the gentlest kiss we have ever given to another person. It was my first kissing meditation and it was certainly the most memorable first kiss ever.  

A few days after that magical kiss, I woke up feeling excited and got ready to attend ALIVE FEST 2019 in Jakarta. More than a year had passed since I was introduced to spirituality. My sister and my brother in law flew from another city to join me for this event. As I was waiting for them to arrive from the airport, I got a message from James to come over. I knew I would be busy during the weekend with the event and spending time with my family so I decided to go up to see him briefly. We started kissing and made out and before we knew it, we were both naked. It happened really fast and sex turned a bit rough. But before the finish line, a request from James woke me up from this terrible nightmare and I said “no”, stopped, put on my clothes, and left the sex scene, leaving him naked and unfinished. It may have been a very cruel thing to do to a man but I wasn’t finished either and the violent parts of the sex left a couple of cuts on my tits and my vagina. It was my first and closest experience to sexual violence. I felt angry and disappointed at myself for allowing it to happen. A couple of days later, we met again and I ended the relationship. Even the universe agreed with this decision. After living in Indonesia for 9 years, James left Jakarta and moved back to the UK two weeks after we broke up. The relationship was short but impactful as it left a pretty big scar in my heart. But at the very least, I started opening up, allowed myself to be naked again in front of a man at least physically, and most importantly had the opportunity to face my relationship issues.

Soundtrack: Butterfly by Christina Perri (This song played in my head when I showered right before my first kissing meditation. It seemed to me that the universe had given me a warning sign but I chose to ignore the messages.)
And you're a pretty butterfly, And I believed in all your lies, Blinded by your sideways smile, And the kindness in your eyes But there's a limit to your flight, I can offer you a better life, But you keep on flying from the light, And I've lost my faith in wrong and right. And I've made the same mistakes, but I won't this time, No I won't this time…

As I reflected on my recent experience, I realized how much I have grown and healed. If this had happened to me before my spiritual journey, I would have gone into another phase of a major depression, threw a self-pity party, entertained my sadness by crying me a river, watched sad movies, listened to heartbreak songs, played the victim mode, and blamed myself, James, God, and the whole situation. The old me would even try to self-sabotage myself: “oh but he’s so handsome, he smells so good, his apartment’s so nice and clean, he promised to be gentle next time, and everyone deserves a second chance right?” And I was supposed to be in Vancouver for work when the relationship with James developed but opted not to go. I would have wanted to turn back time and reversed my travel decision so I could delete this part of my life.

But instead, I took full responsibility for allowing the sexual violence to happen to me. And despite the misery of a week of painful shower, I was determined to heal and move forward. So I decided to embark on a week of marathon healing and did some deep inner work with The Golden Space Indonesia programs, starting from the conveniently timed two day ALIVE FEST, a couple of private sessions, Light Up meditations, Full Moon meditation and the divinely timed Sacred Sensuality and The Art of Intimacy workshops. The last two workshops have truly unblocked and unlocked my sensuality and sexuality that have been suppressed by myself and the society for the longest time! I am very pleased to welcome and embrace them again into my life. I also came to a realization that I have never consciously made love. I always separated love and sex and even felt allergic to the words “make love” or “lovemaking”. I didn’t believe such experience existed. Thanks to personal life experience, the porn industry, and the American sex culture, I always viewed sex as a purely physical activity and that it could not be combined with love. Now I’m wondering what lovemaking feels like. I imagine it’s an experience when I can just be me, expressing my true self honestly and authentically, all my wishes and desires. When I feel completely open and vulnerable, truly immersed in the moment of giving and receiving love. If this truly exist, that’s pure heaven!

A week after the workshops, the healing continued as I joined the ten day Vipassana Meditation course, organized by Indonesia Vipassana Meditation Foundation and the idea of this story was born during this period of mental silence.  All the intensive therapies have helped me heal the recent and past emotional wounds. I feel empowered that I eventually chose to respect and honor myself and express these: “No”, “Stop”, and “I don’t want to”. We all should feel empowered to be able to express these and should not surrender to any type of violence or abuse. We all deserve tenderness, love, care, respect, and compassion in a relationship.

But moving forward is not always easy. At some point, I heard my ego mock me: “you see, when you open your heart, you get hurt again.” Surprisingly, my heart, the new CEO of my life, responded this way: “it’s ok, it’s the risk that I’m willing to take”. I simply refuse to give up on love. My former physiotherapist was keen to help and asked me to send her a picture of myself along with a description and what I’m looking for in a partner as she wanted to share this with her client who loves to be a matchmaker. And so I sent her what she requested and hopefully I will manifest what I had expressed. A friend suggested that I had to be open to the idea of online dating. So I downloaded the dating app she recommended and paid the three month subscription fee.

Some of us decide to live our lives with ourselves. Certainly comfortable and convenient. Totally understood, I chose this too. Some of us, no matter how many heartbreaks we had experienced are still yearning to find love again. As for me, I choose to be happy and complete with the love that I have for myself. I am enough. But at the same time, I’m open for a new relationship, to experience love making, and to give and receive unconditional love. And so I choose LOVE.

Soundtrack: L.O.V.E. by Harrison Craig (Here’s to celebrate LOVE!)

Love was made for me and you.

Affirmations

I Choose Love. I Choose Myself. I Love Myself.

I Choose Love. I Choose Myself. I Love Myself.

I Choose Love. I Choose Myself. I Love Myself.

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* The title of this post was inspired by my own mood and the title of a Hong Kong movie by Wong Kar-wai, “In the Mood for Love”, a beautiful and elegant movie!

** I felt that these titles would also be suitable for this post: “Uncensored Love” and “To all the girl and the boys I’ve loved before”.

*** Although this story is based on my life, the name of the characters have been altered to protect their privacy. Here are my inspirations:

     Samantha: Samantha Jones from “Sex and the City” TV series (she is a Sex Goddess!)  

     David: David Duchovny (I’m a huge fan of "The X-Files" TV series and love Fox Mulder character)

     Amir: Aamir Khan (the hottest and best Bollywood actor in my humble opinion)

     James: James McAvoy (the hottest Scottish actor in my humble opinion)

**** Follow Lulu Love on Instagram: @lululove.selflove and Twitter: @luluselflove 

***** Thank you Blogger.com for hosting this blog!

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First drafted in Jakarta in January 3, 2020.