Taken from my Substack, originally published on August 1, 2026:
I was focusing on myself—finishing my MBA, publishing and promoting my second poetry book, writing and painting new artwork. But where did that leave my love life? I was both scared and excited to start anew again. Scared of the opening up process, the potential letdowns, encountering danger, disappointing sexual experiences. But I was excited for what could be—the butterflies of a new crush, the taste of a first kiss, the thrill of embarking on a new romantic adventure with someone.
In light of my breakup, I was deconstructing romance and partnership, and all the beliefs I had previously held that I had put onto my ex-partner. Engagement. Marriage. Kids. I wasn’t happy in that relationship, but I had wanted the status symbol of it all. When I really admitted it to myself, I realized I would have sacrificed my happiness to be with someone who wasn’t good for me just for the sake of getting married and having kids. It was very clear that I still had age-old religious ideas and objectives that had embedded themselves within me. I was still measuring my outside image by evangelical standards. Which made it performative.
I was performing partnership because I thought it would make me happy, that it would fulfill me, that it would make society, and my family accept me.
But this type of performance with the wrong person is soul-sucking (as I had realized), and incredibly dangerous for women, who, statistically-speaking, sleep next to the most dangerous person they could ever encounter in their lives.
Amid all that, and the feeling of crippling loneliness (as well as trying to compete with my ex—if he could move on, why couldn’t I?), I created an account on Hinge. And on OkCupid. I skipped Tinder because now I was too scared to get back on it. This was a change from the inaugural casual dating years I had upon moving to Paris. I felt hesitant to experiment, which may have left me more vulnerable to getting attached to the wrong person.
The first person I went out with was perfect on paper. He had gotten his MBA from UC Berkeley (we shared a common alma mater). He worked as a business analysist. He bought and designed his own house. He had a car. He chose a nice restaurant for our first date (didn’t pay for it though; I insisted I pay for myself).
I ignored the questions that implied I hadn’t integrated into French culture enough.
I ignored the fact that he took 12-24 hours to respond to texts.
I got attached to him anyways, because on paper, he was perfect. And I was still so attached to the picture-perfect image of coupledom. He was also cute and super tall, with glasses (my weakness).
For our second date I invited him to my house so I could cook dinner for him.
No matter how feminist I had become, I couldn’t shake the patriarchal need to perform traditional feminine domesticity for the men whose attention I craved.
I knew what I was doing. How backward it was. I couldn’t bring myself to stop. I guess deep down inside I thought that being “chosen” by this perfect man would redeem my previous heartbreak. This was, of course, a farce.
He showed up with a box of beautiful French chocolates. That only made me like him more. He kissed me on my couch. My heart soared.
The next weekend I invited myself over to his house to sleep over. I was dying to sleep with him. I was still ignoring his avoidant and/or I’m-not-that-into-you signs. I didn’t care. I just wanted to push my attachment until it could no longer be pushed anymore.
What you would expect to happen, happened. It was the worst sex of my life (another sign I chose to ignore). He immediately pulled away after, which made me feel rejected. It felt emotionally cold. He continued to respond to my texts for the next few days and when I asked him out the following weekend, he said he felt ashamed to tell me this, but he didn’t feel “the spark” with me and wished me well. Bonne continuation (lawwwwwwl). I was crushed. But I also wasn’t surprised.
And what I was upset with was the fact that even though my logical brain saw the signs of this inevitable outcome, I ignored them all because I thought maybe, just maybe, things could possibly turn out differently.
This dating episode made me depressed less because I was rejected, but more because I couldn’t trust myself anymore. I couldn’t trust myself to stop when faced with signals from another person that I should.
How does one date with attachment issues like that?
I put my turmoil onto my paintbrush.
It was through this pain, that my painting Attachment was birthed.
For this one, I knew I wanted the tone to be dark. So, rather than using a transparent raw sienna underpainting like I had on all my previous realist canvases, I used ‘black’ as the underpainting. My version of black isn’t actually black. I mix ultramarine blue with alizarin crimson to make a deep plum which I use as the darkest color in all my paintings. This gives them all a sense of harmony, even when the styles are completely different. The result was a cool, almost gothic-like rendition of an anatomical heart, meant to represent anxious attachment.
My paintings wouldn’t be what they are without the poetry that accompanies them either. While I was working on Attachment, I was writing some of the quintessential poems that define my next poetry book: ‘drowning in love’, ‘fiction’ and ‘uncool girl’:
drowning in love
I don’t know how to experience love
except for falling straight in,
headfirst,
all passion.
They say this isn’t love, this is
anxious attachment,
infatuation,
attraction,
lust.
But if this isn’t love, then
I’ve never experienced love.
Not truly,
not without feeling my heart
ripped out of my chest,
without feeling my thoughts dominated by
memories of your skin on mine,
our breaths intertwined as one.
The things I whispered to you,
the things I didn’t whisper to you,
because I was too scared to.
The things you held,
the things you didn’t hold.
The things you touched,
the things you couldn’t touch.
Every time it’s over, I keep
telling myself I won’t do it again.
Won’t fall head over heels in love with
the version of you I created in my head.
Because my brain seems so good at
crafting men who are good enough for me
on paper,
but not that good at finding them
in real life.
Not that good at picking them.
Perhaps I’m imagining what I can’t find,
what I believe I’m not
worthy to find.
But what I do know is that
I’ll keep diving in
blindly,
without looking,
because I’ve never known anything
but to drown
in love.
fiction
I fall in love too quickly.
Everybody tells me so.
I wish I didn’t.
Wish I
couldn’t.
But I can’t help it, I
meet someone and all
my brain does is see
their potential.
Our potential.
I can’t help but create
stories in my head of
how you’ll fall in love with me, how
you’ll cauterize the longing
of this endless search,
of this journey I’ve
been on. I can’t help but
put my faith in you. Because
I want to.
I want to.
I’m tired and weary and
desperate from searching and what I
want more than anything is for
you to be the destination.
For you to be the welcome mat
that I place my suitcase on
when I come home.
For you to free me from the
torture of
falling in love with everyone
else too soon.
For you to
save me from my
misery.
But alas, it’s the stories I’ve
fallen in love with, these
stories I’ve woven, these
stories I’ve fabricated. It’s
not you. I
haven’t fallen in love with you I’ve
fallen in love with
my own imagination and
the character I turned you into.
I fall in love too quickly, it’s true but
I haven’t fallen in love with you I’ve
fallen in love with
fiction.
uncool girl
I’m not a cool girl.
I know I look like one but
I’m
not.
I’m a
stare-at-the-phone-until-
you-text-me-back girl,
a count-the-number-of-
exclamation-points-in-your-text girl,
a tell-you-I-love-you-too-soon girl,
a smother-you-until-you-love-me-back-too girl,
an obsessive, overthinking,
head-over-heels-for-you girl.
I’m not a cool girl, no,
it’s true,
but I’m also a can’t-be-replaced girl,
make-you-feel-cool girl,
love-you-until-you-no-longer-love-me girl.
I’m not a cool girl.
I’m so much more.
Sometimes even,
too much
for you.
Although I’ve now moved on and healed from this episode, being an uncool girl has defined who I am. No, I am not chill about things like love and life. I take things like romance, work, friendship, learning, and anything I put my mind to very seriously. I am passionate and intentional, and my loved ones know it. If anything, I want to be more and more uncool as I grow older. Not in an anxious attachment kind of way (which I’m very pleased to say does not define my current romantic partnership), but in a I-don’t-care-what-people-think-about-me way. Especially since evangelical culture had made me such a male-centric people pleaser.
These days, I want to be an uncool girl in terms of my emotional and artistic expression. I want to be uncool in the audacity to believe in myself and my work.
Attachment serves as a reminder of how I had placed so much faith in the patriarchal idea that I needed to be chosen to be considered a worthy woman.
But that faith had misled me. Instead, I needed to be attached to healthy definitions of love. But this work wasn’t easy. It took me two years to redefine love for myself after my messy relaunch into Paris’s dating pool.
This painting, and the poems that I wrote during that time period, eventually turned into what will be my third illustrated poetry book. One about love, longing, heartbreak, and the patriarchal constraints that hold women back. The patriarchal constraints that held me back, that I choose to indulge no longer.
