Back in 2009, the year I turned 21, I watched an Oprah interview with Beyoncé. It remains one of the most impactful interviews In my life. While she was there to promote her 3rd studio album, I Am... Sasha Fierce, Beyoncé also spoke at length about her then recent nuptial union with Jay-Z, a long-awaited wedding which finally took place after 7 long years of dating. In the interview, Beyoncé explained why they took their time for marriage, "The most important thing is to make sure you have your own life before you're someone else's wife." That line and rhyme struck a heavy chord with the 21-year-old me, especially since at that time, I had just ended my first relationship. It was a break up that tore me apart and left me feeling tragically worthless.
This Beyoncé quote has become, and still is, a heavy influence in my life. For years now, I've kept with me the strong belief that I should never let a relationship complete me. A relationship should complement my life, and my life should, by itself and in the words of Beyoncé, be "complete and sufficient". Only with a complete and stable life can one have mental and emotional space for a companion.
I've worked hard through the years for this complete life, and I feel like I've been very successful in creating my own strong identity as a person. I know who I am and I know what my principles, interests and goals are. However, I've come to realise how this creates another problem. My life has become, quite simply, larger than life. With dozens of sacred friendships that I've dedicated lots of time to building from every chapter in my life, with a full-time teaching job that I love and that demands so much of me, with a family to support, with my personal growth and development that I constantly see to, and with passions in the arts that are all-consuming (dance, theatre, music, film, writing), my life is not only "complete," as Beyoncé says every single person's life should be; it is also very full.
I've come to realise how difficult it will be for someone special to come into my life with the hopes of being prioritised above all the things that define me and all the things that make my life complete. I've tried. I really have; and I thought I was doing a good job juggling everything. There were times when I felt that I've even given more of myself than I ever thought I could for the happiness of my partner, until one day the truth came out: "I have never been your number one. At first, it was dance that was more important. Now, it's teaching".
Dance and teaching are not the sole reasons for the break up, but this line about not being number one has been haunting me since I first heard it.
Since the break up, I have not gone to a single dance class. I have dreams of going. I have dreams of joining S24, the most exciting dance competition in Singapore. I get excited about these dreams, and then they disappear when I'm reminded of why I felt compelled to stop in the first place. Dance has become one of the key reasons why THE BEST relationship of my life did not last, and that's something that will hang over me for some time.
A bigger passion in my life is teaching. I haven't stopped teaching, of course. It's my iron rice bowl, but the impact of those words stay with me on a daily basis and every weekend that I dedicate to marking, I remember that it's one of the reasons why my partner felt unloved.
There are many other reasons why the relationship ended and I take full credit for them. I was not as understanding as my partner needed me to be. There were expectations I did not - sometimes could not - meet. I disappointed my partner in many ways. In addition, I was not as honest about my past as my partner needed me to. Above all, I may have dedicated a lot of time and effort into the relationship, but I failed to support him in ways that he needed me to. These points - and many others - left the both of us incredibly worn out and helpless. My partner gave up a few times, but I fought for us, and then came the day that I gave up, and that turned out to be final.
So, here we are, back to square one - a single man with a full, complete life that he still enjoys, but missing the confidence that he used to have in building the perfect relationship that everyone in my life said I was capable of. The events in the past few months of my life have left me a scary message that I'm highly possibly not cut out for a relationship if I have a life that is this full.
This is where my reflection stops, because who's to know how this will turn out?
