Chapter 1: A Thousand Goodbyes

The Beginning

I never knew there was such a thing as the Dark Night of the Soul—until it found me.

It began softly with questions rising one by one, refusing to be ignored. I questioned everything—my purpose, my existence, the very structure of life I had been taught to follow.

What is life?

What does success actually mean?

Did following the “right” path bring fulfillment—or only exhaustion?

And if I didn’t follow any of those things, did that mean I had failed?

Why am I the way I am?

Why do I think the way I think?

Why did I come here?

Why me?

Something felt wrong.

Something was missing.

Slowly, I lost my grip on everything—not just burnout from work, but burnout from the life I believed I was supposed to live.

Things that once fit—friends, family gatherings, work, ambitions—suddenly felt like the wrong puzzle pieces.

I pulled away.

A heaviness settled into every corner of my life, unfamiliar and unnamed.

My world grew smaller,

my inner sky turned grey,

and I could not make sense of the emptiness that followed.

I remember the moment I realized that talking with friends had begun to feel forced. The jokes no longer landed. Stories about work or family bounced off me. Even laughter felt hollow. I would sit across from people I once called my closest, nodding along, quietly wishing I could slip out the back door.

Then my marriage began to shift.

Conversations grew short—clipped, distant. The trust and ease we had built seemed to thin, and I wasn’t able to tell if I was the problem, or whether he was. We didn’t argue, yet something invisible had settled between us—a sadness neither of us could name. In my mind, I began to blame him. The more I resisted the feeling, the more it returned to haunt me.

Eventually, I could no longer bear it.

I told him I wanted us to be over...

When he asked why, no words came—only tears. It was as if my voice had disappeared. The loneliness felt sharpest at home, where he tried to reach me but I could not meet him halfway. It wasn’t anger; it was disconnection—as though our frequencies no longer aligned.

For some, awakening begins with heartbreak or loss.

For me, it began the moment I no longer recognized myself—when everything felt wrong: work, finances, marriage. When the life I had built could no longer contain the soul trying to emerge, a quiet ache rose.

I found myself saying a thousand goodbyes: not just to my work and people around me, but to the version of me who once belonged.

That was the moment I finally turned inward—not by choice, but by necessity.

—Ade Triyani