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Crossing the Abyss

May, 2021. I returned the keys to the last apartment I would lease for the next four years.

I could feel what was coming—the deep fall into the abyss of uncertainty. I didn't know how long it would last, or where, or who I'd be on the other side.

It wasn't an entirely new sensation. Since 2014, I'd been living a one-country-per-year kind of life.

Naturally, when the time came to pack my things (again) and leave Kuala Lumpur, a place that held (and still holds) such a special place in my heart, it was neither uncomfortable nor easy.

Yet, this time, it carried a different flavor.

I knew I was about to leap into a completely different reality. And I knew what life asks from one in order to get there.

I remember how the simple act of handing over the keys meant more.

It meant I was about to start crossing a bridge while blindfolded - and all I had to guide me was the sound of the wind. If I listened too much to my thoughts, I'd slip. To cross the abyss, the mind is a dangerous place, and thinking is the enemy. It whispers coordinates from the map of our old land. But the wind, it's natural, it softly carries you and guides your every step, if you let it.

At first, I wasn't very good at trusting the wind.

How could this wild, formless force possibly know my life plans? My goals? Didn't it understand I had boxes to check—definitions of success I needed to reach before I could be happy? And what about those unexpected storms that threw my life upside down, rerouting me again and again? Didn't the wind know I didn't have time to waste and needed to get to my unknown destination as soon as possible?

Funny how, in moments of weakness, the mind always showed up. Offering comfort, serving as a guide. It said it had maps full of routes - carved by people whose paths I knew nothing about. And whenever I detoured to one of those routes, the path felt dimmer, less vibrant. As if nature had already provided its brightest fruits to those who trusted their wind. Following existing trails felt deceivingly easy. The ground was paved, and the water stations were clearly marked; even better, one didn't need to be present for the experience of walking at all. It did not require any level of awareness. I barely remember them.

Luckily for me, a thunderstorm would come, and my wind would be so loud that it would completely take over. One can't discern good from bad luck in the present moment. Time is needed for the experiences and choices of our lives to mature into clear blessings or lessons.

Walking through the abyss brought me into deep forests. Some trees offered support, shelter, and protection. Their trunks were strong, and their roots ran deep. These trustworthy trees gave me more than they'll ever know by the complex and simple act of existing. Nature recognizes vitality because it's the source of it. Sometimes, the wind would pull me away from a tree I'd be drawn to. Why would it do that? Doesn't it love its earthly counterpart? Then, overnight, I'd hear that trunk crack and fall. And I'd understand: the wind was protecting me from parts of its own that, though once alive, had grown fragile from within. If I had stayed, it might have compromised my crossing of the abyss.

When the forest thickened and the wilderness grew dense, what once felt like a guided path split into endless directions. My wind grew faint—unclear, hesitant—whispering too softly for the weight of my uncertainty. The more the paths branched, the deeper my despair.

There are two kinds of stillness in moments like these.

One is born of fear. I’d freeze—paralyzed by the thought of choosing wrong, of letting my wind down, of betraying the trust I was learning to place in it. That stillness felt like stone—rigid, anxious, unmoving.

The other kind is quieter. Wiser. It would arrive when I felt held by the unseen. A stillness that trusted the silence. That understood the absence of wind not as abandonment but as part of nature’s perfect design. Not an “I am not here,” but a gentle “Wait. I’ll return when it’s time.”

I came to understand that the absence of wind was, in itself, a form of wind. A deeper lesson it wished to pass on to me. A stillness not of pause, but of presence. After all, on someone else’s journey, I, too, am a tree. And the more I allowed myself to become still, the more sensitively I could feel the wind's return—on my skin, in my chest, through the roots I never knew I had.

At a few stations, I flirted with the idea of ending the journey. Those important resting points came to me and provided anything that a final destination would. I began to grow familiar with the surroundings. I wholeheartedly wanted to want to stay. It would have been easier. It would have been the “normal” thing to do. But the wind and I had become one. So I stayed a little longer, drank the water, breathed the air. And then, the next day, I would bless the trees, pack my bag with lessons, and follow my wind.

The moment I stopped resisting and started dancing with it, the sensation of free-falling began to shift. What once felt like disorientation transformed into a quiet sense of awe. I no longer attached to a fixed destination. Instead, I prayed to be surprised and allowed the wind to guide me. I free-fall, laughing in midair, supported by the certainty that there's no ground.

To cross the abyss, one must become it. And to become the abyss, one must first unbecome everything they were taught to be. Birthing a new life demands the death—and the grief—of the old one. Drop your maps. Embrace the blindfold. Feel your wind.

Now, as I sit on the couch of my new home, I close my eyes in quiet gratitude—for the life I live today exists because I dared to trust my wind. I’m grateful for the wild, whirling paths that turned my understanding of life upside down. I blessed all the moments I got redirected from existing trails and pushed to carve my own. I rest in calm certainty of the new beginning I was brought to build. Grateful and in awe, with a sense of home in a city I never imagined, surrounded by people I love.

I bless the wind for not giving me what I thought I wanted when I chose to cross the abyss. It gave me so much more.

Important —

There's a reason I don't socialize my writing - outside of the obvious, "you shouldn't care about what I think". The real reason is something much more personal, which my close friends will confirm as an intrinsic flaw(?) of mine: I change my mind. A lot and often. So to share something feels binding and is a liability I'm not willing to have. An example of it is this text, which I wrote approximately 3 weeks back. Today, as I revisit it, I laugh. I laugh at my own entitlement.

In what world could I expect to ever cross the abyss? How naive to think that navigating uncertainty was a season of life, and not the act of living in and of itself. Disregard every external input, here and in any other place - no one knows what they are doing and only you have the ability of being you.

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