Good riddance.

Advise from a wise old sexy fox.

Totally unexpected, that’s how it happened. And that is exactly how i like it. If you’ve been following along here, you’ll know about the $2,500 I recently paid to buy my freedom from the monster, money I fully expected to vanish into lawyer pockets and the dusty corridors of some crumbling courthouse for the next few years.

By strong advice of one of my elderly friends , a wise old sexy fox who’s done this messy dance not once but twice in that very same country , the best plan, he said, was simple: Just start. File the papers, toss the first stone into the stagnant pond, and see what ripples out. So I did. One should never ignore the advice from an wise old sexy fox, innit?

It was late , my kind of late, 8 p.m., which is basically midnight in my world. I was halfway to dreamland, when ping, my lawyer decided to grace my inbox with one of his cryptic masterpieces. Ping is not the name of my lawyer but the sound it makes when a message pops in. I opened it, squinted, saw an attachment, all blurred as i couldn’t find my reading glasses.

So I did what any sane woman would do, I ignored it. At 4 a.m., my favourite hour when my braincells feeling twenty again, I cracked it open again. And there it was: dry, dusty legal lingo, something about having obtained something. Obtained what? Knowing this place, slow as f*, I just assumed my request to divorce the monster had finally, after two months since we filed in April, found its way onto their system, so now the process can be started.

I could see it now , that whole scene burned into my mind from a thousand visits: stacks of yellowing files, an officer behind the counter with his trousers hitched right up to his armpits, gospel crackling on a radio in the background. A solemn portrait of the president on the wall, flanked by faded flags. Analog as hell with a hint of mould. A place so antique, you can actually smell time.

Still half unsure, I fired the whole thing off to my lawyer mate in Sydney: “Decipher this for me, would you?” An hour later she shot back: “Congrats, dollface. You’re officially divorced.”

Just like that. Not ten years. Not five. Ten weeks. A freedom decree delivered straight into my inbox, exactly as my wise old sexy friend said: Just start. Et voila! That pond rippled fine.

Friends asked if I celebrated with champagne and fireworks, a glamorous midnight toast. No. I was in bed by eight, wrapped in my kikoi, sipping away on a cup of green tea like it was a sacrament. But I did celebrate , just not in the way they pictured.I could never have imagined that my quiet cup of tea would become the bridge to something wilder, a massive, messy, magnificent celebration of trust with fifteen strangers who turned out to be exactly who I didn’t know I needed. Out of nowhere a big tiny fairy knocked on my door. She had arrived on the island and was given my number by my darling friend D from Bali. She sprinkled the magic fairy glitter et voila, i landed in a divine setting, all zen and sacred.

Celebrated with fifteen glorious strangers, on a wild tropical island. Fifteen strangers from every compass point, each carrying secrets, scars, and a quiet longing to become more or simply offloading some shit.

Hidden in a boutique hotel that felt like someone’s whispered prayer stitched into gardens and moonlight. Every tree draped in tiny crystals, swaying like secret chimes in the leaves. Little altars tucked under branches, tiny feathers, petals, stones , signs that this place was blessed long before we arrived barefoot at its gate.

We sat in ceremony after ceremony , smudged in sage smoke, incense trails, every day a fresh new glitter bindi and then the sacred cacao. Thick holly cacao brew, stirred slowly with wooden spoon, tracing infinity signs in the chocolate brew. Neural nectar for the heart chakra. Sip by sip, the past softened. The locks around our hearts clicked open.

One night we pulled on headsets , fifteen women turned silent disco wanderers, drifting barefoot through moonlit gardens. We danced with our shadows and with the past. My favourite part , hands down , was pillow rage. Self-explanatory, innit? Imagine fifteen grown women, clutching pillows like medieval weapons, punching the crap out of the pillow while yelling in pain. At the pain. Through the pain.

There’s something so deliciously savage about bashing a pillow into the sand while screaming at the monster, your annoying neigbour, the tax authorities or whatever needs a good thumping. Grown women, sweat flying, mascara streaked, smacking their way back to sanity. One of the best workouts I’ve ever had. If you’ve never pillow-raged under a full moon with fifteen howling women, are you even living? I now know my shit.

If you’d seen us, crazy women in glowing headsets, half spinning under crystals that caught the moonlight just so , you’d think, God bless ’em, they’ve joined the cult circuit. And maybe we had. But if hugging a tree at midnight with your soul sisters and a playlist in your skull is wrong , then to hell with being right.

So here’s to the pond that rippled. To the not so slow lawyer. To the wise old sexy fox. To the office clerk’s trousers and the president’s portrait. And of course to my fifteen beautiful sisters.

With love from the ocean,

Annelies

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