Careful.

People have often told me I'm a sucker for pain. That in my dealings with people, I show a worrying lack of self-preservation. "Are you crazy? Do you not remember what she said to you?" "How far do you need to fall before you realise he's not good for you? What will it take?" And I have always said that grudges are not my thing. Neither are hostility, vengeance and issuing comeuppances. I'm not very good at any of those and I'd much rather read comics and worry my dog than hatch complicated plots to bring about someone's downfall.

And that is the truth but it's not the whole truth. Because I have been to the other side. Experienced the kind of anger, hurt and bitterness that you can will to become something physical and tangible because calling them 'feelings' doesn't even begin to describe their potency. And they caused me to say things that, to this day make me wilt a little even if I just hear them used randomly or playfully. One day, that person on the receiving end dropped dead. And how bitterly theatrical is it that earlier that very morning, I'd woken up to the vacant, white, summery feeling of forgiveness?

Then on I promised myself I'd let go, a kind of atonement if you will. And once I began, I didn't stop. In time, quite Gyuri-ly, I lost sight of my reason and took it to the extreme. Soon it became a game of 'show me what you got, I'll still come back. You cannot shock me.' And to my horror I found that there is no dearth of people willing to take you up on that kind of challenge. A point that was finally brought home to me only very recently.

For the first time in years, my very dormant sense of self-preservation took over and the only words I could hear myself think were, "you went too far."

Good thing is I'll never be that angry 17-year-old again, screaming, thrashing and foaming at the mouth. Because she grew up and was introduced to their effortless replacements: sarcasm, irony and stone-cold indifference. Don't get me wrong, I still have impossibly high levels of endurance but now they come with a tipping point. Just that you won't see it coming, you'll only know when it's there.

You went too far.