A love-hate letter to my ex, the office

WE FIRST met 10 years ago, when I was all of 23. I sailed past your doors wearing new clothes and with my hair neatly brushed, determined to make a good first impression. I wasn't sure if we would get along, but ours was an arranged marriage. We simply had to make the best of it.

You are more than a floor plan to me. You are where I learnt many first lessons about teamwork, leadership and being a decent human being to others in the same boat. I was such a young woman when we met, but you helped me grow into my own.

In your boardrooms, I made my first stumbling interventions. In your lunch hours, I opened up to my colleagues. In your quiet rooms, behind closed doors, I spoke haltingly to bosses about my dreams and anxieties. Much later, when I led teams, people would speak to me of theirs.

In the years before everything changed, we took marvellous trips together - to places I had never been, or learnt to see in a new light. We weathered the visceral heat of Doha; we strolled with deer on the streets of Nara. We always had a mission.

Sometimes, our travels put us in danger. In November 2015, we were in Paris for a conference when gunmen and suicide bombers struck. They took hostages and claimed 130 lives, scant kilometres from where I sat in my hotel room.

Still I loved you, a bit too much. I often stayed with you for hours longer than I should have, even when I had an infant daughter waiting. A part of me thinks you might have been some type of escape when I needed it. Just you and me, in the hours after dark, with walls around us.

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I remember you the way I left you. You were a handsome window desk, decked with pictures of my family; a pencil sketch of Orson Welles, drawn by my husband; a dorky penholder in the shape of a kneeling knight, proffering his ballpoint like a pledge of his allegiance.

Behind us was a lazy traffic crossing, and a building with multi-coloured windows. To our left was the team pantry: a table of nibbles, Jagabee potato sticks and Nissin cup noodles. In front of us were other nests - some stuffed with sentimental Polaroids and motivational posters, others with shoe racks and gym equipment.

Now and then, our boss would wander out of his office and saunter down our aisle. We'd talk shop at odd hours of the day - sometimes as the sky behind us turned orange, and red, and finally dark. Dry jokes, or animated debate, would float across our cubicle walls.

When we parted daily, I found the commute dreary, but reflective. I'd close my eyes and as I hurtled home, my mind travelled into a different space. I left you behind gladly; I knew I'd see you the next day.

Then last year, when pandemic restrictions struck, we were rudely separated. I wish I'd known we might never meet again.

Months later, when I changed jobs, I returned to you - an empty office - to clear my desk. You were hollowed out. I felt the same.

My farewell party was not how I had envisioned saying goodbye. It took place on Zoom, with my colleagues' pixellated, discombobulated heads grinning in their frames. It was sweet, but awkward; and vaguely unfulfilling.

Is this how it feels like to break up over text messages?

I found a new office, but it just wasn't the same. I was assigned a desk, at which I have rarely sat. I was given a landline, which no one has ever dialled. I collected my new name-cards, which I have never given out. The farthest I've travelled is Jurong.

Instead of cubicles and zones, my new office has chat-groups on Google Hangouts. We rarely all check our messages at the same time, so we chat more in spasms - our brainwaves spinning and sputtering into a silent outer space, where we hope they will be picked up.

Have I just made a constructive suggestion to the group, or said something colossally stupid? There are no shifty eyes to read, no rapid nods to pump up the momentum. Tiny profile pictures pop up to indicate my messages have been read, but I don't always get replies. What does that mean? What does it not mean? How did I end up in this long-distance relationship?

To my ex, the office: I don't know if I want you back. I like my new life, too - untethered from your most grating rigidities; more private and introspective, which suits my nature well.

Yet I admit to feeling, in your absence, an invisible but definite constriction. My world has grown denser and more contained. There is something in me that misses the tribe and fire. Freedom is both lonely and sweet.

Maybe one day soon, we'll reunite and give things another shot. You'll have to be patient with me, as I relearn your rhythms, and how the day flows through your halls. I'll be different, too - and you might have to adjust to that as well.

We are all marked in some way, by these extraordinary times. We are all waiting, hopeful and uncertain, for the blueprints to our new normal lives.