Komby in 14 Steps — Step 4: Higher, the breakup that set me free

Some blows don't come from the market: they come from a home cracking, a signature in court, a door closing on twelve years of shared life and two children. Higher is not an anthem to productivity. It's the track of the breakup — divorce, separation, the moment you find yourself alone not because you chose it as strategy, but because a NO cut through. Faced with that NO, you have two options: drop your arms, or rise.

I chose to rise. And that's where — without knowing it, without naming it — Komby begins.

The trial: when everything breaks for two

Divorce doesn't fall like a line in a business plan: it falls like a blade. After twelve years and two children, it's lawyers, procedures, travel ban, hearings, and nights when you don't sleep — not because of a bug, but because of a future you no longer recognize.

I told part of that chaos elsewhere on France Je Te Quitte — the departure, travel as remedy, the blog name that scared everyone. But Higher is something else: it's not the administrative account of separation, it's what it does in the body when commitment to another person cuts off at once, and you refuse to stay on your knees.

You're no longer "we." You become "I" again. And that "I" isn't romantic: it's brutal. You no longer have a spouse to account to, no couple to protect, no team of two to absorb shocks. If you fail, you fail alone. If you succeed, you succeed alone — because the fight, now, is yours, and nobody else will rise for you. That's a hard sentence, and I keep it, because it's the truth of this step: not that of a victim, that of a fighter who owns the solo ring.

The freedom of being alone: acting without the other judging you

We often talk about freedom as conquest. Here, freedom was imposed on me — a NO, a wave, then another. But what it opens, once the shock passes, is precise: the freedom to act without the other judging you.

No more gaze weighing on an urge to build. No more "we'll see together" diluting the first step. No more partner who, whether meaning to or not, becomes weight on your entrepreneurial urges. When you're free to act, you can grow further — faster, higher — than with someone who brakes, relativizes, or pulls you back to couple caution when you need founder audacity.

It's not hatred. It's mechanics. As two, every decision goes through a filter. Alone, you decide, you pay, you own it; you go to bed with your mistakes and wake with your debts — and you build without waiting for permission from the other's gaze. At first, it looks like emptiness. Then emptiness becomes space: dangerous, because you can lose everything, and fertile, because nobody holds you back from doing what you've carried too long.

I didn't think "I'm going to create Komby." The word didn't exist in my mouth yet. I thought: I have nothing left to lose the same way — and nobody judges me if I try. Fear changed shape. Before, it was also that of disappointing as two, of being judged in your urges. After, it became that of disappearing alone — and paradoxically, that's the fear that pushed me higher. Not to beg. To act. To grow.

Komby begins here — without knowing it, without naming it

With hindsight, I see the line: separation, freedom to act alone, coding nights, Digital CHR, travels, London, then Komby — the platform, the album, the name. At the time, I didn't know Komby was being born in that crack. I hadn't named it. I didn't even know it would one day be called that. I was fighting. I was composing to empty my head and put my feet back in the arena. I was working not to drop my arms. I didn't know that "succeeding alone" — free to act, without partner's judgment — would become the very condition of what I was building: bootstrapped, no investor, no spouse partner, no board — just me facing the screen and facing life.

Komby begins from that moment. Not as a pitch. Not as branding. As an invisible consequence. When you're free to act, you discover what you're capable of building — or not. You no longer have an alibi, no half-measures, no weight on your urges. If I fail, I fail alone. If I succeed, I succeed alone — because I had the space to act without filter. That NO of the breakup became my fuel. Without that wave, I might never have had the silence — nor the freedom to act — to rise. I don't turn it into a debt of gratitude. I turn it into a weapon.

Why I had to release this track

Higher came out of me because I couldn't keep the breakup in my head alone anymore, and the fighter needs air to continue. Composing wasn't "making a song about divorce" for storytelling: it was translating the fight, letting out anger, letting out grief, letting out that strange freedom that has nothing joyful at first and yet lifts you — freedom to be alone, to act, to grow without the other's judgment.

I needed elevation because I was at the bottom of the ring. Not "under pressure" in the startup sense. At the bottom like after a separation: the home that no longer exists, children in the middle, couple identity dying, and you inventing a new identity — man, father, founder — at the same time, fighting, acting. You rise because otherwise you stay on your knees — and on your knees, that's not my post.

Free the mind, extend the fight

I didn't compose Higher to explain Komby. At the time, I hadn't even named it. I composed Higher to hold against the breakup — then I extended it to the world, because an autobiographical album is useless if it hides the fights that make everything tip over.

Those who've divorced know. Those who rebuilt alone know. Those who felt a partner become weight on their urge to build know. If you're free to act, you can grow more than with someone who brakes your urges — even out of love, even out of fear, even "for your own good."

On the journal, I also told how travel became my remedy after separation — see Pourquoi Francejetequitte.com ?. Higher is the inner soundtrack of that shift: before the blog, before London long-term, before MetaSaaS, before the word Komby — brutal freedom to act, and refusing to drop your arms.

What I refuse to romanticize

I won't say divorce was "the best thing that happened to me" with a LinkedIn smile. It was destruction — children in the middle, procedures, fear, a wave of NO. But I'll say this clearly, because it's the heart of Higher: from that breakup onward, I was free to act without the other judging me. No more weight on my entrepreneurial urges. Solitude became the frame, the frame became discipline, and discipline became Komby — without my knowing it, without my naming it the day the couple broke. I wasn't a victim waiting to be picked up. I was a fighter climbing back — and growing because he could finally act.

The Komby album is quasi-autobiographical. Each track documents a trial. Higher is step 4: the romantic separation that leaves you free to act, and the invisible — unnamed — beginning of a company you'll build alone. If you fail, you fail alone. If you succeed, you succeed alone — because you were free to act. It's not revenge. It's combat. And that's why the track is called Higher: because after the fall as two, the only direction left was up.

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Alexandre Auger — CEO of Komby

*Step 4/14 — Previous: I Left My Fears Behind (03) · Next: Journey (05)*