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

Some blows don't come from the market alone: they come from a home cracking, a signature in court, a door closing on twelve years of shared life and two children. Higher is 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: give up, 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 a future you have to rebuild standing.

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 what it does to you when commitment to another person cuts off at once, and you choose to rise.

You're no longer "we." You become "I" again. And that "I" is brutal, not romantic. 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: the truth 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.

You're free of the gaze that weighed on every urge to build, of the "we'll see together" that watered down the first step, of the partner who, whether meaning to or not, became a weight on your entrepreneurial urges. When you're free to act, you can grow further (faster, higher) than with someone who puts the brakes on, relativises, or pulls you back towards couple caution when you need founder audacity.

It's mechanics. As a couple, 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 feels 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. Like 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 this title

Higher came out of me because I couldn't keep the breakup in my head alone any longer, and the fighter needs air to continue. Composing was translating the fight, letting out anger, letting out grief, letting out that strange freedom that has nothing joyful about it, not "making a song about divorce" for storytelling.

I needed elevation because the solo ring demanded a new identity: man, father, creative founder. Not "under pressure" in the start-up sense. The breakup had emptied the home, left the children in the middle, killed couple identity. You had to rise, not collapse.

Letting it land, keeping 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 a weight on their urge to build know. If you're free to act, you can grow more than with someone who puts the brakes on 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 ?.

What I refuse to romanticise

I won't say divorce was "the best thing that happened to me." It was destruction, children in the middle, procedures. Solitude became the frame, the frame became discipline, and discipline became Komby, without my knowing it, without my naming it that day.

The Komby album is quasi-autobiographical. Each track documents a trial and ideas. Higher is step 4: the romantic separation that leaves you free to act, and the invisible (unnamed) beginning of an international company you'll build alone.

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Alexandre Auger, CEO of Komby

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