An echo, a noise, a shadow that will fade as the light creeps in.

Time flies and yet everything stays still. I might want to pretend that I will be okay, but is that really the case?

Waking up today still longing for human connections. As I have lost most of it in the process of securing my own ego in the name of “self love”, I am aware I actually regret that I might have not reckoned all the consequences as I became “too busy” living in the moment.

While I try to fill all these gaps and holes I have endured my entire life, I might not realize that all I do is, instead, slowly drain my own source of contentment—the safety deposit I have kept to survive the darkest days—to emptiness.

Miscalculation was never an issue, I was used to nail it. My old self may lift her palms deep onto her face right now, she does not have to mind me.

Or, is 'all that' to be expected? My current self would hope so. The answer is yet to be heard.

Of course, she is unheard, unseen, and misunderstood.

Or, is it just her failing to understand? Maybe she is too petty to accept the cost of her desire.

Or, maybe she is just being too greedy and outgrowing her own comfort zone, yet she is not ready to relocate to this unfamiliar situation where she has never pictured herself thriving.

A zone so cozy she never equipped herself to live elsewhere.

Huh, so this is how it feels to really hitchhike without either maps or routes in your pocket. She knows where she wants to be, she can see the destination as clear as crystal but she freaks out along the way not knowing whether or not—and when, or how—she will arrive.

Becoming a person she used to despise, becoming a person she once could never picture becoming, becoming clueless while knowing exactly what she wants the most.

One day she will laugh at it all, well hopefully, because if she won’t, the picture of her crying and lamenting every decision would pain me, it would pain me to my bone that I refuse to form further mental images of that miserable scenario.

Poor girl. Duh.

She has been telling everyone that she would thrive the most being single, a singular being, not having a significant other by her side yada yada, yet look at her. Cannot even run away from a situation that has been stabbing her right on every spot where the scars reside.

Is it me or is she just addicted to pain?

Stupid little bitch. Thinking she deserves it AND can bear with it. Look at her. Look at her. No, you cannot, can you? The void around her is so gigantic you barely see her as she fades away, being sucked into it. Look at her, she lets it happen without any signs of struggle.

Shit.

It suffocates me. I suffocate myself. I am losing myself and I do not know how or where to find her.

God, where am I? Where did I leave it? Did it slip somewhere along the way? Am I going in the wrong direction?

How far am I from home? Shit, where is home? I am drowning myself, it suffocates me. I can see the void pulling me deeper and deeper into it and all I do is just staring at it, letting it happen.

As I am sucked into it, I wonder if it is a void, or that it is, after all, a door I have yet ready to enter.

Then as hard as it hits me, I notice—at this very second—that I might as well let it swallow me completely.

Because nobody is ever ready. Nobody is ever prepared.

All I need is to embrace it and do it all scared. Who knows what is waiting on the other side.

All I need to do is release myself. Give it up, give it all away.

On this fleeting moment where I can see my old self bargaining for me to stay, begging me to pretend that I will not be okay, I should just let her—and all the moments she has survived up to this point—washed up in the background

becoming an echo,

a noise,

a shadow that will fade as the light comes in.

So here I am, releasing her.

Down Under one year later

Time flies and here I am enjoying the sun sets on a farm house, sitting just outside of my bedroom window listening to Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes. The lyrics goes:

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me

But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

What's my name, what's my station? Oh, just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you
or bow down and be grateful and say, "Sure, take all that you see"
to the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me

And I don't, I don't know who to believe
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak
Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?

And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I'll come back to you someday soon myself

If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm raw
If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm sore

And you would wait tables and soon run the store
Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm sore

If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm sore

Someday I'll be like the man on the screen

and that sums it all up for me. All them stories, all them roads, all the journey it took to reach this point where I suddenly lost words and be incapable of recalling what has happened in one year. Because time flies, and it surely has capacity to heal I barely recognize who I was.

The Door Has Never Been Imaginary After All

I got a 3-year full scholarship in 2011 and went to boarding school hundred miles away from home by the age of 15. Still the same island and the same province though, but I could only go home twice a year, for more or less a week, during semester holidays.

I can't remember it exactly, but freshmen were not allowed to use mobile phones that often. I remember that it was hard for my mother and I, being the only one each other has. She had a hard time (she was such a big cry-baby back then, even all of her siblings would say so) and so did I. My mother went to a private college in Surabaya, and as my aunt(s) often recalled, she always cried on her way back. She would whine and come back home as soon as she could. She was that baby, even among her younger siblings. When I was away at boarding school, she started to really want to move closer to me, but my grandmother would comfort her.

Of all 3 years I'd spent there, she only visited 4 times. One was on the day I moved in, second was when she had a short haircut with beautiful dark brown highlight, third was the day she went for a retreat (there is a monastery not far from my dormitory), and the last was the day I graduated.

The second time she visited me, we went to city park near the church. We sat on the grass, she took a picture of me and I took hers.

The third time, she felt sick during her visit and should sleep at the clinic. By the time she had to leave, I cried ugly in front of my building watching her back disappear inside the old elf minibus, and a very kind senior hugged me in silence.

When I cried, I cried ugly and more often than not it would make other people cried too. Maybe it was too painful to watch, or maybe vulnerability is contagious. Maybe my companies were the most warmhearted people after all.

I forget how it was going, but I've grown to be a very independent daughter. It was hard to pinpoint, but we kind of grew apart. We rarely called each other (maybe she called but I didn't answer), we rarely texted each other (maybe she texted but I didn't reply). These are even the best scenarios.

Entering university, she escorted me on the day I moved in. Before my final year there, she only visited once, when our hometown church went to Yogyakarta. We rarely texted and call. Even on the day my father died, she was not there beside me. It was right at her 44th birthday after all. During my final year in uni, I told her about my struggle for the first time, and for a couple of months, she started to pay a short visit.

Maybe I did it too much.

Maybe I did it the wrong way.

Maybe I just don't want to make her feel the pain anymore.

Maybe I just don't want her to worry anymore.

Maybe I just don't want to be a burden.

Before I hit 17, I stopped asking her for money. I stopped asking her for basically anything. New dresses? I'm good, I'd take what we had on the closet, I'd love to wear some vintage clothes anyway. New gadget? I'd take what she had and she could buy newer one. Make up? I didn't need it yet. New shoes? Let me buy the cheapest one.

Entering uni, I didn't even ask for a new motorcycle. I used our old yellow yamaha that she bought when I was in 2nd grade. After couple of months, she finally bought newest honda to be used at home, and I continued using the iconic yamaha until I graduated.

I never asked her more than she'd sent. The money she sent for my living cost was at bare minimum, at the year 2014 around IDR400K and from 2015 to 2018 around IDR500-750K. I had those days when I only had 20K left and it's still the second week of the month. I had to buy 3 pcs of fried tempe/banana each afternoon to make me fueled for the entire day, it only costed me IDR2K. Sometimes I hit the point where I found myself in front of small pawnshop. Thank God I never proceeded to gage anything.

It feels abnormal to ask my mother for help. It feels like a sin.

Lately

it's been hard for me to translate my thoughts on words. it was never difficult to elaborate what i think and feel and write it down, but it is now.

i don't know if it has something to do with being over 25, but if i'm allowed to rationalize what it does with my age, maybe the older we get, what matters more is what we undertake. maybe the older we are, we have less time to reflect, unless it brings resolution. the line between important and unimportant becomes bolder, and it costs us to take some time just to wonder and do "unimportant" things. who makes the rule of what's important and what's not anyway?

when we get older, we have more responsibilities, and before we know it, we use all the time we have to pull everything together to fulfill those responsibilities. or maybe its just me and my complications. maybe once i grew up rich that i knew how it felt to have all the options, or maybe i grew up selfish and now i become too selfless to just do whatever i want to do. now i don't think i have such luxury. yeah, i think it's safe to say it's just me and my complications.

i've started to lose my sparks in 2020.

or maybe once i entered uni (oh goddd not this topic again...). but even in the uni, i still cheated and made sure that i still tried what i wanted.

then jakarta happens, and of course i've still cheated every now and then.

still, i've begun to lose myself before i even realized.

the realization came not long ago, when i went home 6 months ago.

i went away from home when i was 15. 3 years of high school and all i have is friends who came home to other cities. then i went for uni and continue to make friends who left their home to other cities. the networks got bigger but the circles got smaller. i rarely went home, but