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 does it do 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 

The last stage.

 Acceptance.

I went through denial phases just instantly most of the times; pausing and reconstructing the way i think and perceive things, challenging my own perspectives, checking my egos etc., etc. It was not their fault, it was on me, I could have controlled it, I could have a, I could have b, I could have c. Yada yada yada.

Then sometimes, when I felt like bursting, I burst. Anger.

Then came the bargaining phases where I wrote an unaddressed open letter, which usually ended up hurt the other parties. Followed by the depression which rang incredibly true on "What happened really?". Fresh from the oven, I wrote it exactly 7 days ago.

This week, the anger, the bargaining and the depression formed a very rapid wave that I would just have 2-3 meltdowns in one day. Like tsunamis.

I cannot hold it anymore. I think it was 3 days ago that I texted my bestfriend who lives in Borneo. I told her I could not bear with anything anymore. If you don't know me, I practically never text anyone.

It's getting worse. It was very painful and messy down here that today for the first time after years, I thought about death. It felt so lonely and confusing and sad and miserable. I felt like I really hated everyone. Everybody is mean. I rarely let myself win but every time I try to put myself first they won't let me. Indirectly. Cleverly. It hurts. It hurts like hell. I am 26 years old but I feel like a 15-year-old girl thinking she is the most heartbroken human in the world. Clueless. Having nobody. Having no purposes. Having zero confidence. Having no self esteem. Nobody wants to invest in her anyway. Nobody thinks she can be vulnerable. Nobody thinks she worths being understood. It hurts. People are so mean. Especially in their silence.

How come when other people pinch me and it hurts me it's on me but when other people feel hurt because I pinch them accidentally it's still on me??? Almost every time. Almost everybody is fine with it. How? Why? It's unfair and it hurts.

I hated the way they only measured the final results. Everything was stripped from its context. Person A is chilling, vibing and silent. Person B is struggling, sharing their pain and loud. Person A does nothing. Person B is problematic.

Then it finally hits me that I'm the one who let people treat me like trash.

I have always felt fine with being an extra cast though.

But now it finally hits me that although I am okay with being a sidekick, the robin to batman or whatever, and even I allow them to see me as one (it's a sarcasm though), what really matter is the opportunity I have missed to really find the people that will truly see me as a person, who want to have and maintain a connection that is mutual and reciprocal with me.

I still feel okay to be this sincere and all-out even though I keep "losing", but I need to reassess about those opportunities I could have taken to meet the people who would have actually accepted me for who I am. Only then I can grow.

And for the 4th time today, I cried once again. Acceptance can be heartbreaking but it sets us free.