I Just Wanna Be There When The Lightning Strikes

Someday we'll walk the streets of Paris together

Futurama

The agony of thinking that graduation is so very near is inevitable. I'm a junior in college, and no plans on extending beyond the senior year so far. Hopefully. It is only a matter of months before I had to leave all of these college attributes behind and start my baby steps toward what seems to be such a big and broad life. And it is only now, sadly, that I realized the future has left me scared shitless, with no clue or manual handbook whatsoever as to how to survive the wilderness called real life. And this article has beautifully put my thoughts about graduating in a single post. And really, like him, I'm scared. I'm so scared of a lot of things, and not to mention a little feel sorry about myself. Because it is only now that I realized I have missed so many great moments, so many big opportunities that I could've taken. It is only very recently that I found out how short my time in college is, and there will be things and opportunities that I wouldn't be able to do when I'm no longer a student. And I wondered, where have I been? Why was I always too busy doing the things that now seems so small to me? I can't say that I don't regret it, not exactly. I don't regret my choices entirely, but I have to say that, I can hear my heart whispering, "You could've done better, you know?" However, I believe that we are the results of every road we took, every choices we made, and every opportunities we didn't take. Not everyone can have the same story, the same pride, and the same experience, and that these differences shouldn't be an important matter. Life should be enough for me; for you and for everyone. Always wanting to be like someone else, always wishing your life could be different, and always regretting every chances you missed would only put you in greater agony. So here's to a life without a manual book. Here's to a life, where you could only learn to swim after they drowned you in the sea. 

When you said "Be right back", that's when I cry. I want you to be right, but I don't want you back. 

A-hole

I had to decide this on my own because, I'm sorry, but you were being an asshole. You were being the jerk that, sadly, I always knew you could be. All I want is to tell you the truth. No sugar-coated facts, nothing was made up just to make it sounds better when it really didn't. I want you to understand how bitter and hard it really is for me. Because I thought that's what you always did. And back then I didn't judge you. I didn't call you an idiot. I didn't smack you on the face with the truth that I actually had. I didn't really let you know what I think about it because I know it would hurt, and I'm done hurting. I want to practice being kind instead of being right. But I guess, like all things, you don't understand it. You don't get it. You could do the things that I never asked, but you're always incapable of doing the things that I demanded you to do. I guess it's hard for you to understand me, because we don't live life based on the same part of the human brain. But that's alright, too. I had come to the conclusion that I have to decide, and therefore I decided that I should jeopardize what we have. It will be hard for me. I guess. But I had to choose, and I chose me.

I didn't owe you

This is why I have spent days (and nights) trying to spare me some distance from you. I needed the space so I can try to find out what it is that always seems a bit off; that never quiet fill what's supposed to be filled. I'm not sure you will understand this, but I have lived my entire life on things that aren't meant to be rational. I don't understand probably 80% of things that happened in my life, or the faith that I keep, or the belief I believe, and yet I can still live. And there's nothing wrong with that, because I am not entitled to explain myself, or my life, to anyone. I didn't owe anybody anything. I don't even owe you and explanation. I can just go, trust my instincts and live my life the way I have always done. 

When I'm awfully low

Being sick means I can lay in my bed all day, curl up under the blanket beneath my shivering skin and the wound up bones that hurting every inch of my being. Being sick means I can live in my pajamas all day and ignoring baths and still be socially-accepted (at least at home). Being sick also means that I can sort of shamelessly feel deserving of people's attention, even if it's only a simple get well soon. And lastly, being sick also means you can whine about it all day and everyone will feel bad for you, instead of, you know, judging you for feeling like the most miserable person in the world.

No, I'm not trying to romanticize the truth about being sick, nor am I trying to say that I like being sick (because I HATE IT). I'm writing this to remind you of the details that you might forget to enjoy while you're bedridden with flu and has a face like boiled prawns. I'm writing this to support the idea of seizing the day, even when your right to being healthy and fit to go ouside was taken away from you.

A grief that can't be spoken

"I had a dream that I've finally met you. We talked as if we never apart, but then I lost you again in a sea of people."

Ratih  Amandhita

It was a long time ago, sure. Perhaps what I remember about you weren't you; but the idea of you.Perhaps the memory I've had of you wasn't quiet it; I have a tendency to romanticize the past, and the past which included you is always my favorite part. Yes, you. How are you? The shortness of time that we had is a blessing for me, because... Even after all this time, I still write about you. I still try to talk to you, even in the most imaginary way. I still remember you as the one that I can never have, but always wish I could. You are the one that I have spent my wishes trying to reach, but they all soon become empty. I have met new people, sure. They are nice people that I wouldn't mind keeping for the rest of my life. I will be fine with them. So you shouldn't worry. I'll be fine. We'll be okay.

Our little lives don't count at all

I can't remember the last time I was so in love with a book, I wanted to eat it and then tackily tried to write a fan fiction based on the original. (Okay, I remember. It was for The History of Love. I wanted to write a spinoff where Gursky could actually see his son and learn the love between father and son) But after a long, long while, I finally found one that can fill that void and longing to read something so good it breaks my heart knowing it's a mere fiction, and that it eventually ends. And Chudori's Pulang is probably that book for me. For now.

I knew this book from someone who recommended it to just about everyone, and even though I don't really like this person (sigh) I really like her taste in literature and arts, and I don't have a lot of people whom I admire in that manner. Anyway, I haven't read an Indonesian book since I started to discipline myself with reading 3 years ago. No, actually, scratch that. I have, but they are so modern, and so many foreign languages get in the way of the writing itself. But Pulang, despite the occasional English and French it contains, is very, very Indonesian. It has some small details that really exist in my daily life, such as minyak jelantah, ulekan, and all the other stuffs and it got me to think, "Gila, hal kayak gini could make a story too?" And what I love about this book is that It is written in such a way that's so intelligent, and I can imagine how much research Chudori had to do before she started writing. As a girl raised in a family that is still keeping the Javanese traditions strong, I'm amazed by how many aspects in this book is derived from the ancient tale of Mahabharata. It's from India, of course, but Indonesia's wayang culture were departed from this very tale and it's just a timeless classic.

So, this book focuses on Dimas Suryo, the Indonesian exile who seeks for asylum in France along with his 3 pals. All the way through the book, he was always compared to the two Mahabharata characters that he loved: Bhima, and Ekalavya. Well, because he has the characteristics that were just like them. Like Bhima, all he ever wanted to do was to protect the women that he loves. But just like Ekalavya, he always feels rejected in the world. He was even rejected from Indonesia, his motherland, whom he always, always long to be. He has a daughter, Lintang, who was always in wonder whether to call France or Indonesia as home. And here she is probably the heroine of the story. She is a smart, beautiful woman who's full of opinions and criticism and she loves her family, her estranged father who's always... Not fully present, as his spirit was left in Indonesia, with the woman he always genuinely love and all that is attached to it. Of course, like a lot of classic heroines, she is also a bit of a bitch because she has the perfect Prince Charming, Nara, back in Paris, but what she really wants was Segara Alam, the alpha male she met while on research in Indonesia, and also the son of her father's eternal love.

Complicated, huh? Well, I haven't told you the full story because you have to figure it out yourself. It's a beautiful tale that came from the gruesome era of politics, intelligent without being snobby, and lovely without being oh-so-sickening. If you ask me, I would say that Pulang is a lot like Les Miserables. Set in the hard times of a nation and centered on a man who lives a life that's always at the edge of being discovered, and a beautiful daughter who builds her own part of the story with the young love she found in hopeless place. Perfect, huh? And if you ask me what I really learn from this story, it's this: Choose. Whatever you choose, doesn't matter. But you have to stand for something. Because choosing means you can take control of you life, of your fate. Because you shouldn't let life gets the best of you. But either way, not choosing should be okay, too. Not choosing is indeed a brave act, almost as much as choosing would make you. And whatever you do, choose or not choose, you can always try to deal with yourself and make peace with it.

Impossible Love

We've got it all wrong all this time. We thought love is something that we see in couples spending their Saturday night together at the mall, or enjoying some fine wine at a French bistro. We thought love is supposed to be what we see in romantic movies. But, well, this is reality. You're not Meg Ryan, and that guy, he's not Tom Hanks. Hell, even their own love stories weren't as beautiful as what they had in Sleepless in Seattle! (Let's face it. Sleepless in Seattle has one of the most impossible story in the entire romantic movie universe. There are coincidences, sure. But God doesn't work in such a way that's really... God-ish. If He did, no one would be atheist)

But maybe, just maybe, we have to see love in those old couples who have stayed with each other since they can't even remember when. "Oh, when was that... World War II? Hitler was still a mere journalist." And yet, here they are today, right in front of us, the entire population that has to view love as something that people play with. There are people who were married for less than 24 hours. Or 72 days. Or perhaps they've survived years of marriage, along with each other's philandering ways. Those facts; those bitter realities that we knew today in our generation, are what makes us look up to ridiculous romantic comedies. You know what, love isn't as easy as spending your summer learning Spanish in an exotic city near Barcelona. You don't find it right when everything in your life seems to be so good but you had your heels got stuck in the middle of the road. No. Life isn't all sugar and spice, and love doesn't always come to be the cherry on top.

I have seen some really old couples who still love each other, or at least one of them still love the other one the way they used to; perhaps even more. It's probably because they're older now, so they need each other more in times of sickness or something. But no, it's not like that. It's... it's literally loving each other unconditionally. Skins may wrinkle and beauty fades, but love? It's not physical. It doesn't have to age.

I know a husband, who has the same profession as his wife, and has been married for about four decades now, still talk about his wife as if he was a boy who just won a trophy. He still talks about her as if she was the greatest woman in the world, and no other woman, not even man, can do what she's able to do. He doesn't care if Marie Curie found radioactive or Angela Merkel still reigns as one of the most powerful woman in Europe, or that Oprah should be a monarch in America. He doesn't give a fuck. But he knows that his wife has a higher degree than him in his education. That she has achieved more awards than him. And that above all, she is his. The thing that's really rare in men, other than a bank account as big as Warren Buffet's, is that they can genuinely be proud of what his woman can do. That he loves to see her spread her wings and fly. That even after all these years, after all those opinions and negativity towards marriage and women and the theory about the impossibility of growing old together, he still sees her in the same way when he fell in love with her. That even after a lot of things have changed along the way, in the end, he keeps coming back to that point where they fell in love. Where they found each other.

Looking at him, at his type of man, would always put things in perspective for me. That some love actually works. That there is still love in a lifetime of marriage, not just the neediness of each other. That not every love has to be like in romantic movies. And that after all, the rain will only makes the flower grow. 

Love Story

You said you studied environmental engineering in college, but you write as much as Kerouac. Your words springs out of every pages you tore out of everywhere and they sound better than mine. It was a hot summer night at the park, we lied on the wet grass, gazing at the stars. You suck in astronomy, so instead of telling me if it was Orion or Centaur, you made up your own stories of the constellation with superhero names. And that's when you kneeled down and asked me if I wouldn't mind wearing a man on my finger for the rest of my life. Why couldn't you just say Harry Winston? My tears were flowing and I feel like such an idiot. You wipe out the tears off my cheek and whispered if I don't say yes, you'd run around this garden in your birthday suit. How terrifying. So I said yes. You smiled wider than the last time I saw Julia Roberts' genuinely happy photograph. And, my dear, that is how our adventures began. You took me to watch Russian ballet in Moscow and depart on a 7 days Trans-Siberian to Vladivostok. We took pop dance lesson in South Korea and taught ourselves to consume the disgusting Ginseng. We blacked out after blowfish sushi in a fancy Ginza sushi place, And I thought that was it. We die. But when I awake, you were holding my hand, walking the streets of Montmartre half-drunken of too much bubbles. We just saw the Moulin Rouge, you said, and I hated that no one looked like Nicole Kidman there. And then we jumped, to this magnificent place called Broadway. You love Les Mis, but I wanted to see something more cheerful so we see Wicked. I love Fiyero. But I love you more because you actually have some brains inside your head. You said you love Eponine, but you love me more because I don't have to die in your arms during the French revolution. Her fate sucks. The next morning, we were in Rio. All the beautiful beaches and girls who resemble Gisele Bundchen were so overwhelming, it feels more like a honeymoon. And you know what, when I took my sunglasses off, we were under the warm, slightly dim Tuscany sun. The children ran around making a big mess that their nannies had to clean up. And soon, our son flew to London to play football for a major club. And soon, his sister moved out to live with her girls and pursue a career as a writer. And the little one? Oh, I really can't let go of him but he really needs to go: off to the moon, in his astronaut's suit. We grew old together, my dear. We did it. We made it. We have loved and love has made of us. Let's grow even older together. We'll get there. We can do it.