Where Are We?

Two weeks after we entered 2026, my car suddenly wouldn't move in the middle of the road. I was stopped at a traffic light on our way to lunch with my mom, her friend, and Mbak Dar. We were all so excited. We had planned this for a while and had been rescheduled once because David was sick. Nothing special about this lunch, just a regular mie ayam at Galeria. What made this special was that we all love this mie ayam and really looked forward to having it together. Anyway, my car gave no strange signals before this happened. It was just all of a sudden. The engine was still running. I shifted into gear and hit the gas, and fuck me... it wouldn't move. And I was literally in the middle of the road. What the fuck was going on? I was panicking, no joke. I was literally in the middle of the road, and for real, this shit never happened to me before. Now that I think about it, yeah, perhaps it's good to have such an experience in your life, cause... why not? I think I was stuck in...

Wow, it's been over a year since I last came here. Perhaps I've been too happy that my mind lacked the imagination to compose a sentence to express what I felt. Not that I'm not happy right now, but a lot has happened these past few months. One of them was my best friend, who died after fighting cancer for two years. We texted each other pretty regularly after I left Champaign in late June. In late August, she sent me selfies with Ju showing how happy she was to be back with him in Korea. I haven't heard from her for a week, and I texted her, but I haven't heard from her since. And then one day, I got an email from our department offering the position she once held. I reached out to my department and texted her, and the next day came the bad news I had dreaded. 16 September 2025 was the day Jin finally won her battle. For me, whatever the outcome, she won it. She beat the shit out of the fucking cancer. In May of the same year, she found out that the cancer had spre...

 It's been a while. Where have I been? I guess I am just here enjoying life. It's been five years since. Yes, this May is the fifth anniversary. I remember exactly when my doctor in Indonesia told me that I would be able to grasp things better after five years. At that moment, I thought five years would feel like forever, and I didn't know how I would survive. And five years is now. I just watched a new romcom yesterday called The Idea of You . Well, a romcom is not meant to be deep, meaningful, or whatever; it is only intended to be dramatic. Before, watching a romcom made me feel hopeful as a single, miserable, or unhappy woman in an unfulfilled relationship. But it felt so weird yesterday that I couldn't relate to any of those. I mean, I am in a super happy and healthy relationship. Yeah, that  happy and healthy! I feel enough. Is it wrong to feel enough? Does it make us stagnant as a person? I know society tells us to crave more and more. And here I am, a 34-year-ol...

 I was in the shower this afternoon listening to my Birdy playlist, and her song Terrible Love  came into play. The lyrics always ring in my head:  it takes an ocean not to break . I don't know why, I cried. It's incredible how much failure can teach me about life. It has been a while since I've come back here. It may be because I have an additional human diary now. Having David in my life still is so beautiful. I still can't believe how lucky I am sometimes. This feels like the most incredible blessing after having my family, friends, and people who love me. Returning to the shower this afternoon, I realized how messy and cruel my mind had been to myself. I couldn't appreciate my triumph and always replaced it with harsh judgment and disappointment toward myself. Of course, until I finally failed, I knew what true disappointment really was. This took me back to those days in Russia. The moment somebody told me that I was not good enough, didn't read enough, and...

"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared to our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate" (Thoreau, in Walden, 1854) Already mid-January of the new year of 2023. It feels so weird that I didn't write anything here while 2022 was ending, especially considering the many horrible and beautiful things that happened. Now when I look back at 2022, the one thing that I am most grateful for was that I ended the year not thinking about the now and the future only for myself; I ended the year with a heart full of gratitude for companionship, lessons I learned, the person I became, challenges I faced, hardships I overcame, people I met; and most importantly, I was grateful for love. After what felt like an eternity living in a dark cloud, I think I ended 2022 with the fullest heart knowing that I finally became a good tyrant of my fate. Everything and nothing happened all at once. That is how I described last year...

I am in North Carolina again right now. Spent my second Thanksgiving two days ago, with a house full of laughter, a family full of love, and a heart full of gratitude. It feels like I have never been this calm and happy in such a really really long time that I can feel a stream of gratitude flows through my heart. I think I wrote it here that I had another serious relapse last May, the three-year anniversary. It was tough, my head was heavy and dark. I thought I wouldn't recover. I always wondered how long life has to stay that way. I still had no desire to think about the future, like it even matters. I was so skeptical about life and taking life too seriously is just dumb. I had everything I'd ever wanted, all the love in the world, yet no matter how sunny the day is outside, inside, it'd always been a dark cloud. That was pretty much how my days were six months ago. It is kind of interesting to remember that I thought I was no longer floating back then, but looking at it...