I remain grateful.

It's been four months since I came here and a lot have happened, yet still.. happy days are the hardest.

I actually came here often, I've been putting out so many words but then I got lost in the middle and quit. It's hard to read your mind when you still don't know which piece is missing. And you know what? I got the scholarship! I'm halfway to get to the place he had always been, the place he often asked me to visit and only when he's no longer there that I'm about to make it. Now, you see how frustrating it makes me.

I remember seven years ago when he emailed me telling that he got the scholarship and he's coming back. A few days after I also got an email saying I got that Russian scholarship. I didn't have the guts tell him on email, instead I told him when we talked. On the letter he gave me before my departure, he wrote me I have missed you in America, now I am going to miss you in Indonesia.

It just seems impossible to write anything without him in my head.

Things have slowly gone back to normal, though I still don't know how to digest intimacy - people still come and go and I don't know who and where they are in my life. The second half of 2020 has been super busy, it has turned out quite different than I once thought it would be. I mean, with this pandemic, what do you expect? But like for real, it's been busy, the only difference is you're doing it all at home with no travel at all, which makes this all a lot emptier than it should. I just submitted my school application last night, about to take my first TOEFL iBT test in three days, and GRE in ten days. Can you believe that? I've never taken those tests before, and I'm so nervous I'm going to humiliate myself.

I was awake until 3am last night, picking schools. I missed him, I wonder what he'd say about the options I have and how he would help me with my application. He'd tell me why don't you pick one in NC? hah then come laughter. It's times like these that I really need him to calm me down and help me practice my English before the TOEFL test I take on Monday. And the GRE! OMG, I'm so going to call his dad. But picking out schools has become far less exciting without him, and it's crazy how empty everything has become since he's gone, consider how much I wanted this to happen when he's still here.

But I'm grateful, I remain grateful.

I'd like to share a quote I found on a book I'm currently reading, it's A Brief History of Thought by Luc Ferry:

"Do not let your picture of the whole of your life confuse you, do not dwell upon all the manifold troubles which have come to pass and will come to pass; but ask yourself in regard to every passing moment: what is there here that cannot be borne and cannot be endured? Then remind yourself that it is not the future or the past that weights heavy upon you, but always the present, and that this gradually grows less." (Meditation, VIII, 36)

It made me cry. Once I finish my first test, I think I need to write to your mom.