Where Are We?

Oh, hi there! It's actually been fifteen minutes since I wrote the title,  and I still pretty much have no idea what to write on this page. Where am I? That's the question I ask myself almost everyday. I am in Jakarta right now, geographically. I just finished lunch with my old time college friend who works around here (Cikini), who just finished her master last year in Singapore, and who just told me she's getting another job in ASEAN next month. I'm happy for her, she deserves better. Not that her current job is not good enough but she's been there for 5 goddamn years and still no signal for permanent position. So, the concept of having another job with better experience and better money definitely make more sense. Or maybe, above all, I'm happy for her because she knows where she's going and life excites her more than it does to me. Around a week before I left to Jakarta, I finally decided to see a doctor. It was quite possibly the ...

I dreamed about you again last night. In the midst of winter town, I saw you there waiting to be found. The air was chill and the town was bright, waiting for Christmas. I gave myself a coffee, walking towards you staring blindly to the night. I said ‘hi, how have we been?’ Was the first thing that came to mind. I know, it has always been us when it comes to him, the one I met when I was twenty one. He stared at me for awhile, like he always did on the telephone line. My face turned red, my eyes turned warm, I remembered summer 2015 when I kissed him good night - this has been a bittersweet love, I kept that in mind. How could it be so cruel, I lost myself in a noisy crowd. We got all teary, then hugged each other tight. It’s been a long journey not having each other around. It’s been such misery not to be able to hold each other tight. I put myself on his lap wiping the tears from his eyes, my arms around his neck.. I would never again want to be far. Then I woke up with a heavy he...

These past years I have been having this talk with my best friend about the meaning of my life. Why am I here? Why do I feel useless all the time? Have I been doing things that make this world a better place to live? Or have I become an ignorance grown up instead? I wake up each morning, having my daily breakfast with bread and coffee, then go to work. I do what I have to do, being busy all day, getting all chatty with colleagues, sometimes I jog, sometimes I hang out and have some drinks with friends, sometimes I go straight home out of exhaustion, and most of the time.. I feel nothing. I help none, I make zero effort to make this world a better place to live. It makes me feel so worthless, hopeless, and sad. My life has no meaning, and when I die, I die for nothing. Death is a friend of mine, I think about it all the time. It used to scared the shit out of me at first, but I started to get used to the idea of stop living . It somehow can sound better than anything mundane I ...

This has been such a devastating week, I feel like I lose all my balance, my strength, my hope, all the courage I have in me suddenly disappeared in the face of domestic violence. It's real, it's sickening, and it's right in front of me. It is much different and way much worse than you imagine it could be. Who needs love when it hurts more than it pleases? Who needs love when all it offers is fear? Who needs love when all it can cause is pain? And above all, you cannot call it love when what is shown is far from the act of love. I went all weak, I couldn't sleep, I feel anxious all the time. My heart beats really fast knowing a monster lives around my family, and my family allows him to. You simply cannot cure a person when the person does not want to be cured. I may have never been in her shoes, but I saw what I saw, with my own eyes, and nothing  about it can be justified as the right act. I said, nothing . I wish I could put into words what I have in min...

" Buddha teaches us the art of cheerful despair." I came across the line above a few days ago. I don't remember where, but it must have been from one of the Stoic books or articles I've read these past months. I've been blogging forever until one day, I decided to quit, simply because everything about my life had gotten so personal, and I didn't think I was ready to meet the possibility of having people talk to me like; " Hey, I read your blog the other day; I'm sorry for what happened. " It happened several times in the past, and I finally said to myself - No, you can't do this anymore. People need to talk to me personally to know what happened with my life with me. I realized that I tend to get too overwhelmed by the idea of writing out my feelings, so quitting writing publicly sounded like a good idea back then. Otherwise, I would have gone mad thinking about how detached I could become from myself. But it was then, not fa...