It’s been a while, quite a while since I’d really spent my time to post about myself –in a straightforward way. It’s irritating to know that everybody know about to most f*ckd up side of your life. But it’s also pointless to keep your life for yourself, forever –including all the considered unimportant stories.
January 2020
I don’t even remember where did I spent my New Year Eve at the first time, but one thing for sure, I wasn’t at home. So I checked my phone, and unsurprisingly I was in a meeting with my friends, discussing about the past and future of our organisation. During the past year I was acting as one of the steering committees, and that meeting was also my responsibility. I should’ve finished every single word on my thesis in January, but it went discarded. I still had to meet my psychiatry in January to distress my traumatic syndrome disorders. At the end of January I heard the news that my campus is looking for volunteers to work relieve the devastating flood in Banten, so I submitted myself.
February 2020
My voluntary work lasts for no longer than two weeks, so I still got a little time to spent at home before coming back to Jogjakarta. There was a graduation happening in February, so I took graduation photos for my friend. I began to work as a kitchen crew for a small cafe in my town, 8 hours x 4 times a week, started to developing my cooking skills at the same time. also adopted a kitten (3 weeks old) to be part of my life. I stopped my monthly routine to look for SSRIs and cognitive behavioural therapy counseling. It hurts myself to see everybody were going to the hospital for a ‘real medications’, instead myself was just stumbled upon some stupid thoughts inside my head.
March 2020
I got a visit from my high-school friend, and it turned out to be ‘a night to remember’. We talked a lot about how our life had been changing since we left high school, and the difficulty we’d been faced. After that, coronavirus became more serious as the governor reported the first COVID-19 case in state. Restaurants, public space, and universities were being closed. Even though I wasn’t heavily impacted by this pandemic effect, it’s sad to see my cafe getting lesser attendees day by day, until it’s finally get closed at the mid of the month. I finished my thesis writing at the end of the month, but I still couldn’t sleep well before my professor agreed with my writing. I re-installed Clash Royale, the android game that I used to play during my first semester on college, and I leveled up very good. The most important thing is I developed a sort of brotherhood with the living persons left in my neighborhood, they were: Ega; Icang; and Garin. Ega has a kind of entertainer personality type, energetic, and always bringing smiles whenever he’s around, plays guitar very well, but is very lazy when time comes to clean up the mess in his room. Icang on the other hand is an extraordinarily caring and social person who’s always eager to help, he’s also briliant at sparking new ideas and doing what he likes, but has some sort of issues with maintaining his focus. Garin is the youngest amongst us, introverted, has a sharp fact-based mind, he doesn’t give a f*ck about feelings, and the best of all is he has a really good sense of dirty jokes. I prepared meals for them most of the time, and they’d clean up the dishes. We also challenges ourselves with 30-days Batman Workout Plan, which is quite tiring but satisfying. Everyday each person was obliged to be the coach and prepare the workout menus, so there’d be no day that ever be the same. I regard this month as an optimistic-funky period.
April 2020
Everybody in my neighborhood (re: homestay) were going back to their hometown, but me myself, never had ever been struck with the ideas of coming home. Homecoming is nothing but a delusion in my dictionary. Even if I got a thousand chances, I would still not coming home –not during this bad stupid pandemic. Fortunately, my parents weren’t troubled to send me money every week, so l regard this as an uncounted bliss. I installed Tinder on my phone just to kill most of my times, and to look for some ‘miracles’. It sounds foolish to look for a partner based on swipes on your phone, but I did it anyway. Garin lefts the clan on the mid of April, to be exact: on the first day of fasting month Ramadhan. It felt gloomy for a couple of days, until our clan got a new member named Yayan. I’d never met Yayan before, but I’d been following his Instagram account for years, he’s an artist. Yayan was a kind of a bliss for me, because he’s good at cooking, so I was no longer being a single fighter in the battle against hunger of my brotherhood. The pandemic consumed me a lot around those days, I was becoming more impulsive at picking up things at the supermarket and online stores. I used to be generous and strict about saving money, but I was just thinking about my belly. Thesis writing went lame, since I’d gone losing interest of doing it, but I worked the revisions anyway.
May 2020
I decided to take a haircut, and turned my hair white for the second time. My inner circle was getting bigger as my clan began to hunt for food in Nidya’s and Hammam’s territory. Hammam is a friend of Ega and Icang; and Nidya is supposed to be Ega’s future partner, and I was still an outsider. My ((ex)) was having a birthday on the mid of the month, and a week after that was the big feast of Eid Mubarak. I celebrated Eid Mubarak with my brother who’s also living in Jogjakarta, and little that I know that he was also alone in this big celebration. We connected with our parents once again through a video conference, and also our close relatives. I talked with my friends and colleagues with sort of joy and festive surrounding, but well some plans turned out to be disastrous.
I knew that the end of my relationship a year ago was a self-caused destruction, for myself, but I couldn’t help myself any better during that time. I started to realise that the tremendous shift on my life happened after my withdrawal from any sort of commitments. I was being more ‘explorative’ on myself than I’d ever been before. But I have forgiven myself, and she had accepted my apologises as well –even though there must be a part that one would never forget. After all the relieve and peace we both had agreed for, I still couldn’t place a face-to-face phone conversation with her. I still regarded myself as a scumbag, hypocrite who deserved his lifetime punishment. If I were a nightmare, I was left with no courage to haunt one’s sleep anymore. Why in the world there would be anybody who’s wishing for a nightmare.
I’d never realised that I’d nurtured love in somebody. When I told them the truth that I would never let myself fallen into same love, they kept asking me responsibilities for what I’ve done.
Ah it’s been a year now, think I have (not) figure out how, how to think about you without it ripping my heart out.
Julia Michaels
selikurdirham 