Relationship

What does the past mean to you? If it does not affect your future, would it still matter for you? Yesterday, I tried to migrate all my data from my old to my new phone. Somehow, I couldn't synchronize WhatsApp with the back up so what I got from the app was a list of group that I joined with no personal chat at all. It freaked me out for a bit. I managed to sync all the contacts though, so that was a huge relief but I lost all the chats. I did the same thing with my email where I deleted all the sent items, which somehow deleted the correspondence that attached to the sent items as well. I was quite devastated back then since I have some letters that were super sweet in the email. The same goes for my WhatsApp chat!! But probably because this was the second time I experienced it, I became more accepting?! 

Anyhow, it was quite an interesting experience to download many apps in one night. During the years, I have downloaded many apps individually. I did not realize that I was apps dependent. At least to be able to enter public places, I need lens for QR code and then music, comic, financial services, fitbit and others. This fresh start also allowed me to detach with apps that I don't need. Reflecting on what I consider as important and what is not. 

It also makes me think about relationship. I think what made me accept the lost of my emails were the fact that people's relationship is a work. You will create new stories with the people who are close to you. Their names will start popping out again in your chat. And if it is not, then they are just not important anymore. Not because of hate but because you don't find the need to contact them again and vice versa. Being a gypsy, I experience this a lot. People start to fade away in the distance. 

When life gives you lemon

 ... make lemonade, or sell it.

Yesterday, I got an invitation to present my work in an international workshop. Of course, I freaked out laa, I am not confident to talk among my seniors who have been in the field, like forever. I accepted the invitation but for the coming week, I think I will be super nervous. They give me 10 minutes to talk. What can happen in 10 minutes? Nothing bad will happen, right?

Working in Singapore is new in many levels. I usually work in a male environment, with people older than me. In this type of environment, I usually got protection from my superior so I could get away with things that I did not like. My superior even told me once that he read my blog and said that I could always talk to him if I have a problem with work. In Singapore, the situation is quite the opposite. I am working in a female environment with people similar to my age. I was given a lot of opportunities, which were not really on my comfort zone but I know by taking them it allows me to grow. 

I am not ambitious and probably, that's the reason why I don't really worry about my life a year from now. But I think people care about me. When I got the invitation, the person said that he was being recommended by one the Deputies in an Indonesian agency. So yeah, always be nice, and the Universe will take care of you.

The Gypsy Life

I have been moving places. A lot. Sometimes, it makes me wondering where my home is. Currently, I even don't know where I am going to be a year from now. No permanent position, no specific expertise, I am a generalist, Jack of all trade, master of none. But the theory says that a generalist has the highest survival rate since they have high adaptation skill. Sometimes, I am thinking that I want to be a writer, working from home, daydreaming and creating a world out of imagination. Or increasing my coding skill so I can do some consultancy projects from home. When I started my journey, I never thought life can be so complicated. I thought I would have settled down by now. But here I am, still being a gypsy.

Day 29: Oddness

This is the final post for the break up series. I have not contacted him for two weeks and I don't have the interest to do it anymore. The memory still come and go but that happens to any other memory, it's part of life. Like yesterday, I dreamed about my life in the Netherlands and my friends there. Once your feelings are not attached anymore, the memories start to become distant as well. 

Day 29, an odd day to end an odd relationship in an odd period for an odd person. Sometimes the hardest part is not ending the real relationship but the imaginary relationship that come afterwards, alhamdulillah, I have found my peace. 

So goodbye, I hope you find your peace as well. 

Day 28: Mean

When you were thinking about what you want to find in a partner, one important thing is that you share the same value and vision. I think the biggest turning point was when I was feeling ill and he refused to see me because it would be hard for him, that's the point when I could not see a future with him. I have the tendency to put others' first and being rejected by someone who said he loved me but would not help me during one of my weakest point was simply cruel. How can you trust your life to someone who is not only not able to protect you but also cut you into pieces? I know a relationship should not make you dependent to someone else, you have your God and yourself to define what you are as a person, but when you are in a relationship, you are kind of synchronize yourself with somebody other than you, for better or for worst. 

Alhamdulillah, time has done it magic. I am in a much better state thanks to people who were there for me during the darkness. Accepting someone during their happy state is always easy, it is during difficult state you see people's true color. 

Day 26: Rejection

One of the things that break up gives to you is the feeling of being rejected. Even if you know things happened beyond your control, you still questioning your self worth. So when you started meeting new people and the person seemed to act distance, you're questioning yourself whether you want to take the same risk again. It takes two to tango, right? You cannot drag someone who is not interested. At the end, you will left shattered again since you mess politeness with being interested.

Anyway, yesterday I went to Little India for group dinner. We went to a vegetarian restaurant for soup kambing, spicy sardine and something that taste like rendang. The texture felt really like the original fish and meat. Afterwards we enjoyed a little walk in the area to taste the light as part of the Deepawali celebration and went for dessert, bean custard in a syrup. It tasted good, everything that sweet usually taste good. Blame my sweet tooth for that.

Day 25: Relationship After College

I got my brain back, so my writing speed increased to 300 percent (and yeah, deadline!). This whole episode of falling in love and falling out of love made me wondering how someone can create a relationship after college? I used to start a relationship with friendship. But after college the situation became a bit complicated since my environment was mostly married people. So how to create a comfort level and trust with somebody you just know? What is love, really?

As an analytic person, I Googled, how to fall in love and I found a research on how strangers fall in love through 36 questions and starring each other's eyes for 4 minutes straight. I don't think I will have the courage to do that though. As an introvert, the most natural interaction for me is meet in person with family, colleagues and friends. My comfort zone. The second natural thing is text since it allows me to keep distance. Only when I start to become comfortable I can do phone or video call. Even I did my complaints to company through email and text 😅 I am so bad with people! Although the irony is that I work as a social scientist, so during fieldwork I have to meet new people on regular basis. 

Day 24: Non-linearity in Breakup

Week 1: You had your closure. Both of you agreed that the relationship could not move forward. You hold on dearly on that realization and were able to no contact him. This was the toughest part of the breakup but it's good for the detox since you needed it to reduce the dependency. For me, this week is more strategical than emotional since being infatuated really work like drug, I need to cleanse my body from the drug.

Week 2: After you clean your system from the drug, your emotion started to overflow again. The good thing was you were able to shift how you see him, from lover to someone who shared a beautiful memory together but you know you could not have. The conversation went awkward, although it's better than having no contact at all. You still care about the person.

Week 3: Another round of no contact. This time went better since he has changed. He went cold on you and there was no hope left.

Week 4: You have a mixed feeling about still missing him and a new confidence to be able to move forward. 

Day 23: Love

Falling in love means you are giving part of yourself to somebody else. Your happiness becomes his and vice versa. While I start to be able to neutralize my consciousness into accepting the reality, my sub-consciousness works in a slower pace. During the relationship, I somehow develop a dopamine attachment to him. Whenever I stress out about my work, I find calmness in talking to him. So yesterday when I started to stress out about my work, all the good memories started to overflow again. Love is a scary thing. I don't know whether I am able to be that vulnerable again, giving part of my self to somebody else. 

Probably, that's why you are not suppose to have feeling before marriage in Islam. Most of the feelings come from syaithan who planted nice imaginations into your mind. Currently, I am trying to get closer to Allah SWT again, fasting, night pray and other sunnah. Probably, I need this experience since I have been lost for some time. And hopefully, my current ikhtiar will have a happy ending. 

“My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and that what misses me was never meant for me.” Imam Al-Shafi’i 

Day 22: Me After You

Yesterday, I have been busy preparing for the housewarming party. In the morning, I went to my old house to take letters and after that my day was full with shopping, cooking, watching movie and eating, a lot of eating. It's nice to have friends and able to spend time with them in person. If there is something I learn from COVID, one of them is to be grateful of physical activities. The latter also adds a new realization on the imaginary life I had with the Knight. While I like to send him pictures to places I visited, he never did the same. Sometimes he sent me a fictional picture with no spatial attachment. The bright side, it made the process of moving on easier since we had no attachment to the reality. Sometimes I am still wondering what my life would be with him since I found him attractive, but the frequency become less.

I also met a new man. He is nice. He did not give a firework sensation but I know I can trust him. In the 'Suitable Boy' miniseries, his character resonates with Haresh, not the most dashing character but the most responsible who at the end, gets Lata's heart. 

So for the Knight, this is me accepting you letting me go, and it's time for me to letting you go as well.

Day 20: Support System

One of the critical things during the grieving period is to have a support system. I am grateful that I have that in Singapore. Friends who I could share the story with and sympathize my condition, so yeah, this Saturday we are going to have a party. Yeay!! I am not an extrovert person who like to initiate a party but when my friends asked me when they could come for a house warming party and another offered to cook the meals, I thought, why not, bring it on. 

Yesterday, my friends and I went to the town to work in Novena. It was a nice experience, travelling, went to a new place, found a praying place there, which made everything perfect. A part of my life still felt a bit crappy, sometimes the feeling of emptiness still crawling in. Knowing that someone who was once the center of my world would not be there anymore. But people come and go and that's life. There's going to be a moment where he is going to be a fragment of my life that happen to make my life as it is. 

Day 19: the Art of Grieving

I registered for a counselling two weeks ago when I felt devastated and yesterday, I was questioning myself whether I really needed it and how the process would be. But after talking to the person, I felt much better. He validated the stages I felt during the grieving process and he also asked me to be more reflective to my grieving process since I tended to approach the grieving methodically instead of giving my heart the time to heal. One of the simulations that we did yesterday was to imagine what happened if the person stand in front of me, what would I say to him. He described my condition as having a false reassurance, which has the same affect as betrayal. Shadowing the truth with an imagination, which led to my devastation.

I also asked him the best way to move forward. I explained the no contact approach I did in the early stage of my breakup, which led to explosion on the second week. And while all the YouTube videos suggested that approach, it may also suppress your emotion and make your healing process become longer. I told him that it's exactly what happened to me. At the end, getting a cold shoulder from the Knight helped to move forward. His reaction towards me has totally changed and it gave me a new reality check that what we had has passed as well.

Currently, I am off from all the apps. Somehow, the apps gave me a toxic vibe.

Day 18: Don't be Alone

Based on my own observation, I am already quite okay as long I go outside my home. The silence and not seeing somebody really messed up my mind. Killing the expectation also helps, I have been binge reading and watching about cultural differences and it helped to put everything into context. Another thing was to avoid looking for new people since it still reminded me of him, or simply because I am not in the mood to opening my self just yet. Other than that, I get my brain back. I was able to write again, my concentration was also return to normal. I lost 2 kilos, got the one kilo back, not sure I am happy with that though, ahaha. Anyway, life goes on. I am getting better with my prays, probably I have been lost for the last couple of months so this is also a good moment to calibrate myself again.

I have also been watching documentary on love scam. Some people ended by killing themselves after lost 1 million USD. Love is a scary thing, you can be blinded by it. I guess, Descartes words 'cogito ergo sum', I think therefore I am is valid, the power of mind can make or break someone. Mental health is as important as physical health.

Day 17: The Context

One of the things I do to cope with the break up was to rationalize things. Did I miss the red flag during our relationship? Did I imagining things? While I believe that our feelings were mutual, I realize that we were on a different page. I entered the relationship with the thought of conquering all the problems. This point of view was possible due to my upbringing, I have agency to make decision for my self. Woman are quite independent in my society. For him, the relationship was more his way of denying the reality he did not want. He knew that we could never be together but he did not want to admit it. 

Yesterday, I read many stories on how his society works and while he never wanted to discuss family problems with me, I could find similarities with what I read and how he was being raised and his responsibilities as the only son. Being ignorant about cultural differences made me totally blind on what I was dealing with. 

People say that you need 30 days to create a new routine. I hope I already half way through being my old self again. 

Day 16: Diversity

“O mankind! We created you from male and female and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise each other). Verily, the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is he who is the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is fully informed.” 

(Sura Hujurat, verse 13)

I always attracted with diversity. For me, everyone has their own beautiful story. What important is  mutual understanding and a shared vision. But the more I learn about society, the more I know that diversity may also mean incompatibility at the extended networks. Thus, love at first sight and imaginary work only when you take spatio-temporal elements out of the picture. When somebody starts to doing that you better know that he is not serious since there is no attachment to reality on where you are going to life, how both families will know each other or even the basic, whether both of you want it to be real or not. 

I am still struggling to make peace with my heart. And my current approach is not helping as well. But while on the first week I was contempt with the whole process, on the second week, all the feeling started to overflow again. 

Be strong Yuti, حَسْبُنَا اللّٰهُ وَنِعْمَ الْوَكِيْلُ

Day 15: Blood is Thicker Than Water

I finished watching 'A Suitable Boy', a miniseries adopted from Vikram Seth's novel with the same title. The setting was taken in India after independence and separation from Pakistan. It is an interesting story by itself how culture, politic and religious tensions were taking place and how people were struggling in finding their identity between tradition and post-colonialism. But what made the series especially dear to me is to understand the arranged marriage culture and the role of family in deciding spouse for their children. I am still amazed how a person can married somebody else based on a single picture, no interaction, no talk and betting the rest of his or her life with the selected person. But probably, if they have the same intention, Allah SWT will make it easy for them.

I am quite amazed with how the story evolve for Lata, one of the main characters. [SPOLIER] Initially, she was in love with a Muslim guy, which would never been approved by her Hindu family. She asked Kabir, the guy to runaway with her but he refused since it's not rationally visible due to their current status as students. Lata felt disappointed with Kabir's decision and followed her mother's decision to find a 'suitable boy' for Lata. 

What I am amazed that Lata can be content with what her mother asked her to do. She could move on and fall for two other guys before deciding to marry what her mother has chosen for her. It's like all her love and desires for Kabir were nothing. I think the biggest turning point for her was when she visited Maan and he told Lata that he was being grateful for his father's love for him. That's when Lata realized that everything that her mother do was for her own sake. 

In one of my crazy scenarios, elope is one of the things that crossed my mind. But man's responsibility is for his mother and wife. Also if we do get married, his family is going to be mine as well and I won't do nothing like that to my own family. So yeah, elope is only in my mind where we can live happily in the third country.

Day 14: Root

 After felt super down on Thursday, I started to talk to him again yesterday. Our talk was on moderation, no feeling attached, or at least no words about feeling and mostly talking about how Allah SWT test us with what we love. The irony of the whole situation was that he knew how to calm me down. And I did calm down. I listened to many surah and hadits afterwards about how Allah won't test human beyond their capacity and that's how He brings us back to the right path. Watching all the videos calmed me down. While initially, I was wondering why this year many bad things happened to me, now I started to find peace in what Allah has promised to us. 

I guess the last couple of months, I was lost in my desire and hope to have someone in my life. While I have accepted that he couldn't be mine, I really hope that my future husband has a good understanding of Islam as well. He becomes my imam for my shalat and we both pray together to reach His jannah. 

Day 13: Acceptance

I broke all the how to move on rules by contacting him. Of course it was a bad decision, I return to square one directly. I still want him to be part of my life although I know it's impossible. I already accept the fact that we won't be together, so I did not say anything about miss you, like you or love you but I don't know, life is hard. 

Day 12: Sense of Identity

One of the hardest thing about break up is to find yourself again. Yesterday, I watched a video that illustrates a relationship like sticking two piece of papers together. Once you tear it up, there will be part of him that stick on you and sometimes, it will shatter the paper as well. I think the illustration was great, that's why I feel my self incomplete these days since I always shared my routine with him, took the wrong MRT, bought salad, eating cheesecake, watching cartoon and other little details. It's nice to have someone to share your life with. 

I know I have to deal with this loneliness since he has decided to left me for someone else. I kept on hoping that he would contact me but I know that there is no point since he is going to get married in 3 months. Maybe he even already start to talk to his future wife. A band aid solution to talk to him will only jeopardize my healing process. Contacting him on Monday was a huge mistake on my end. But we are human after all, sometimes we seek for the easiest route to reduce the pain even if it's not right.

May Allah guide me with peace and patience.     

Day 11: What is Love?

After contacting and got a cold reply, I was wondering whether the last months were only a dream. Was it just me who has the strong feeling towards him? I know what the ending will be but was it hard only on my end? Oh, my ego hurts. Well, I know for best, it's better to distract my mind to things rather than another human being. I don't want to hurt anyone and I have the tendency to place others' happiness first, that's why my collaboration works are more successful than my own project. I thought meeting someone who put others' first would made me safe, but apparently I was not the one he chose to protect. 

During my dates, I met people who never interact with women until college. Their marriages were mediated through people and pictures. Love comes after marriage. In that context, I can imagine that you are able to fall in love with the other person that's how you are being 'programmed' since childhood. Your first touch with a woman will start once you are legally married and you won't compare her with anyone else as well since she is exclusively for you and you for her.

Growing up in a mixed society, I could not really imagine to fall in love in that way. Would the person treat me nicely? Would he understand my quirkiness? Can he make me laugh?

Day 10: "I Contacted Him"

An anti-climax, I know, ahahaha. I thought I was able to end the whole mourning thing after the tenth day but the silence only made me crazy so when I had a coding problem, I contacted him in a professional manner. I think the early no contact had done its magic. There are some theories saying that for one year relationship, you need one month of no contact or similar to 1/12. Since I started to video call him on 11 August and we broke up on 11 October, 60/12 is equal to 5 days. Yeah, I have passed the number and based on that weird theory, I am allowed to contact him again, so I did.

Knowing that he is coping made me relieve. Although I won't be able to see him with somebody else since it will make me jealous, I pray that his next relationship will be a happy one, even without me. 

Day 9: Rebound

I thought talking to other guys would help but boy, I couldn't be more wrong. Replacing one's attention with other made me miss him even more. I could not help myself from comparing little details that he usually said. Meeting a guy with a similar past with him did not really help either. I almost cried in front of the guy when I told him about my past relationships. I think I will give my self a break from guys for these couple of weeks, allowing my self to recover before starting a new chapter. 

I kept on questioning myself why is it so hard to letting him go? Why I felt comfortable around him? I even missed how he used to say he liked my inverted commas that appear whenever I smile. I developed a new habit of looking at the mirror and looking where the inverted commas are. I am weird for loving someone who is weird. I went for the date without make up on since I was late and all I remembered was he liked to tease me by saying, "hey look, I am beautiful, I don't need to wear make up." I miss his face as well, he has a serious face when working but when we chatted, he used to give me his rare smile. 

While I passed the first with strong determination, entering the second week, I got a new urge to contact him. I am wondering how he is, why he did not contact me, am I the only miserable one? But watching a lot of breakup videos, I know I should stay strong. If he managed to move on without me, I should be able to do the same. 

Day 8: Otherness

It's been a week without him and I don't think there is going to be we anymore, or it was never even been one since the beginning. After trying to rationalize the whole process by watching about the context of marriage in his culture, I realized that he was never considered me as a possible partner simple because his society won't accept it. He never intended to bring our relationship into real life since it's not an option, while for me, I have been looking for possibilities to have an inter-countries marriage. We were on a different page of a book and I should realize it sooner. 

In sociology, the concept of otherness refers to exclusion, an idea of not taking into account the excluded person well-being simply because s/he is not part of us. We take care of 'us' but don't really think about 'them' because they are not part of us. I realize that the hard way.

I am still tempted to text him since I need the substance. But after being one week clear, I don't want to repeat the same pain as the beginning of the breakup. If he can live without me, I should be able to do the same.  

Day 7: Weekend

It was a week ago we decided to break up. In the morning, I was still texting him, sending him pictures of beach and wooden bridges that I visited with friends. We were wondering how would it feel if we walk there together, holding hands where our fingers colliding into each other, sharing a glimpse of warmth through our finger tips. I was also wondering how our first meeting would be, would I be nervous, would I able to speak after talking hours on phone. But now all those imaginations just shattered into pieces. We don't belong together and I don't think he ever think that we are able to be together since the beginning, he was just denying his future whereas, I was seriously thinking ways to be with him.

I was still tempted to text him but I always restrained myself to do it since we have no future. I don't want to fall into another heartbreak although I still miss him. I slept well, back to my sleeping beauty pattern and my appetite has returned. What I miss is to have someone to share my day with and his smile. 

Things that help: I have been kind to myself, not too ambitious to finish my work, binge watching serials on Netflix and allowing myself to feel the whole experience.  

Day 6: Relativity

These last couple of days, time run slowly, whereas my months with him went like a blink of an eye. It's weird how we are able to create a space for the two of us where time just went by like that. Our video calls also worked in that way, every time we targeted to take a small break from our works, it became hours. We just could not get enough of each other. At the end, we just said, "hey, I wanna see you." We did not care anymore how often it was or who initiated it, we just wanted to be together. It would be easier if we were together in a single space, we could just do our activities with the other person on our side. 

Currently, I develop a new weird hobby, I like to look at him on Telegram. Looking at him online already made me happy. Knowing that he existed in the other part of the world and that he was using the same application as me.

God, it's hard. He is everything I want but he decided to left me for somebody else. 

Day 5: We Could Be Happy Together

After thinking all the negative possibilities, the positive always started to flow back. Can we give our relationship another chance? We were happy back then, aren't we? You became the highlight of my day with your weirdness, which I currently miss. We like to call each other names, my favorites are grumpy panda, handsome or rabbit since you have this black circle under your eyes for working late at night. You liked to call me cheesecake or beautiful. Initially, we were imagining a life together, a generic template on having a relationship but by time, it developed into a personalized version of our characters, which made me longing for more.

I think one of the hardest thing about moving on is to beat your own hope of having a beautiful life together. I want you to be happy ... but I want that happiness to be with me. 

It has been four days without you and I still want you.  

Day 4: Agency

What I am looking for from a man? Why was I attracted to him at the first place? I guess the first attraction was because he opened up since the first chat. But attraction won't work without chemistry, it became quite deep since he knew how to make me laugh. At the end of our relationship we already knew each other's routines and our interaction flew between our works. The only time we did not contact is when we had to work. But despite all the dance on how to synchronize our lives together, there was always something hidden, a hidden network that could change his mood in an instant. And this hidden network was also the one who brought us apart.

At the beginning, he convinced me that the process was not going to happen, but at the end, he couldn't resist it. Listening to his story, I am sure that I don't want to be part of something that does not care about my feeling. I am blessed with a loving family who put my happiness on their priority so I could not imagine myself being part of something where my agency as human being mean nothing for the sake of structure. So in a way, even if it's painful, I kind of dodging a bullet.

Time is really the key. I started to cook again. Yesterday, I gave a presentation about social network analysis, something that I have keen to do since a decade ago and got positive feedback. Next month, I am going to give another talk about it. I washed my clothes yesterday and remembered him a bit since he was the one who dealt with how to operate it at the beginning. But my urge to contact him has decreased. He started to become a part of problems in my life that made me question why my life is like it is. A kind of detachment which made me reflect more on life.

Day 3: Love as Addiction

Love is an addiction. Once you stop the connection with the person you love, your body will create a chemical reaction asking you to supply the substance. During my younger days, I was attracted with how opium influences the body. Strangely, some of my mentors tried it, so yeah, my attraction was totally justified based on my network. The interesting part of opium is the philosophy behind it that relates to Morpheus, the god of dream and sleep. I think love also works in that illusion, you dream about something ideal and you don't want to detach from that idealization, whereas in real life, love always has flaws. But as a substance, it gives you high where reality become blurry.

So I have been clean from the substance for more than 37 hours. A record that I want to add up until I manage to free from the longing to return to it. Yesterday, I was still a mess, my appetite was not returning, I left my room like a mess, could not work and at night, I was super tempted to break my 24 hours clean condition without him, but my dad texted me, so I was safe from repeating the cycle. 

The meaning of his name is Knight, an irony since he was the one who shattered me into pieces. I thought Knight should be able to protect the one he loves. Well, this is another wake up call that all of my imagination is an illusion, an imagination from the world of the Morpheus. 

Hopefully, I will get better soon. Cleaning my body from the substance completely.

Day 2: Allowing Myself to Grieve

Yesterday, I tried to do the no contact but failed miserably. I went to the supermarket and saw the salad he liked and I took a picture and sent it to him. I texted "I miss you" and tempted to do our regular video call before bed. Alhamdulillah, I managed to avoid the latter. My brain is broken, why do I want to be someone who does not want me? Irrational. But somehow, I can really imagine we live together. I think that's the worst thing about move on, you have to beat your own imagination and not the reality. The reality had given you all the information to convince you that he's not the one but your mind keeps on playing tricks on you. 

According to Mark, one YouTuber's love coach, to be able to break up, I have to list 10 things that I don't like about him. When I tried to do this exercise, what crossed my mind is that I hate that I love him. I hope this love thing can turn into past tense soon. 

The good thing is I managed to sleep although woke up several times. I lost my appetite as well, although I managed to force myself to eat. 

I tried to do rebound as well. Bad idea. I compared everyone with him and hate the whole process. 

I hope day 2 is more successful than day 1. 

Day 1: He's Getting Married With Someone Else

First day of breakup. I kept on repeating the mantra: 'he's getting married with someone else' over and over until my head could not think anymore. There was a constant urge to ask him to reconsider but I knew at the end, he would never pick me, it's never been it's never will be, so why prolong the pain. But giving up a routine was hard. I could not talk to him first thing in the morning, I could not share the little things I found during my days and I could not see him before I went to bed anymore. There was this hole in my days without him and the worst part was I could really imagine us being together. 

He had a strange way to make me laugh, with his witty jokes and weird sense of humor. Probably, that's the first thing that attract me to him. And even I knew that there was a chance of 60 percent to not be able to have him, I was willing to take the 40 percent chance because I had a strong feeling for him. I still love him. At some time, it's going to be a past tense but on the first day of break up, I still want him pretty bad. I know he is not going to fight for me, so this is for the best. But I still want him.

I hope I can be better soon. This morning I talked with friend for two hours. It helped, but living alone kind of making things more difficult.

I wish nothing bad for him. But I just want him to be mine and not with someone else.

I will be better. 

Hopefully soon.

Picture: sometimes the canal force water to follow a certain path that you hate. You have no way out.

Happy Birthday!

This time of the year where you reconnect with people you barely contact on daily basis. Sometimes, it feels nice but as a person who like to keep everything private, can be overwhelmed as well. But having a special day might be nice to reflect on many things, including many plans in life that seem far from target. As people say, c'est la vie, this is life, you just need to make the best of it, being grateful for having family, work with a nice atmosphere and the feeling of being in love.   

Be Kind

Sometimes, emotions get the best of you even if you try to be nice. Somehow, I always have this idea of the back of mind, guilty feeling for everything. I think being kind to yourself is one the hardest thing to do. You can reflect on people's reactions towards you, on whether you have been good or not, but you are not able to do it for yourself. Probably, that's why I have the tendency to fall for the broken one. Their selfness attracted me, although it will also be the one that ends the relationship. But that's how a nice love story always ends, right? Tragic. You need a good portion of sadness to make it memorable. 

This is not how I want my love to be, but sometimes, you don't have an option. Maybe, what has written is that both of your lives need to intersect for something else instead of colliding into one another. Maybe, it's the illusion that makes it hard. Reflecting on another case, I wouldn't fall for someone who cut his ties with sibling due to an illusion. I just don't have respect to that type of person. But again, people have their own stories and I always try my best to not judge, as long it doesn't interfere my life. 

Falling in love is everyone's right. What matter is how we deal with it, how to turn that feeling into a positive energy that can make us a better person.  

Hurt

"Hey darling, what time are you going home?"

"I will come a bit late, but will drop by on the shop to buy your favorite cheesecake."

"Thanks honey, miss you."

"See you soon my love."

Life is surely interesting. You find love when you least expected it but when you meet the one, you just know. Both of your quirkiness start to make sense. If sometimes you felt out of place, suddenly you understand how the strangeness is made to complement a missing piece. Perfection is not about you but how both of enable a beautiful symphony. And when your fingers meet for the first time, you forget how to walk alone. There is something strange about sharing warmth through the tip of your hand and how wrapping each other hand can create a different level of closeness. 

Somebody told me that when you fall in love, your world starts to gravitate into the other person. You feel a sense of completeness when he is around either by sharing the same couch or watching him eating next to you. You will surprise that watching somebody brushing his teeth can make you happy. Well, you still like presents but you start to find peace with mundane details of being together. A complete trust to share your deepest fear.

Conscious Detachment

“We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” Dr. Seuss

How to stop everything when things feel right? A synchronized weirdness that somehow ticks all the right boxes. At the same time, you know that there are a boundary you could not cross and the relationship will end anyway, sooner or later. Probably, I should turn the whole experience into a fiction, a version where two persons have to face a tragic ending. Maybe, by doing that, I can imagine a better ending for the two of us. Or maybe a version where they constantly fighting due to cultural differences and by having that imagination, I will be happier to be able to dodge a bullet.

I know I did stupid things. Trying to create a distraction that made me even miss him more. Probably, instead of doing stupid things, reducing the dose? It feels like drinking a sea water when you are thirsty, you want to get rid off the thirst but you even make it worst. 

My brain breaks ... I don't know what to do or what I want when the ending is clear.

Obsession

In a relationship, there are three elements involved: man, woman and the relationship. You can be a perfect person for yourself and the same goes for the woman as well, but if both of you are not compatible with each other, your perfections won't really matter. In imagination, you are perfect for each other since you portray the other as what you always have been looking. The absence of reality makes imagination more detached with the reality and thus, perfect. 

Obsession works in this way, you feed your brain with imagination that become less and less true. When you start to create a path to reality, you start to realize that your imagination has no resonance with what you have imagined. Maybe, for people with obsession, it is better to be hated than not to be remembered. And me with a short term memory could not even pin point what I have done to get this kind of obsession. Probably, I should stop responding text or email from strangers. The plurality of the whole thing made them nameless for me but probably not for them. 

"What makes you attract to me?" he asked. For me, it's really about space. People who confess their love tend to make everything about them. I love you, you made me happy, I spent hours thinking about you, the way your smile made me out of my mind, I could not work thinking about you. All of these reasons are about them, not me. They never asked what I want or how our life should be. Everything is about them and their minds. 

Sober

It's quite difficult to be sober when you are on a love struck period. You talk until early in the morning without really remembering the conversation. You know you are happy but could not pin point the activities that trigger the happiness. So yesterday we had a talk on how to take control of our lives again. We made a table on the positive and negative sides of what we did and tried not to pass a certain bed time limit. I think that's why people call it as falling in love, you don't really have control of what happen to yourself. And yeah, sometimes, the world becomes a blurry since what exist only your feeling towards him, nothing else matter.

Probably, the biggest downfall of being love struck is that you become vulnerable, you don't have too much control of your emotion anymore. The way he behaves influence how your emotions going to be. So currently we also try to detach ourselves, to give ourselves a sense of identity again, not got too entangled to one another. 

I never imagine having a self-control of being sober and just follow the flow can be hard. I always believe I am a human of logic, but yeah, my past has shown that logic failed when heart interfere.  

Sense of Deja Vu

"What did you do to me? Why time flies when I am with you? You are a time eater."

"Did you hack my system? Why can't I think straight when I am with you?"

Somehow these conversations gave me a sense of deja vu, a taste of familiarity to the new experience. We just talked or looked at each other in silence until he wasn't able to look at me and I lost my words, did not know how to react. I lost count on what rules we made and later on, what we dropped since it could not contain our emotions. We talk, we tease and we drive each other crazy. 

We like to make a story together. Hah, another deja vu. 

Are You Happy?

Well, that's a one million dollar question, isn't it? This article about success and happiness argues why success and happiness don't go together. I thought one of the possibles negotiation between the two is placing success as an indicator for happiness since I see many people obsess with success. After reading the article, I realize that both of them are built on opposite values. Their incompatibility is like arguing ~N is similar to N. It's impossible since when you chasing success, you always want to compete and your sense of achievement is built on how you can be special compare to other, whereas happiness is something that you achieve from inside, a sense of ignorance of other people's achievements. 

Does it mean happiness cannot go with success? For me, the question is not matter of whether it can be achieved or not but rather a question of means and ends. For people who are chasing success, a sense of 'happiness' is achieved when they get recognition of what they achieve, whereas for people who practice happiness, success is the result of being happy. If you manage to find peace from what you are doing, you are successful. I think this argument is kind of fall into an extrovert versus introvert thing 😅 Extrovert tends to find justification from outside, whereas introvert from inside. As an introvert, I find the extrovert exhausting, so this is my personal bias.

Do I hate success? I mean sure, I like to have my paper being published or able to get the first place for something. But the satisfaction does not come for the achievement but rather as a form of responsibility that come from inside. Well, at this point, I think I am walking on a thin ice since I don't like to disappoint anyone so I kind of seek justification from outside as well.

Well, I think at the end, we cannot escape from being a social creature. We somehow constantly being confronted by the social. 

Falling in Love

What are the symptoms of being in love? For me, any type of emotion always comes from attachment (or care) to someone/something. The feelings of hatred, anger, love, betrayed, sad, happiness and enjoyment emerge through the way we associate our self to something. So moving on is not about shifting from one spectrum of being attached to another point on the same spectrum (i.e. from love to hate) but rather to shift from attachment to detachment, to initially care about someone to become indifference.

From this perspective, falling in love starts with a sense of attachment. You turn a stranger into someone you barely know, an acquaintance. At this stage, the other person's existence does not effect your life yet. Although if something good happen to them, you may get a slight happiness since you know the person. This one is followed by a friend stage where one's existence become very dear to you. At this stage, your life kind of being affected by the persons you are friends with. Although distance, frequency, work, family may influence the intensity you have with your friend. You will know the big events that happen in their life but your life is not fully rotated around their lives. The last stage is lover. At this stage, both of your lives kind of collapse to one another. You try to combine two different rotations to meet on particular time and place. You're in contact on daily basis and you want to know everything about the other person's activities. You get joy in knowing that somebody had finished their lunch or going to brush their teeth.

If you have symptoms of the last stage, then you are in love. 

Culture

I think one of the main thing about cultural differences is values. In one country, being someone to be proud of is valuable whereas in other place, what is valuable is your happiness. I never understand why people like to compare one to the other or brag about their or their relatives' achievements. Probably, because I never have been a fan of being in the spotlight. I prefer people ask me about whether I like something or whether I want to do it or not. And probably, that's also the reason why I felt lost when my Oma passed away. She was one of the persons that never forced me to do anything. We just loved accompanying each other.

The interesting part of moving from one country to another is that apart from facing different cultures, you also find a mixed culture where people re-create a new identity based on the mixture of different people. And since nothing can be taken for granted, we communicate. I think one of the thing about assuming that if you belong to one place, you expect people to be similar to you, all of you are assumed to follow the same values, but in reality, people have personalities that may not be what you think of them. With differences, people are aware that things need to be communicated since no one knows what are the norms.

Probably, that's also the reason why talking to him is interesting. He is like Scheherazade from the Arabian night where he captivated me with his stories and voice.

PS: I took the picture when I went to Fort Canning Park. They have this wall with names of people who passed away during a certain period. They came from various countries, UK, US, Indonesia and others.

Un/productive

I managed to submit a paper for a conference last week (I have to write the abstract, introduction, discussion and conclusion but at least, the data and framework are there) and revised an abstract, so writing wise, I am quite okay. However, it was not the case for my main projects. I still need to write an emails to people and to start reading all the materials that I have been collecting for the past couple of months. I have been easily distracted these days, doing random things without any result. I won't even call this phase procrastination since I don't really have a new idea.

But life wise, I am on an okay condition. Initially, I use to worry about love and career. I need to have certainty and sometimes, my obsession to certainty detach me to people I care about. Now I live my life closer to the younger version of myself, let everything flows, don't worry too much about what the future will bring as long that I am happy. So having someone who calls me everyday without any commitment is kind of liberating. The older version of me may questioned the motives or even ask for certainty but this current version does not really care. C'est la vie. That's life. Acceptance.

Probably, that's one of the reasons why I am not productive. I prefer to daydreaming than working, ahahaha.

Honey

In one of the WhatsApp groups, there was an offer on getting a free mask. So I contacted the number and asked for a free mask. The unusual thing was the person addressed me as honey (or cayang). I found it funny, but since the mask is coming from a formal institution, many of my friends reached out to me saying that the greeting was improper. After getting many messages, I started to ask myself whether I should feel offended by the greeting but I still could not see the mistake. People in the salon or in online shop like to call their customers with honey as well, so I think the call is acceptable. Some others argued that it's improper because the one distributing mask affiliates with a formal institution so it's better to have a formal reply. But had been working as an admin myself, I know how boring a standardized response would be. Having people responded with a smile or thank you could really made my day, especially since there were people who think getting responses from an admin were their rights. 

On the other hand, since I traveled to many places, I received many calling, 'sweety' (from flight attendant), 'honey' (from salon or online shops), 'sister' (when I went to department store), 'beautiful' (random), and catcalling (when I passed random guys in a bad neighborhood). Apart from the last one, I could accept the others. What annoyed me is people started to judge me and asked to many personal questions on first meeting. I considered it as an invasion to my personal space.

Do I have to speak up more? Or should I be offended? My golden rule is to think that people are naturally nice. So the first thing I do when I get a strange response is to rationalize it in my mind and assumes that it was only a cultural difference. I will argue when I feel threatened (which rarely happened).

The Heart

“But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you.” Fox to the Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Human's mind is an interesting thing, we love to fall into a routine. Our days are being defined by how it falls into the same pattern. We start to miss things once its change. Strangely, we don't really have a control on how light or heavy the change can be. Thinking about the possibility of having no control on your heart is a scary thing. If you runaway, you can save your heart but you may loose your chance to find happiness.

So now I am just following my heart and feel miserable due to time difference.

Alchemist

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” The Alchemist, Coelho.

It's been a while since I met someone who can continue a story where I left off. At some points, I was giving up in finding someone who share the same idea of being a wanderer in this universe. But then again, the Universe works it magic. I met a person who remembered details of The Alchemist. So when I wanted to express the complexity of my feeling, we could refer to different situations of what Santiago has to face during his journey. I don't know whether our intersection means something more permanent or nothing but sometimes, when you are down, you only need a small sign to convince you that you are alright, your quirkiness has a place in this mundane world. It does not matter whether the person is there for a long run or not, what matter is that on a certain period of your life, you are happy.

I always thought that life works in a continuous space. But the more I think of it, the more I think it's a discrete space, a set of events that define what we called as life. There are events in life that appear in front of you out of the blue, a random possibilities that materialize without a reason but somehow it warms your heart. Or the way you are able to move on from someone, one day you were still crying when you remembered how things went left, but the next day, the memories has no meaning to you anymore (shout out to Taylor Swift for this perfect song). In the moments like that, I really feel that we are living in a discrete life where things can be switch on and off.

This realization makes me become more grateful of what I have. Living in the moment instead of thinking what I did wrong or what the future may lead. Be nice, doing the right thing and allowing my self to be surprised.

The Body

On June 17th, 2020 I went to a clinic to check on a constant pain that I felt on my stomach. I had a mixed feeling for the whole journey. Scared, not really sure how the system works, fear that I had serious illness and other worst possibilities. Luckily, when I contacted my friend asking how to deal with the health system in Singapore, she offered to accompany me, so one less problem to deal with. The whole process went quite fast, from diagnose until the decision to do surgery. The next day, the doctors came to check on me and she said that the surgery went well and if my body could function after total anesthesia, I could go home.

Having an operation creates a strange relationship between me and my body. There are part of me that I have no control on. It still feels strange to touch the scar and there are still some moves that I can not do without creating pain. I am healing, physically and mentally. I think mentally, this whole experience makes me reflect on the presence of important people in my life and moreover, what I considered as important.

Not Meant to Be

Sometimes not meant to be means that both of you share the same attraction but the timing is not right. You are attached to a commitment you cannot break easily and the other one could not adjust the timing for your own sake since it attached to his network as well. Your intersection with one another leave an understanding of you don't belong together despite the instant attraction. But this is life, you cannot always get what you want (or I simply over thinking things) and sometimes commitment is better than attraction. You can get bored with something but what makes things run is your commitment.

Attraction and the right moment appear at any scale of life. This time is about work, some other time, it may be about a person. Things are meant to be when every thing falls on the right moment. If it is a human relationship, meant to be refers to sharing the same stage of life. Each of you wants the same thing and places it as their priority. If it is work related, the moment appears in front you when you are not attached to another commitment.

"But if you really want it, why not fight for it? Negotiate?"

If every thing can be negotiated, what does it leave for credibility? How do you want people to recognize you? An opportunist, an unreliable person? Even when people let things slide, how do you see yourself?

I think growing up means you have to be accountable to your decision.

And it's bloody difficult!!

How to Fall in Love

How to fall in love with someone? Where does the feeling coming from? Is it a matter of chemistry or if somebody is close to you, he will create a sense of familiarity and you will end up missing him once he is gone? Does excitement come from curiosity or from compatibility? 

Currently, I am doing a detox to online relationship. I really don't know what to expect from online platform and the interactions over there kind of drained my energy. I am naturally bad at introducing myself to new people, adding the artificial space made it hundred time worse. Probably, since the platform is an instant thing, people were quite straight forward on what they want or in other cases, just come and go as they please. There is nothing wrong with that as long every one accept it as the norm. And even when that is the common norm, there are always exception. I usually ignore people that I am not attract me but sometime people are bad at reading sign. Does it make me a bad person?  

Is it possible to have a deeper conversation beyond daily activities? I even don't know whether I can fall in love through mediation and not by meeting the person directly. The person who can increase my heart rate only by his smile and turn my face red with his words or just simply doing activities together without a word. Funny, a picture entered my mind when I wrote the latter. I was working when he came and said, "can I work here, I don't want to be alone?" There was that as well, a strange relationship.

Rambling

I have to work on five more sets but even thinking about it gives me headache, so here I am, hiding from my responsibility by writing nonsense. Thinking what to think, the art of procrastinating, or simply running away. 

If you remember certain things from the past, does it mean you miss the place or the person? Or that is only a memory, a fraction cell in your brain that grows with you. What do you consider as home? I think after my grandmother pass away, I don't really have a definition of home. Home is a place where you feel attached and somehow, I don't feel attached to anything right now. I have a job but since it has an expired date, I don't really prepare myself to settle in. Somehow, I am still considering to return to Bandung, but don't know whether there is a possibility for me to work there and also the type of job that fits me. 

I have been checking places I want to visit after Covid as well. Probably going to a beach. But traveling alone has lost some of its charm. When I was younger, I enjoyed traveling alone. Meeting people or simply being invisible in the crowd, but nowadays, I prefer to be alone in a familiar place where I know what to expect. Probably, I lost my adventurous side or I never had one to begin with. 

So why do you keep posting in English? I think because currently, I am on my writing period, I prefer to think in one language to make the process faster. Although the main problem is probably the lack of data. Oh well, back to work. 

Third Culture

"Are you even one?"

"I like to consider me as one. It always feels that I don't really fit in one place. When I first started in elementary school, my Bahasa was still bad, my skin was fair and my mom used to pack food instead of gave me money for snack while other kids always have  something on their hand. Until now, my daily meal always consist of bread. I can eat without rice for weeks but feel miserable if I cannot bread for several days."

"So you feel more home when you were in Europe?"

"That's another thing. I did not drink, I did my prayers, I wore veil, I fasted. Those things created a thick barrier on the type of activities that I could be involved in and not. I still went to the bar though and ordered apple juice since the color is the closest to wine (or beer but without the foam)."

"So what are looking for in a relationship?"

"A person who can read my mind."

"Keep on dreaming, honey."

"The dreamy answer will be a person who share the same frequency as I. But if you want me to elaborate it, I think a person who can read between the lines since I am not the most talkative person in the world. I found this quality most in people who are older or introvert since they tend to be more sensitive."

"What is your next destination?"

"I don't know. After Europe, I was planning to settle down in Indonesia, but I couldn't find a job that suits me and here I am, still questioning my life as I did a decade ago. Life seems moving no where for me."

"It adds the complexity for people who want to approach you. Do you have specific preference?"

"Apart from the things I mentioned earlier, I want the person to share the same responsibility as me in house chores. This makes me more West than East. It's difficult since I still adopt things that are considered as conservative but I want a type of relationship that is more contemporary."

"Do you consider yourself as beautiful?"

"Hey alter ego, did someone hijack you?"

"Noo, this is a logical question. Somehow, you seem cool with the whole situation and I know one of the reasons is because you never lack of admirers."

"I don't think I fall into the beautiful category, I may consider myself as cute though and that has a different niche market. I always have a chubby cheek so I think people have tendency as seeing me as a little girl and attract elderly people or people from the service industry. There was a time when I fixed my eyeglasses and my mom asked me how much I paid to repair it. When I told her, I got it for free, my mom responded, 'you gave him your smile, did not you?' By time, I also know the type of respondents who are willing to do favor for me based on our interaction during interviews. Somehow, I also got a lot of request for random sampling since I rarely say no if someone ask me a favor. I have no problem with that, I only feel bad for people who ask me for direction since I am bad at direction, literally and figuratively." 

"Are you an extrovert?"

"No, although I may fall into an ambivert category. My comfort zone is always my personal room where I don't have to bother on other people. Probably, that's also why it's difficult to let new people in. On the other hand, since my work forces me to deal with new people all the time, I start to learn how to stretch my boundary. But I am still bad at large setting meeting. I also prefer to text first, a first step of interaction without really need to be social."

"How do you even survive until this point?"

"I believe in the art of resonance. The Creator protects you by surrounding you with people who complete you. It's not that you are dotting on them but in a weird way, you complement each other."

The Act of Service

According to some articles (i.e. DW and CNBC), there were an increase in dating app use during the Covid-19 time. The articles also said that people spent more time using the app. I use dating app on and off. Sometimes the people I met in the app were just too much. I have also been scammed once although since the person was too weird in the sense, saying love too fast and sending words that looked copied from elsewhere, I knew that he was fake. So when he sent me some bubbly words, I Googled it and found that he copied them from Facebook. Also when he sent me a contract of his work in an oil company, I used reverse image and found a similar story with the same contract in the scam survivor website. He played for the long run, it took him a month with daily communication until he showed me the contract. According to scam survivor, the pattern is usually approach, sending a contract, promising to visit and then being caught in the immigration and asking the victim to send the scammers money. For my case, after he showed me his contract, I silent treatment him and he did not contact me anymore.

I don't like confrontation. So I use to solve problem by ignoring people. I think I accumulate bad karma for this approach although (as a justification) I thought that's the main approach in dating app. If you are not into someone after both of you swipe right, then just ignore the person. But somehow, some people who I am in contact with keep on messaged me on daily basis. I think this the effect of covid-19, making people more persistent.

I don't know, it's quite difficult to fall in love to people I meet online. Probably, because I am not really touched by sweet words. I am more touched with the act of service like when someone asked me to do small things for me, or contacted me for a problem I posted in a group and offered to help. Therefore, being in an artificial communication such as dating app is kind of suffocating since people only say nice words for the sake of approaching the person at the other end.

Because of the covid-19, I got many good mornings and I forget which profile belong to what name. I thought I would like the attention but apparently, if you don't have feeling for the persons, answering these greetings become painful since you don't want to create expectation for the persons you are talking with. 

What is a Mathematician, Really?

I adopt the title from Hersh's book, "What is Mathematics, Really?" I found the book in the math library when I was an undergrad and since I like the book so much, I bought it when I was taking my PhD in a subject that has nothing to do with math, or so I thought. I think my learning process is always about finding meaning. If I didn't get why I should do a particular subject, my grades would just fall down the drain. That's why I changed my subject from abstract mathematics to social science. Along the way, I re-learned statistics and programming again as part of my research and somehow, I realized that the way I am attracted towards math is part of a bigger attraction, pattern.

Mathematics is a form of pattern and since it works through definition, I can have one of the purest form of pattern. When I was an undergrad, my final project was about the convergence of Lax-Friedrichs scheme in approaching a continuous formula with partial differential equation. The author of the main paper that I built my final project from is a woman. So reading about her kind of me motivated me to keep going (after being told by my supervisor). I did the same for Calculus, I finished reading all the mathematicians stories that start each chapter in Purcell's book.

My training kind of shaped the way I approached social science. I like to create a social model by defining the rules first. It's like creating a natural number or a space. The way we understand the world is through a lens or a framework. It allows us to become sensitive to different things, depends on the lens. At the same time, failure in understanding the lens also means failure in what it disallow us to see. In math, I see this as a form of transformation where one space may be more effective in solving one problem than the other. We can only say this once we understand the space we are working in. In social science, it's less clear than math and therefore, many people may not see it as an epistemological problem. They confuse truth with situated knowledge.

Movie Marathon

I have been doing a kind of movie marathon and all of them end up with either suicide, break up and regret. They have romance genre as their category but none of them end with a happy ending. Probably, happy ending is not a thing anymore. It's better to leave the movie with an open ending and let the audiences decide the meaning of it. As Barthes said, "the author is dead." On the bright side, it's nice to see that even a fiction has a complicated narrative as in real life. Nothing is really black and white since everyone has their own background that makes them who they are.

Somehow, I think that's what a relationship is. It's not a matter on finding the best person but how two persons are able to fit each other's life into a shared routine. The movie where the male character kill himself is a story about depression. The main characters met for the first time at the bridge when the female was standing on top of the bridge ready to jump after she lost her sister in a car accident. The story is narrated from the female character where her interaction with him enabled her to deal with her depression until she realized there was something off with the male character. And at the end, the movie shows that her feeling was right, the male character ended his life.

I think that's how life is, there are moments where you meet someone for a particular reason. The person won't be part of your life but his/her presence in a fraction of your life helps in making you a better person. That's how the Universe protects and directs you.

Unsent Letter

Hey, how are you? I miss you. I know I don't have the right to say that anymore especially since I was the one who pulled the trigger. We broke up twice. Although I kind of not regretting the first one since that was the first time I really believe that you had feeling for me. While I like how we could spend time without talking sometimes I was wondering what you were thinking and the first broke up was the first time I saw your emotion. I think you and I were quite similar in this matter, we did not really like to show our emotion or even used it since it would make us or human in general vulnerable and we chose to be a logical creature.

It's strange that during this weird situation you are the one who crossed my mind. Probably because what you said about not looking for someone kind of ring a bell for me now. The energy to hold a conversation or to open up is just too much. At the same time, it is also nice to have someone who you can talk to without having to pretend anything. And I miss that about you ... or maybe my idealization of you. Since imagination is always better since it does not happen. Reality has frictions and sometimes memory will only leave you with the good bits.

Time

One of the things that attached to routine is time. If I usually distribute my time following my office life, now I have no time division. I can pray, eat and work without taking a shower, which lead to a limbo feeling of being in between relaxing and working modes. It also makes me reflect more on the meaning of time and how Islam describes it beautifully in the surah Al-Asr (1-3).

By time, Indeed, mankind is in loss, Except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience.

At the end, our value in the world is evaluated based on how we deal with the reality. As Allah SWT has promised, “Surely, Allah is with those who are As‑Saabiroon (the patient)” [al-Anfaal 8:46]

April

I will try to write regularly again. One thing I realize about working from home is the lack of boundary. Usually, I start my day with breakfast, reading some news or comics, taking shower and heading off to the office. But now it does not really matter if I take a shower or not or whether I change my cloths for days or not. There were still meeting in between, but as long as I dress up, the rest is kind of okay. So today I started running and after taking care of my physical health, it is good to take care of mental health by writing. I forget when (or why) I stopped writing regularly. It feels nice to be reflective again and re-thinking about what I want in life. My friend who I met in 2012 said that my life does not go anywhere. My confusion about what I want in life is similar to what I complained to him in 2014. Probably, I fall into one of Einstein's dream spaces where I keep on repeating the same routine over and over, a space where life is a sum of repeated events.

I also want to detach my life from my phone. I will combine my work with more readings and writing without internet connection. Probably walking to the park is also a nice distraction to be motivated again. Just like the old time when my friends I got bored at the afternoon and we had this nice walk around the campus. I miss Europe's nature and since I can do nothing about that I should just focus on what I can do to create the new comfort zone.

Dis/Connected

It's strange that during this working from home period I became more connected than ever. There were no days without meetings. Group meetings, reading group, discussions with student, writing session and weekly meeting. The great thing about group meeting in person is that you can disappear in the background whereas in this whole mediated connection, the device will make you the center of attention once you talk. Maybe this period allows us to focus and to listen to one thing instead of doing multiple things at once.

The staying at home reminds me on the time when I was in Enschede. Christmas period, snowy and no obligation to go outside. No close friends since I was just arrived from Indonesia. But I kind of enjoy the quietness of cold, snow and being alone. There was a lake next to my lake that I used to visit. I was quite productive as well during that period. Probably because that's the type of quite that I like, nature, no email, no human on the street. 

Ten years apart. New place, new continent, new break ups.  

The New Normal

I am still finding my way to the new normal. I worked during weekend and I went to the supermarket in Monday. Everyday becomes a mesh of working and holiday. When I watch movie, I remember work and when I work, I want to escape to do fun things since I haven't had a proper break. Probably, I should start running in the morning, take shower and start to work instead of reading in the morning and feel unmotivated at 10 AM. With the whole lockdown thing, I become more connected to my phone. Usually I only need to charge it once per day, however, during this stay at home period, I charge it three times per day. Crazy!

I have borrowed several books from the library. Probably, it is also good to read in the park instead of staying inside all the time. So, it is either park for running or for reading or for cat chasing. The last one sounds fun :-)

Sunflower

How to keep my face straight
When you looked me with that smile
Our colleagues just passed by without a hey
Since me eyes were distance, locked to where you stood

"Hey," you said
The rest was blurry
As this memory will be

Expectation

“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. ... "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am!" -- Fox to the Little Prince, Saint-Exupery.

There is a strange connection between sense of belonging and routines. Even when things feel weird, you start to miss something once it becomes part of your routine. You have the agency to do different things but you end up doing the same thing over and over because that's how you define yourself. I think that's why it is easier to accept a new person when you are younger, your movement are being shaped by the years you spent together. Once you are getting older, you have years of moving by yourself, synchronizing your steps with another may take more effort. But as time pass by, you start to wonder whether this is what you want or not.

This is the part where you create a space of expectation. You create an idea of what you want but it's still not part of your physical world. Expectation is part of an imaginary world where you mix part of the reality with what you expect to be the truth. You feel happy not because of the reality but of a hope blanket you put around the reality. The key for this expectation to last is a constant supply of part of the reality. You still need an external trigger, which is the basic ingredient for your expectation.

The question is if you are super skeptical about love, why you only allow certain people to enter, why not increasing the chance of never being alone by having parallel relationships? Apart from moral consideration, relationship takes energy i.e. memory for remembering all the details and not mixing their stories, time, emotion, so at the end, the cost for energy is higher than the risk of being alone. At the end, you have to put yourself out there and wish your brain still working until expectation and reality become saturated.   

The Social

Being in a social distancing period made me wonder about life. What I consider as important, who would I connect with during the period, why things happen as it is and what do I want to do in life. Having someone new kind of supporting the whole reflective thing. I still don't know where this relationship is going to end but for now, I am happy with the way it goes. Me being happy in a relationship is kind of rare, at least for the last two years. The social kind of aspect me to behave in a certain way, which does not really fit with my own character. I have to deal with people who talk about themselves without paying attention about my facial expression or people who do not really know what they want. There are not bad guys, they just hold the wrong piece of the puzzle, which may fit with somebody else.

As a social creature, I am what my past shapes me. As the smallest in the family, I use to have people doing things or protecting me. I remember when I was in junior high school, I had to find my socks 15 minutes before the bell ring and the whole house was being involved in finding my socks, or eraser or my homework. The situation remained until I got my PhD. Sometimes I told my supervisor that I wanted to tag along with him since I did not have anything to do at home. I also have senior professor who I consider more as an grand parents than something professional. I like to be taking care of or having someone who I can talk with about random subject.

Probably, having a degree makes me a weird one, especially when people consider man has to be above woman or because I lived quite some time abroad. Maybe, I am just being sensitive but after a while, I can really feel the difference once people know about my attribute. It becomes tiresome when people look at you for your degree and not the whole you. Well, attributes are part of your identity, but every person has more than one dimension. Herbert Marcus wrote a book called 'One-dimensional man', where he (probably) discusses about a shift in the Soviet Union to consumerism. I have not read this book, I read his other book 'Siddharta' though where he told a story about the possibility of having no expectation.

I like the idea of having no expectation. If you never hope something, you will never be disappointed. I could not be gloomier than that, right? While it does sound gloomy, practicing it in daily life is kind of liberating. I think that's how I approach my current relationship, que sera sera. I don't want to rush thing as well as forcing something that I don't want to do (i.e excepting calls from strangers or from people I am not close to).

It takes the whole past to bring me to this point, a series of events that make you, you.

PS: talking about series of events remind me of doing partial differential equation where you talking A LOT about subset and space.

Kaila

"Dimas ..."
"Eh Kaila, kok bisa ada di sini?"
"Aku lagi bantu bosku, kebetulan dia jadi salah satu penanggungjawab di seminar ini. Nice to see you again."
"Likewise, I like to catch up with you later. Sekarang aku harus beresin ini dulu," ucap Dimas sambil membawa beberapa poster.
"Sure, see you later Mas."

Kaila menarik napas lega. Ia tak tahu berapa lama ia bisa menjaga wajahnya tersenyum tanpa rasa canggung. Pertemuan terakhir mereka di Jakarta tak berjalan lancar dan sekarang mereka bertemu lagi di Paris, kota yang selalu jadi pelarian Kaila tiap kali ia penat dengan kesehariannya di Belanda.

To All the Boys I Loved Before

Living in the period of the coronavirus where everything is uncertain makes me more reflective. One of the things that I am been wondering lately is about my suck love life. Why my past relationship went from sweet to sour in a blink of an eye? What went wrong? Or why it did not work in the first place?

I have been chatting about my past love life with someone. It's nice to hear that you are not the only one who made the same mistake, runaway because you were just too damn afraid of what might happen if you decide to move forward. After years, you started to accept what happened happened. Not because you believe it happened for a good reason but because that part of reality became blurrier than before. The feeling became less strong and you were able to accept a new person in your life.

Unfortunately, welcoming people in your new life can be a bit complicated. Adjusting your life into another can be difficult especially when you include family into the equation. You hated the disagreement from both sides and at the end, the relationship started to drain all your energy. I didn't blame any party though, I have been in a position where my parents disagree with my choice and position where his parents disagree with me. So I am done with no family support relationship.

Strangely, on the second date with a new man after those breakups, my parents met the parent of the man. That was a super awkward meeting although a nice insurance that I didn't have to deal with family issue. Unfortunately, the relationship did not work out either, probably because of the distance or simply because of me.

There were people here and there, dates, chats, flirts. But at the end, you kind of getting tired with introducing yourself to new people and answering dozens how are you text.

I am also wondering whether me being here and there makes me the strange one?

Ethnography

My approach in doing ethnography is to be honest. When you ask people to share their stories, it's only fair if you do the same. The first two hours of meeting people is usually the assessment phase where each assess the other on whether one can be trusted or not. In a village, one of the assessment is family and this is where all hell broke loose. People asked why I haven't married yet and preached me about it. I don't lie, but I was really tempted to do it. The bad things about lying is that it creates more and more lies. And since I don't do it, my face usually gives away the truth. I know I need to create boundaries but boundary, creating trust with other people and my own character don't really fit together. Another possibility is to just suck it up and take it as a sign that people care about you. Need more meditation for this.

On another note about my fieldwork, I am lucky to have a Sumatra face. People consider me as their own and even a pretty one, ahahaha. There were cases where people who I interviewed got a phone call and he said he was busy talking with a pretty girl or people were talking about me. A good ego boost and a farewell to feminism.

Life is about balance after all :))

Waktu

Di suatu fragmen kehidupan, kau begitu dekat. Kau suka bercerita tentang hal-hal yang membuatmu gundah. Sebagai gantinya kau menraktirku kue atau kau akan masak untukku. Mungkin pada saat itu, aku juga membutuhkanmu. Aku butuh kedekatan itu agar aku merasa menjadi bagian dari sesuatu. Tapi begitulah waktu dan mungkin jarak, di fragmen kehidupanku yang lain, kau menjadi orang asing. Kabar yang coba kita pertahankan di momen-momen tertentu perlahan pudar hingga akhirnya tak ada lagi. 

Di suatu fragmen kehidupan, kau suka mengajakku ke tempat-tempat menarik. "Kita janjian di tempat yang ada toko buku," begitu ujarmu karena tahu aku menyukai buku. Dan mulailah kau dengan cerita-ceritamu dan masa depan yang belum pasti. Entah kenapa ketika aku kembali ke tempat-tempat yang pernah aku datangi bersamamu, aku teringat dirimu. Pikiran punya logikanya sendiri untuk memunculkan suatu fragmen dari masa lalu.

Hidup itu menarik. Di suatu waktu, hidupmu berkelindan dengan hidupnya. Tapi di waktu yang lain, kau dan dia seperti orang asing. Apa yang terjadi padanya sudah tidak mempengaruhimu lagi. Tentu saja, kau ingin yang terbaik baginya, tapi hal itu tak lagi menjadi bagian dari keseharianmu. Masalahnya tidak lagi menjadi bagian dari hidupmu lagi dan sebaliknya. Kau dan dia telah berada di semesta yang berbeda.