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.