Photo by Photos Hobby via Unsplash

Old wounds are not worth revisiting.

-S

Pic by David Kennedy via Unsplash

Time will fulfill the promises you never kept.

-S

Doa yang Sedikit Memaksa

Kita pernah saling kenal ketika masih sama-sama mahir merajut hening jadi tawa

Kita pernah saling kenal ketika mampu mengekstrak tawa jadi sapa,

dan sapa jadi rindu

Tapi kita tidak pernah cukup saling mengenal untuk tahu bahwa kita sama-sama pandai berahasia

Sampai akhirnya kita mulai bertanya,

waktu kah yang terlalu cepat,

atau kita yang terburu-buru?

Lalu diam kita menjelma rindu

Aku diam-diam membisikkan namamu dalam kepasrahan doa yang sedikit memaksa.

-S

"Mama"

Pinterest

Sudah jadi rahasia umum bahwa saya kurang bisa bersosialisasi dengan anak-anak. Apa lagi dengan anak yang usianya di bawah 8 tahun. Mungkin bukan nggak bisa, tapi saya-nya yang nggak mau. Kenapa? Karena mereka belum bisa dibilangin; mereka belum tentu duduk sekali pun diminta duduk oleh Ibu-nya. Kira-kira kondisi semacam itu lah yang bikin saya malas dekat dengan anak-anak.

Akhir tahun 2015 akhirnya saya memutuskan untuk melawan rasa malas saya berdekatan dengan anak kecil. Saya mulai dengan menjadi relawan SabangMerauke. Saya sengaja menyasar anak usia remaja karena saya merasa sedikit lebih senang ada di antara mereka daripada ada di antara anak yang usianya di bawah 8 tahun. Saya sadar bahwa melalui kegiatan ini, saya belum tentu bisa menghabiskan banyak waktu dengan Anak SabangMerauke atau bahkan kenal dengan mereka satu per satu. Tapi seenggaknya saya sudah usaha.

Gawatnya, usaha saya di-amini semesta dan bahkan di-akselerasi. Bulan Februari saya menyewa sebuah kamar di Bendungan Hilir. Saya bertetangga dengan seorang ibu dan anaknya yang berusia tiga tahun. TIGA TAHUN. HAHAHA. FYI, ini bukan kali pertama saya bertetangga dengan ibu yang membawa anaknya untuk tinggal di rumah kos. Saat saya kuliah dan menyewa kamar di Depok, saya bertetangga dengan seorang ibu yang sedang melanjutkan studi S3 di Fakultas Teknik dan anaknya yang, pada saat saya menyelesaikan studi di Depok, sudah duduk di bangku SD dan bersekolah di SD dekat rumah kos.

Kembali ke ibu dan anak tiga tahunnya yang jadi tetangga baru saya. Tetangga baru saya anak laki-laki, biasa dipanggil Jem atau Jef saya nggak tahu pasti, dan ibu-nya yang dipanggil Mama. Dari cerita penjaga kos, ini adalah rumah kos kedua yang ditinggali Jem dan mamanya. Kamar yang mereka sewa di rumah kos sebelumnya hanya beda satu gang dangan rumah kos sekarang. Menurut penjaga kos, penghuni di rumah kos lama yang ditempati Jem dan mamanya banyak yang mengeluh karena Jem suka berisik jadi mereka diminta pindah. :(

Nah, ini. Anak umur tiga tahun tuh ya, memang berisik dan aktifnya luar biasa. Oke, ini sok tahu karena ... how do I know??? Pagi, saat saya mau berangkat kerja, Jem masih minum susu sambil nonton TV dan nggak teriak-teriak. Siang saya nggak ada di rumah kos. Sore/Malam saya pasti dengar Jem bercanda sama mamanya. Ah, masa saya tega sebal karena alasan itu? :(

Saya ngaku sih, kalau Jem memang suka ketawa agak lebay kalau diajak bercanda, apa lagi kalau lagi diajak bercanda di kamar sama mamanya. Saya yang cuma punya waktu baca jurnal dan lalalili malam hari supaya tesis cepat rampung, sebenarnya agak terganggu. Lagi-lagi, masa iya saya tega telpon yang punya rumah kos dan komplain tentang Jem? :( Mungkn tesis saya jadi bisa cepat selesai, tapi selesainya nggak berkah huhuhu

Setiap pagi Mama Jem pergi kerja. Beliau siap-siap berangkat kerja tanpa suara supaya Jem nggak bangun. Kalau Jem sampai bangun, anak itu akan nangis. Beneran. Nggak main-main nangisnya lama banget selesainyaaa :( Sebelum Maghrib Mama Jem sudah sampai di rumah kos. Kalau mamanya sudah pulang, Jem akan nempel terus. Sembari ngeringin rambut habis brsih-bersih, Jem akan ngajak mamanya ngobrol. Well, nggak literally ngobrol sih. Jem cuma akan bilang, "Ma, Ma, Mama..." diulang-ulang sampai yang lagi sok-sok baca jurnal pilu sendiri terus mewek. Ha.

Lalu pada suatu malam, sampai lah saya pada satu kesimpulan. Hubungan ibu dan anak itu melodramatis. Saya nggak siap tahu-tahu mewek di depan umum karena sibuk bikin skenario sendiri tentang ibu dan anak yang ada di hadapan saya. Mungkin itu salah satu faktor yang bikin saya nggak nyaman ada di dekat anak-anak yang usianya di bawah 8 tahun. Mereka masih murni dan belum punya intensi untuk berlaga "nggak sengaja" jatuhin botol minum kosong di tempat umum padahal sebenarnya males buang sampah ke tempatnya atau "minjam" pulpen yang nggak akan dikembalikan.

Terus saya kangen Ibu.

-S

So, I was Wondering

Flickr 

I re-embrace my commuter life in July. I used to take the bus but I can't seem to tolerate the traffic any more, so, this time, I take the train.

Not too long ago, I've been "recruited" by a couple of friends from the office to their commuter clique as we happen to take the same line. They took the train as their everyday transport long before me.

People who take the train are varied. You might find your neighbor who happen to be a member of the House of Reps., managers in a multinational company, merchants who have to take their kid(s)/grand kid(s) to their kiosk because nobody can watch them back home, beggars, students, or street performers. You can easily tell by their appearance OR by peeking to their screen phone OR by overheard their conversations. While the only way to recognize the member of the House of Reps.' in a car packed of people remains to be their neighbor.

Speaking of recognizing people by their appearance or by peeking to their stuff or by overheard their conversation, my commuter clique like to casually labelled whether a couple is made up or not. A made up couple is usually a(n allegedly) married man/woman who get too physical with someone other than their S. O. (significant other). It's kind of having an affair on the way to the office/home. My friends told me to check into the couple's finger to spot a wedding ring -- sometimes it's there but come in different color.

I had enough with married man/woman having an affair; friends who are married with kids still hanging out with their exes regularly -- just the two of them without their S.O. (significant other) knowing; friends who just got hitched for less than a year getting way too physical in public with some one other than his/her legal S.O. Having an affair is, indeed, an incurable disease. So I'm not going to talk about it.

A made up couple. Have you ever go out with your male friend who is really cute so you pretend like you are couple just to get a jealous look from the waitress or random people you meet? If so, this is what I called "channelling your inner S.O.". Hahahaha. Why on earth I'm writing about this anyway. I can't help but laughing and I have to take a break before I write the next paragraph.

It's not your fault if you can't help but acting as your friend's S.O. because of their cuteness (or maybe you have crush on him but you are in their friend-zone list or you just want to have that jealous look from random people at the mall or you have this fantasy of him/her and you doing the thing). It might be weird but I like to observe (random) girl and boy who hang out together.

First thing first, I'll find out whether or not they have that shiny circular gold (or white gold) on their finger. Once I find out, I'll observe their gesture, their body language, the smile they throw at each other. Are they a real couple? Or a made up one? If they are a real one, good for them. But I always go with the second assumption.

I wonder what's the story behind them. Was the girl secretly in love with the boy? Or it was the boy who secretly in love with the girl. Was the girl knew he's gay? Was he knew she's lesbian? Were they knew if one of them grab their phone, write a message, just to delete it the next minute in the middle of their hectic day? Were they met on a dating app and run an errand? Were they once a lover and try to rekindle their romance? Were they almost a couple before one of them got hitched? Were they whisper each other names in their prayer? Who am I, a hopeless romantic?

The train is coming. I should be queuing behind the yellow line just like everybody else. Trying to keep my mind from wandering further, inventing a bitter story for every girl and boy I met at the station. All of a sudden, I found his face in the crowd on the opposite platform. He's looking down checking his phone -- any chance he text me? Oh, he's probably just delete it. Or the text wasn't for me. Our eyes met. He smiles -- an action he rarely does. I smiled back. The train interrupted us.

-S 💋

Intermezzo (I)

N: Have you had your breakfast?

S: No. 

N: Did you take any medicine in the last three days?

S: No. 

N: Do you get enough sleep?

S: No, really. Sleep is like money, one can never have enough of it. 

Sort some shit out at the very end point of business hour. Send it to my Sydney based colleague and we talk on Lync:

S: Can't it wait 'til tomorrow? You can ask somebody's help to review. 

L: Nooo. They (our client) are one hour ahead of us, so there is no way we can send this out before they're open. Why? Are you not confident?

S: Now that's a tricky question. Not much. But I believe if human being are doomed to never be 100% sure on anything, so~

-S 💋

The Art of Getting By

"Since the dawn of recorded history, something like 110 billion human beings have been born into this world. And not a single one of the made it. There are 6.8 billion people on the planet. Roughly 60 million of them die every year. 60 million people. That comes out of 160,000 per day. I read this quote once when I was a kid, "We live alone, we die alone. Everything else is an illusion." It used to keep me up at night. We all die alone. So, why am I supposed to spend my life working, sweating, struggling? For an illusion? Because no amount of friends, no girl, no assignments about conjugating the pluperfect or determining the square root of the hypotenuse is gonna help me avoid my fate. I have better things to do with my time."

It was an article from 10 days ago from Elite Daily that I bumped into before I write this post. According to the article we are allowed to miss something or someone that is no longer with us.

"We need to understand that through life, we will loose people we never thought we would, and it will hurt like hell. However, we need to accept that in order to live again without them, we need to grieve. The only way we can do this is by missing them until it hurts. If we don't, we won't go through the essential part of grieving, the part that allows us to move on." 

We lose people we care. We lose things we value the most; tokens, relationships, jobs you love, opportunities, etc. Losing things drive us crazy. It drags us into a black hole. We're trapped in a state of solitude, not a good way of solitude but a depressed way of solitude. Somehow, we tend to pull our self out of our circle. We drunk in sadness, sunk in despair. Make a perfect soil for jealousy to grow.

Suddenly you can see how life works, "life is unfair. But it's unfair to everyone, so that makes it fair". Say, you see your healthy relative pass away while your neighbour who's been sick for so long can finally get up from bed and do a morning jog. Or your ex who decided to rekindle his childhood romance and marry the (you think that she is a lucky) girl. Or your average friend who get your dream scholarship or job or life, whatsoever.

I agree with the article that "grieving was normal" because it was "essential to process" the loss. Besides, "in order to truly move on, we need to (grieve)".

In order to free our self from grieve we need to let go. And that is the most challenging part since, according to another article, "people crave comfort". It's either we miss the presence, the feeling, or the person who used to be with us.

I believe we undertake some kind of a test whenever life put us up in our least favourite situation. I'm not a gamer but I assume it's like in video games, you have to face your greatest enemy to level up. So I made up a test to measure my willingness and determination to letting go: I grabbed my phone the other night and called the person who spent his short period of time with me (and he really nailed it) and left.

I need to re-experience my emotional reaction. I need to know if my heart still skips a beat when his name appear on my cell phone screen. I need to know if I still look for topics to discuss. I need to know if I still feel the urge to call him again the next day. I need to examine the overall progress of an idea of his presence-diet.

The result wasn't that bad. I am proud to say that I can control the euphoria when his name popped up on my cell phone screen. I no longer look for a topic or two to discuss. And I reduce the urge to call him on the next day. It pleases me because I can see a progress in the process - a one year or more process, just to be precise. 

It doesn't mean I throw away all the memories, the expectations, and the happy ending scenarios of him and I. I sort them, store, and put them somewhere reachable - just so my mind is neat again. I some times open the storage and lit a candle to see if it's all still there. It is still there. He is still there. I take an extra breathe and slip his name in my prayers. It's a beautiful masochist emotions I can't resist. It's a kind of masochism I try to manage.

"You know we're going to be together one day, we just have to sort through all of our messed up issues first, and you have a lot of girls to sleep with to get out of your system."

-S 💋