Excerpts from Unarticulated Monologues

Excerpts from Unarticulated Monologues

โ€”to friends that are perhaps no longer.

Maybe it’s something in the configuration of the sky and celestial objects floating in it, or simply hormones – nonetheless, lately I’ve been drawn a lot towards the feelings that come from every interaction, or the lack thereof, between myself and human beings surrounding me.

I’ve particularly been lost in thoughts during several occasions where I was made to reminisce about the connections I made in the past. Friends, mostly. People who used to rub off on me the way I rubbed off on them, mainly because we shared so many mornings, afternoons, evenings, and maybe even nights together. And the things we said or did not say. Unspoken dialogues that could’ve perhaps glued together the cracked walls, one-way monologues that might’ve been a much-needed icebreaker, or overflowing questions to imply that I still care – if they’d let me.

To you, friend, whom I once knew, who used to be;

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The newly unlocked kind of joy you didn’t know could exist.

The newly unlocked kind of joy you didn’t know could exist.

It’s fascinating, the things you discover as you age. Things you never necessarily learned from anywhere, nor previously heard of, and yet they somehow come about unabashedly – and that you get to experience them firsthand, which is also the sole reason why you come across them in the first place.

Certain states of mind, emotions, and feelings – they materialize out of sheer serendipity. Sometimes, it’s unannounced. For better or for worse, they may change you inside out. Even if it’s just a temporary surge of happiness, or ache, or anything in between. Even if it dies out immediately. Sometimes they show you things you didn’t know you had the capacity for, or they help you search through the depth and range you’ve been carrying with you the whole time. And that is perhaps all that you ever need out of it.

I don’t know what it is, and I don’t think I have the interest in figuring it out either. Let it be undefined. Let it remain unchallenged. Let it just live. Grow. Nurtured. Linger. Become. There is no need to guard one. It may last, or it may not. Whichever path it chooses to roam over, I am embracing it. It may fail me, or it may enliven me. There is no anticipation or expectation, just leaps of faith in believing its sole intention.

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Numbed Out

Numbed Out

There’s an alternate reality where I don’t have crippling regrets in my approaching thirty. And it doesn’t involve a story about girlboss’ ambitions, nor daydreams about living in Scandinavia, nor making overdue amends with people who share your bloodโ€”not that kind. The premise is about living your early 20s carelessly, pouring your hearts out and accepting love where it might’ve been promised. To let one guard’s down where it felt safe to do so, and to quit building fences out of insecurity and fear of not being able to be vulnerable enough to let anybody in.

I feel bad and ashamed for even inviting those thoughts into my headspace. How did I allow myself to be so beaten over silly summer flings that could’ve been? To even dare to ask myself, have I traded my best years with the comfort of a safety net, that in the end doesn’t even feel so sturdy anymore?

I don’t know if I would’ve been happier or just as desperate. I would perhaps circle back to the same old situation anyway, wondering if I had done enough to allow myself to be happy.

Will I ever find out whether it is stagnation or unpredictability that would bring me more happiness and/or cherishable memories at the end?

I am in a state of paralysis, I guess, and I need any possible kind of force to move me.

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Would It Have Been

Would It Have Been

Does it really take the whole world to crumble for two creatures to coincidentally find a home in each other’s presence, two siblings to make long-overdue amends, and a mediocre character to take their first step towards digging what should never have never been buried for nearly two decades?

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Winter Wonderland

Winter Wonderland

Winter has witnessed me blossoming into a better version of myself, and the opposite. It’s the season where I got to explore new boundaries of what I was capable of feeling. Some of my best days indeed involved a sight of endless pile of white ice, but some of the worst did as well. It has seen some of my loudest laughs and some of my worst cries, and every confusion in between. It brought along some of the days that I’d miss a lot, and some others that I’d rather completely forget.

Winter, for me, was a time of forgiveness. Of independence, of figuring out what truly matters and what does not, of redemption. When there was too much emotion, yet too little space in one’s heart to process.

But it was a beautiful sight. Regardless of seconds, minutes, hours, days, which turned into weeks, which might turn into months, where I was aching; it was nonetheless always a beautiful scenery to remember those times by.

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Recollections of Sanctuary

Recollections of Sanctuary

Ever since I took my first office gig in Jakarta last year, I’ve been moving across a couple of temporary housings in the city. “Kostan” is what we call those accommodations here in Indonesia, which is basically almost like a mix of a dormitory (but not only for students) and shared house (although some of them don’t quite look like a house, especially since some of them are not equipped with parking lot, living room, laundry facilities, or even a kitchen).

Funnily enough, none of them ever felt quite as “comfortable” as an actual place to relax and unwind by the end of the day for me. Although in the context of proper beddings, furniture, and facilities which help me to fulfil my basic needs of a shelter, they are indeed physically comfortable. It’s just that none of them ever feels like a “safe haven” that I would gladly spend a whole week inside, unlike some of my previous temporary bedrooms. (I was even almost gone mad the first two weeks of WFH and quarantine, before I decided to stay with my family in Bandung instead.)

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