Starting in November, out of all months.

Monday, November 2

This kind of feeling that returns every now and then. Today was like any other Monday, with no special occassions, just unfinished works and deadlines waiting for me ahead. What made today a bit different, was, this wave of indescribable feeling. It was a familiar feeling when waking up felt heavier than usual, when I keep questioning my nervous system what’s wrong, and when it felt like a squeeze to the gut. But despite all those discomforts, I still had to drag my feet to work, showed up in time and gave my best to the children I teach. While I didn’t have time to figure out what’s wrong with me today, the best I could do was to write this. With the hope that putting it into words might ravel my untangled thoughts.

Now my mind wandered around what might be the reason behind this heavy feeling. There were a lot of guesses running through my head, was it because I consumed too much media and information? Since these days the situation in my country was full of ‘storms’, I had no other choice but to keep myself informed. It saddened me deeply how months had passed, yet there was still no official declaration of ‘national disaster’ and quick actions coming from the government to address the severe forest fires in several regions. That was only one out of so many problems rising up. The next issue that heavily occupied my mind was the economic disparity, how was it normal that 50 richest people’s wealth was equivalent to 50 million people here? Only if rage could be explosive enough, I believe this nation would be nothing but ash. But then I saw people holding hands, cared for each other deeply, some even organized protests to fight for our rights, our rigged rights. Such a shame, I wish could do more than just to stay informed and joined spreading awareness through my screen, and at very least, had discussion with my students as I hoped they would be a ‘better’ generation than us.

After explaining the previous reason, my second guess seemed so small, less serious and insignificant. However, little voice inside my head told me, we should find ways to let it go, we should tell someone that the pain was here, we should draw the trace showing that the sorrow was once here. The little heartbreak I didn’t have the courage to tell anyone, so I beared it all alone. To call it little but in truth I would summon all my vocabulary just to articulate this ‘little’ emotion. So I wrote poetry, so I tried to write a poem. I wrote my poem in Bahasa Indonesia, describing how my steps have slowed a little, perhaps I need to tend these steps, watched closely the wounds so it might heal soon. I must say that the poem depicted what’s inside my heart and I felt quite satisfied with it. Funny how today I also found a post ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you write mediocre poetry’, that surely brightened up my day. I nodded ‘yes I did write that mediocre poetry’.

I didn’t mean to compose the paragraphs with such contrast reasons, but that’s all I could manage to write. Little did you know, I started this writing early this morning then continued it at night just before my bed time. This whole day I tried to piece together words hoping that what I’ve written would hold some meaning. I was still feeling uneasy in my stomach by the time I wrote this, yet I had to keep going, I pushed myself to finish this piece. Tomorrow will probably be packed as usual, but I hope to still find time to write a review of ‘The Dragon Republic’, my 5/5 recent read. I wondered how do people usually close their writing because it seemed I had trouble to find a good one. Let’s stay sane and take a good care of our health everyone. I truly hope that the things we are currently fighting and dealing with, will turn out well in the end.