Love is Love is Love is Love

“if you have to describe in one word, what do you think love is?” I asked myself on one fine day of self reflection. I think the old me would romanticize love and describe it as magical but I realize that love was never actually magical by default. Love is labor. Love is hardwork. Love takes time. Love sacrifices. and sometimes, love is painful. 

So what is love?

Maybe the real question is: can you actually describe something so abstract in one word? Love might mean something different for each person. does that make love individual? I don’t think so. But if it meant differently for everyone, does that mean love is never universal? can it actually unites people?

Then I come to this one perfect word that I think describes love perfectly, or at least, my view and opinion of love. 

Love is liberating.

Love should be liberating.

Think about the cliche quotes about if you like a flower you would pick it but if you love the flower you would let it grow. I don’t know why but I think that sentence describe what love is. it is the ultimate form of acceptance. when you love something/someone, you like them as it is, and you would wish the best for them. and that, my friend, is the purest form of love I can ever know.

Sometimes love means letting go. And as someone who’s not very good with goodbyes, that also means that love sometimes can be painful; like, annoyingly painful. yet it tells us to come back again and again and again.

Ah love, how do I deal with you?

Ah love, why does it hurt so much to lose someone who was never written to be mine?

Kelvin here, signing off.

On Disappointment

i guess its true what they say, the fact that you can never know how strong you are, or even the fact that you can be that strong, until being strong is the only choice you have. People say that life is very dynamic, that you should expect nothing from life. All you gotta do is to live it the best way you can. It seems like by doing that, the universe will conspire to give you just the best too. 

but what if in certain moments you thought you had given your best but it was still not enough? who created these standards anyway, who gets to decide which one is worthy and which one is not? the system is funny. 

all my life i thought i had gathered enough supplies to stand by my own on this journey of life. i was never the cool and popular kid, and so I learned to depend on only me. I was also never the joker of the class, and so I tried to help  everyone as much as I could; at least I’ve given them something. these kind of mindset helped me feel better about myself. but does it actually make me a better person, or is all just an illusion?

I just realized that maybe I’ve never bravely faced my flaws and disappointments. I always try to make it up by doing everything else that I could. I accept my flaws by doing more and more and more. by raising my expectations that its okay if I can’t do this thing BECAUSE I can do this other thing. Why can’t I just stop at “it’s okay if I can’t do this, we’ll try again.”? The fact that my society, the circle I went into, have zero tolerance of being wrong doesn’t make it any better either. 

I guess what I’m feeling very sad about was the feeling of inadequacy. that you are not good enough. that you are nothing compared to those people. I should’ve known better since there are literally 7 billion people in the world and I’m not even in the top 50% of that. but I thought I did what everyone was doing, so why don’t I get the same results? it’s not a great feeling knowing that you disappoint yourself right in this moment. not the mention the additional burden of disappointing your loved ones and the feeling of humiliation you get after failing. ah. life sometimes do suck. 

now this should be the part where I usually write about my self reflections on this certain experience and what we can learn from it. but surprise surprise here I am disappointing myself again. one of the reasons why I haven’t posted much on my blog in the past 2 years or so is because I haven’t been able to create coherent writings to say what I want to say. it’s getting too loud in my head and organizing it takes a lot of time that I’d rather spend doing anything else. this is a bad coping mechanism and I should’ve known better, but ha knowledge has no correlation with motivation, or so do the researches say. 

but I guess moral of the story was that I need to realize that I am not that trained to be strong. all my life I have lived a relatively smooth life. I always have roof upon my head, foods to eat at the table, I can splurge in tertiary things such as cellphones and laptops, come to think of it, what more do you need? 

this too shall pass darling. this too shall pass.

Echo #3 : Perks of Being Alone

"you know what comes along with being alone?"

"loneliness?"

"no, peace."

Photo Journal : Un Jardin Sur Le Nil

but maybe darling -- just maybe, heaven looks like this.

special thanks to Nadim, Khamila, Dila for their time
Kak Dince, Erlangga and Ais for the wardrobe
Iqbal for the Make Up
constructive criticism are very welcomed!

What's Next?

WHERE HAVE I BEEN? I know, right.

I always proudly say that I am an introvert, but I cant deny that I always long to have some kind of social connection, or wanting to go to social gatherings more than I thought I would want. Looking back, I think I have spent too much of my free time going out with friends. Even if it’s only for a simple meal or even an actual day out. I also joined some organisations in the past year and they have quite a schedule: recruitments, strategic meetings, executing programs and activites, you name it. I guess partly that’s because it feels effortless to spend time with your loved ones. I am one who gets bored easily, so the idea of spending time without feeling like you actually spend the time (you know how time flies when you’re surrounded by amazing people?) amused me. 

it isn’t necessarily bad, but I’ve been wondering if it does any good at this point. I haven’t done the things I used to love in a long time: blogging and journaling my thoughts and feelings. In this modern and digital world, everything can be a content or a way of gaining publicity. But I wrote this blog mainly for myself, so that I can look back and see where I have been and where I am now. Whether I am making some progress or not, whether I am stuck in the same loop over and over again. Let’s call it a way of reflecting myself (BHE much?). It actually requires dedicated time, and I haven't had that what with all the dine outs and gatherings and events. Most of the time I ended up tired and fell asleep in my bed only to do it all over again the next day.

The thing is, the euphoria you get after a social gathering or an event or even a serious (and potentially boring) meeting but one that generates meaningful results/decisions is very addictive. You feel…actualized? If that’s a word. You feel like you have done something to better things. You feel like you actually mean something in this big, scary world. You feel like finally you can say “hey! I have a share in this too!”

Addiction can be scary because it forces you to do it over and over again. Per definition, you are addicted when you can no longer help but to do it. I don’t know if I was in that stage or not, but I’m glad to finally realize that all good things must come to an end. It’s reassuring to believe that I will find other ways to actualize myself again. I guess you could say that I have found closure in this part of my journey to adulthood. In the meantime, I might as well enjoy and use this time to refocus my purpose. I can use this as a turning point to actually rethink of what I want to achieve with all of this and whether this has been the right way to do it.

Okay, so enough now with the contemplation. My last post was in 2017 and A LOT has happened since. I can wait to archive my journey, thoughts, feelings and self realization in the past 2 years. If I can actually remember and put them in a coherent piece of writing, that is.

Okay then, got tons of shit to do.

Kelvin here,

Signing off.

Echo #2 : You.

When you’ve been looking for something for so long and then on one perfect day you finally found it, can you actually ever forget about it?

                                    Can you ever get over it? 

Can I ever get over you?

Cuivis Dolori Remedium Est Patientia.

Been reading this great book by Ika Natassa titled The Architecture of Love and it brings back the waves. It never goes away, but I am trying to never show it again to the point where I almost believe that I am healing. I thought I have mastered the art of swimming/surfing to the coast, yet here I am diving deeper into the abyss. Deeper and deeper until it becomes too deep. Funny how I cried less and less and less, yet I miss you more and more and more.

I think I find a lot of similarities with Raia, the main character of the story. The way she thinks. The way she uses words (in the novel, she is a writer). The way she lost and try to find herself. And also, the way she fell in love. I almost want to meet her only to remember that she is only fictional.

"Banyak hal yang lebih mudah disarankan daripada dilakukan. Seperti meminta maaf, memulai sesuatu dari awal, pindah, sampai menyatakan cinta." said Ika in her book. I don't know which word I really want to say. Both of them, I guess. Yet at the same time, I also have to start over. Wow. Now I know why it felt so hard.

"Satu hal yang menenangkan dari patah hati adalah paling tidak, tidak ada seorang pun yang kebal darinya," she said again.

I think the hardest person to be patient with is yourself. I have this high expectation of myself to handle everything "like an adult". Even my therapist tell me to do so. Come to think of it, what does handling everything like an adult means? Does it mean being "professional", able to function properly as a productive human being, part of a bigger and more productive society, even though you're falling apart everyday inside? Is it even possible? Is it even humane to even expect something like that from someone? What kind of world are we live in right now? They all said it's a cruel one, but never have I ever thought it would be this heartless.

I'm someone who always try to do something as fast and efficient as I possibly can. But with heartbreak, there's no instant fix. As far as I know, there's no medication that can take away the pain (hell, we don't even know the exact pathophysiological mechanism of a heartbreak!) there might be some things that momentarily relieves the pain such as spending time with friends or being busy and productive, but a great physician treats the disease and not the illness, right? At least now I know how it feels to have an (seemingly) incurable disease.

They said time heals everything. If time is the drug, then the amount of it is the dose. I wonder how much do I need for it to heal the scars and the wounds you left me with. I wonder if it was because the scars were too deep, or the cuts keep forming new ones everyday. "Love someone who didn't love you back, and you'll die daily" they said.

I hate how even after all this time, you still have this great effect in my life, the way I think and do everything. But maybe I have worn a rose-stained glass a tad too thick for you to handle. I'm sorry.
To you, my achilles heel.
You still are.

Signing off,
K