Adios Blogspot

I wish I had a more poignant way of saying this, but it's late and I've used up a lot of my creative writing juices today, so basically: adieu blogspot. Thank you for putting up with all of my emotional rants, lovelorn ravings, heartbroken posts, the occasional inspiring story but mostly just a ton of mental diarrhea for the past 8 years :")

Anyone wanting to still keep up with all of this can move on to my new micro-blogging platform at antiaj.tumblr.com. It's basically my same old mash-up of thoughts and random prose, but packaged in a more modern, more colorful, overall generally more aesthetically pleasing format is all. Enjoy!

Dear terrorist,

Dear terrorist,

Did your body not revolt?
When you strapped on that backpack
Filled with explosives,
Knowing full well the end result.

Did your feet not hesistate?
When you walked into that square
Getting ready,
To spread your message of hate.

Did your hand not burn?
When you squeezed the trigger
Felling innocents,
Without a hint of concern.

Did your mind not scream?
Begging you to stop
When you pulled out that bomb
Killing one, two
Lives not yours for the taking.

Dear terrorist,

Did you not remember?

That your body, mind, hands and feet

Will all bear witness to the sin you’ve committed

Once God has brought you before Him. 

In memory of the victims of Thursday's #ThamrinTerror. May the best of humanity always prevail against those who have lost their humanity. #WeAreNotAfraid #KamiTidakTakut

Let me be.

Sometimes you need to disconnect from the world. Detach all of the wireless wires connecting you to the infinte flow of information, silence all notifications of supposedly important events, and just reconcile with the silence and stagnance of nothingness. That blissful place where time seems to stop and you are neither rushing towards something nor leaving anything behind. You simply are there. Present. Somewhere in that other dimension where time and space are not passing you by like a vortex.

No sé que estoy haciendo, lol

Hoy fui a mi universidad con mi amiga. Yo no tenia nada para hacer, solo quería ir allá para encontrar con mi amiga para comprar un libro para mi facultad. No me gusta el docente que nos ordenó a comprar el libro, pero qué puedo hacer? Es obligatorio. Bueno, cuando llegamos a nuestro facultad, mi amiga llamó a alguien que estaba cerca. Resulta que la persona que ella llamó fue alguien que hace mucho tiempo me gusta. No voy a decir su nombre, pero creo que ya sabe bien quien es. Pero ahora él ya esta en una relación con uno de mis mejores amigas de secundaria. A veces, todavía siento un poco tímida en frente de el, pero ahora no tanto como antes. Todavía estamos amigos y podemos hablar normalmente como colegas del clase y por eso estoy feliz. No sé porque estoy escribiendo esto aquí pero solo quería contarla a alguien o alguna cosa.

Si, eso es todo. Bueno, también quería ver si mi español ya esta suficiente para escribir, y resulta que si. Jaja. Me alegro.

Final-Year Fears

It's frightening me how much uncertainty I'm facing at the moment. The feeling of having so many choices yet none at all at the same time. For a person that writes out a daily to-do list of things that needs to be done within the course of each day, I am terrified by the fact that I cannot do the same with my long-term future plans, especially those concerning my career and education.  

I feel like I've become my own worst enemy, my own harshest critic. I have to repeatedly remind myself that I have achieved great things in the past. I say this not in arrogance but with utmost humility. As in writing this I have nothing but hesitation in my fingers, their fearful nature almost stopping me in my recognition of my own greatness. Why am I doing this? Because I constantly feel that I am not good enough. I feel that I have made no significant contribution. No significant advancement to my skills nor to my employability if that is even a word. I feel that every major accomplishment that I've achieved so far has been due to the influence of my father, a figure who I deeply respect and admire but under whose shadow I constantly feel burdened by. Like the moon, I am not my own person, I am merely a reflection of the greatness of this man. I do not like to admit it, because it makes me forget all of the accomplishments that I was able to achieve of my own accord. And it makes me doubt the skills that I do have right now. 

What troubles me now is that I know I have my skills, my potentials, yet lately it's been so hard to find opportunities for me to exercise them freely, to let others know that yes I can do this and I can do that. What I am devoid of right now is opportunity. And the courage to pursue opportunities when they do come. Please God, give me a chance to show others what I can do. Not just for my own sake but also for the sake of being able to fulfil my task in this world. For the thing that I fear for the most is still the thought of having lived in vain, of having lived a life that was worthless and unremarkable. 

Insomnia

With head pressed half in pain,
but eyes still far from closing,
I opened my ears to the midnight refrain
of a million cicadas composing.
And hoped with hope that was almost in vain,
that my body would soon be dozing...

Found this gem on one of HONY's photo comments

Life, summarized in one concisely powerful paragraph:

"I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life. I've learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as making a "life." I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I've learned that I still have a lot to learn. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

- Maya Angelou

This whole week has been filled with a lot of 'I wish's.
I wish we didn't have to end this way.
I wish you would still want to fight for us.
I wish you hadn't made all those promises to me.
I wish we had never met.

I still feel myself as being quite fragile after all this. I've been trying, very very hard to put this all past me. But, this is honestly a first for me, so I guess it'll take a bit longer to get used to. But no matter how much my mind wraps itself around thoughts of you and us and how we could've been, my heart in all its calmness thankfully keeps reassuring me that I'm doing the right thing. It wouldn't be called a challenge if it wasn't physically and emotionally draining like this. So, I know that this sacrifice is something that I need to go through.

Ya Rabb, I surrender my heart to you. I pray for You to never let me waste a single moment of my time with negative thoughts. I pray for You to give me the strength to focus on the great things You have sent me to do. And I pray for You to never let me stray from Your path. For there truly is nothing I fear more than that..

Wise Words From an Old Friend :)

Moving On

You see, moving on is not about forgetting what's keeping you. It's to get rid of ill feelings that attached to it. So if you had a boyfriend and want to move on, you don't forget about him. You lose feelings you associate with him--feelings thatshouldn't be there anymore. If you had a bad grade and you want to move on, you don't burn them down. You get rid of the grief and sadness and do better next time. If you were left behind and you want to move on, you don't erase traces of them.

I do too.

I am not forgetting, okay? I won't.

Moving on is not about not keeping pictures anymore, nor not telling stories about stuffs you want to move on from. It's not about pretending that nothing has changed either because things changed and it will always change--it's inevitable.

Moving on, for me, is not about stop loving, or missing, or remembering things that are nice or bad.
Moving on is knowing things changed and being fine with it.

And moving on has nothing to do with replacing things with other things. Or replacing people with other people.

Places in heart are special and they don't take second guests. There are no places in heart that are reserved for two (or three. Or four.). Once it's there then it's there forever. Fortunately, heart is a very vast place and it will always make room for new things and new people.


So move on.

Don't try to replace things because it's not going to work. And don't try to take up someone else's space in one's heart because they were never for you.

You got your own.

Credits to: http://ranikuncipohon.blogspot.com/2013/12/moving-on.html

Fight, Flight, or Forget?

I learned something new about myself today, whenever I'm in an emotionally overwhelming situation I have the tendency to shut down. It's as if all of my sensory abilities go numb and anything vaguely resembling emotions fail to register on my mind. This is what happened to me yesterday, when I got the news, a million different feelings came bubbling up to the surface at once: anger, sadness, surprise, pain, everything. But then, in the span of what felt like only 5 seconds, it stopped. It didn't dissipate, or diminish, or decrease in any gradual way, it just stopped. If I was a soda bottle being shaken up, I'd say it was like I not only held the cap closed to prevent the bottle exploding, but I somehow made the all the pressure inside it disappear, because what I felt after that and still feel now is just a serene calmness. I'm not sure where I learned to develop this kind of self-preservation mechanism, but frankly I don't really care, I'm just grateful that I did.

It still surprises me though how easily I'm getting through all this. I'm not even flinching when I see his face or name any more, but I know that I'm just skirting the feelings. I can still feel it. It's like walking on a fragile icy pond that you know you can plunge into at any given moment where the ice is thinnest. To put it in the same analogy, I've been skating carefully, tentatively. It's made me slow yes, and somewhat absent-minded at times, but the important thing is I haven't fallen through, and I intend to keep it that way.

3..2..1..

23/11/2013

Haven't talked to you since Thursday now. Kinda regret not being at home to chat with you that night, HI Corner wasn't really that worth it. I wanna send you another message, ask how you're doing, but I keep being torn whether it'd be the right thing to do or not. Maybe this is God's way of pushing us apart. Maybe we weren't meant to be. It hurts, this uncertainty. And what's killing me the most is that I don't know why you haven't replied to my previous messages. I promised I wouldn't disappear on you. I hope you won't do it to me. I've always had the tendency to take love for granted, perhaps because people have always so willingly given it to me. I know now how much it hurts to not have that love returned in full at a time when I want it to be. Thank you for teaching me this, I needed this lesson.

24/11/2013

On the bus to Jakarta now, the AEON 2013 welcoming party is tonight, I'm going with Ucup and Male. Kinda reluctant to go on Primajasa now ever since that last time we said goodbye. That was definitely one of the worst bus rides I'd ever had. I didn't even cry that much when my grandfather died.
It's been two months now and I think both of us have gotten over what people call the 'honeymoon' stage. We're finally starting to question ourselves whether or not we are each other's destined path.
It's funny you know, your circumstances are exactly like mine when I was in high school. 3 people. 1 friend, 1 significant other, and 1 who loved unconditionally albeit as confused as you are. Normally, I think I should be mad. Mad because it seems like you're placing me as a last resort, someone you can fall back on cause everyone else has rejected. And yet, surprisingly I'm not mad at all. I'm not sure if my lack of emotion proves my calmness and maturity in dealing with this or if this is simply a numbing reflex I've adapted to cope with the pain I know I'm supposed to feel.
Writing is helping though, so thank you for inspiring me with the idea. Seems like love really is a drug, and addiction is just inevitable. That's why it hurst so much whenever I lose contact with you for so long, it's like I'm detoxing my heart.

Found one of Lang Leav's poems that describes precisely how I feel. Perhaps we both were each other's angels sent to teach something or help at a perilous time: you through your conversion to Islam and me through my grandpa's death. Perhaps this is why it's so easy for me to let you go, because I know you've fulfilled your purpose as I have mine. And though it saddens me that we will be strangers once more, you always will be among the sweetest of memories in my heart.

25/11/2013
The End.
It's official. For now at least :)
Yesterday's AEON reunion taught me something very valuable: goodbyes aren't always forever.
See how beautifully and perfectly God plans everything? He never lets you go until you're really really ready. I wasn't ready before. But after last night, I became ready, and now I'm not afraid. I'm not sad or depressed or anything I should be feeling considering my current situation. I am letting go wholeheartedly this time, no more going back, and I am jotting down now all the lessons I've learned from you:
I've learned the power of prayer.
I've learned to trust in God's love.
I've learned to never make promises I can't keep.
I've learned to be grateful of the love I receive.
And I've learned about the kind of love that I deserve: one that never seeks to change me but will always be proud of the real me, even in all my silences. But most importantly, one that will be able to guide me to His Heaven. Now that I know there are people like you, I will never settle for anything less.
My prayers for you will still be the same: I pray for God to reunite us if that is His will, but if not then I pray for Him to guide and protect you in His neverending grace, and to give you someone who can continue to guide you in Islam.

AYVP! :')

A home doesn't always have to be in the literal sense of a roof over your head, that's more the definition of a house. A home is where you feel utterly comfortable in with people whom you love and love you back. I can always return to Setiu or Melaka or even UKM, but it'd never be the same as it was when we were all there. I cherish those moments very dearly now.

What it doesn't mention is that "deep emotional" in this case often means missing those people you're separated from in the most heartwrenching of ways. My family. My grandfather. My grandmother. The friends I've made in so many different occasions. You. I think I'm currently experiencing more mizpahs than should be shouldered by one person, but I guess this is my challenge in life :)

:)

Every time you feel lonely or disconnected, remember this; you are far from being singular and isolated. You are a part of a greater Whole....so infinite and all-encompassing there are no human words to explain it. Every breath, every heartbeat is intimately known and loved beyond measure. ~ Creator

There are days like today when I really really miss you. And yet I know I can't let myself be tempted to contact you, because it'll just make things harder and more confusing for us again. Last night, I braved myself to read our last conversation in FB. I thought I was going to be emotionally drained after reading it, but surprisingly it calmed me and gave me the strength to hold true to the decision we made. I'm holding on to that last promise I made to you, that I wouldn't be sad or depressed just because we won't be having any more special sundays or late night chats. It's hard, and as you can see (if you could read this), there are days when it's especially hard to keep true to that promise. But writing like this is helping me a bit. It seems all I really needed was a place to vent out my thoughts and feelings. You were that place for me for almost a month and I became addicted to the solace that I found in sharing those thoughts and feelings with you. Addicted to the happiness and gratitude that I felt in knowing that someone was always ready to listen and care enough to comfort me and make me laugh again when I was feeling down. The thing that still saddens me until now is that when I said goodbye to you, I realized that I didn't just lose a person whom I dearly loved and loved me back, but I also lost one of the best friends I've ever had (even if for only a short period of time).

If you are magically reading this somehow, don't worry, I'm okay. I promised you that and I'll keep true to my promise. That first promise to you I can't keep though, because I still feel that there's a chance for us, and if God wills it then there's really no one else I'd rather wait for for all my life. I love you martian man, I miss saying this to you, but hopefully there'll be a time again when I can say it directly to you and not just write it down in paltry little words like this.

As you said to me before, "kung ikaw ang nakatakda para sa akin, siguradong tayo'y magkikitang muli, mahal kita, mahal na mahal." :)

Another Crazy Experience

I will remember your sweet semi-smile, your turtle-face, your sharp intake of breath before you speak.
I will remember the way you ask permission to have your cheesy moments, and all the lame jokes and pick-up lines you come up with from God knows where.
I will remember the way you poke my cheeks and my sides at random intervals and how you always remind me not to cry whenever I get the least bit emotional.
I will remember your smooth stubby hands and the desperation yet strength you had when you grasped mine.
I will remember the way that you're just an overall hopeless romantic who listens to slow instrumental songs from a world music album.
And I most definitely will remember all of the crazy, spontaneous moments we had: stargazing on the beach, painting each other's faces, searching for halal food in a Chinese night market, climbing a 4-storey rooftop, going on a bike ride along the Melaka River at nighttime, eating porridge with chocolate chip cookies on another rooftop, trekking through a forest with no established trail, jogging a different route every day, finding absurd synonyms for mainstream words and phrases, laughing at the pick-up lines you slip into your PDF code for our group report, proposing to me under a semi-lit tree with a self-drawn marker ring, proclaiming your shahadah through Skype with me.

My words here are nowhere near sufficient to capture the spirit of the moments we've shared and my gratitude to God is beyond words for letting us share those moments together :)

Goodbye, for now :)

"Sometimes, Allah takes us away from things, from people, from familiarity to unknown paths, to the completely unfamiliar so that we can once again trace back our paths to Him."

I know now what I did wrong last time. This time, I did not do it again. This time, I know what lesson I should've learned. And God help me, I will never forget it.

Thank You for easing me in a decision that I should've taken a long time ago. Thank You for taking me back under Your guidance. I pray that I will never, ever, forsake it ever again. And thank You, for teaching it to me gently, and through, literally, one of the best teachers I could have ever hoped for.

He is Yours to guide now, as I am Yours to guide too. I have no fear of being alone, for as long as I have my belief in You, there is no such thing as loneliness. Thank You for making me go through that challenge, for I know now that You have great things set out for me. I can only hope that I am strong enough in my faith to meet Your expectations.

"Ya Allah, we, your servants, are weak. We fall into ruts, we move backwards, we keep tripping instead of running, but help us keep pushing, accept our tiny actions, our little smiles, our miniscule deeds, even if they weren't performed with complete heart. Ya Allah, we are trying, and you know the sincerity of your slaves. Please help us keep pushing."

Selamat Hari Tergila-Gila martian man :) 

May we have endless crazy days to come.

I Can Get Used to This - David Choi

No need for words really, this song just says it all :')

An Ode to My Greatest Inspiration :)

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal. - Albert Pike

One of the greatest figures in my life passed away today, though high in rank, he was always known first and foremost for his humility and simpleness in life. And it showed, for he died in the most beautiful way and while smiling the most radiant of smiles. Translator and ambassador, but above all my humble, funny, loving grandfather. I can only hope to follow in your footsteps. May Allah SWT grant the best of places for you in His Heaven. 

Innalillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un wa inna ila rabbina lamunqalibun.

http://news.liputan6.com/read/153780/widodo-sutiyo-pendamping-setia-pak-harto