Jakarta, 2020.
My last non-work travel in 2020 was at the beginning of the year when I visited Jakarta for rasasastra launching & art exhibition.
30 January, 2020
Jakarta 10 PM air hit me like a truck. Hot and heavy.
Had a long anxious walk to the arrival gate and being stopped by a stranger who picked up my ID Card. I didn’t thank him enough. Something about Jakarta that I simply don’t talk about. Told Seetha yesterday that the city scares the heck out of me. I was born here, and although it’s not much different from Surabaya — where I was raised, I have zero interest to fit myself or befriend Jakarta in any way.
I keep saying this over and over again though; i love, love, love its public transportations.
Faked it till i made it on the bus ticket box as if I had been there million times. When really every ounce of my knowledge relies on Trafi.
Among the lingering kretek smokes and passengers bonded by hidden paranoia behind their blue paper mask in the waiting room, my stomach rumbled with regret from the airport's overpriced pisang goreng and nasty iced cappuccino. Which I must say, a daily occurrence from the impulsive buying tick I have been trying to get rid of for years. Every time it happens, it feels like going back to square one. So here I am. No longer starving for all the wrong reasons.
Someone shouted, “Kemayoran!”, I dragged my nervous body. There were only two other people on the bus. I sat by the window, the leg rest didn't want to come up. Or maybe I was using it wrong.
My phone screen lit up. Text from Pipin,
“Bought you nasi, ayam, telur. Must eat.”
I chuckled,
and felt home.
My hungry heart growled.
Typed back,
“Will eat. See you in a bit. Did you get the Boncabe?”
1 February, 2020
“Thank you for being here, Tep!” Ko Ocep has said (or conveyed) it many times, on the text. To actually being told that in real life felt otherworldly. I chuckled and tightened my hug. Yes, I am here. I am here. Here. Warm and alive.
He let go, “I do remember you crying for hours somewhere in Kaliurang”, I nodded. It was six years ago. I was seventeen — confused, lonely, and scared. Strange first impression, I must say.
“Gosh, all those years listening to you telling me all things… in english!” He shook his head. I errupted in laughter. Blame it on ‘bilingual reduced emotional resonance’ — i wanted to say that but my therapist would’ve definitely high-fived Ko Ocep.
It was true though. Year after year, he constantly reminds me: “you’re here. At least you’re here.” And I come back every year with the same old faults or brand new bad decisions. Again and again, he taught me that I had the permission to feel, and not to feel. To enjoy mistakes. Prayed for me. Held me for hours in the middle of freezing cold mountain breeze almost midnight while I purged a decade of rotten demons I have bottled inside the closet of my chest. Literally putting in his physical effort because apparently, my panic attack also consisted of me punching myself. So, it was only fitting that he was the first person I actually sat down with and put in words what has been happening in the past year.
It was easier thought than done. In reality, I got distracted a lot by the incredible banh mi we were having for lunch.
I did manage to tell him about poetry and wonderful people I am abundantly thankful to call friends and yoga and meditation and taking my own path on faith and creating my own mind space for solitude, and the lesson on compliments..
But it was the easy stuff.
In fact, I couldn’t put together most of I actually wanted to say.
I did not know how.
My whole heart and soul had been rebuilt out of gratitude, and I couldn’t find a way to untangle even the slightest of how it transformed me inside out, upside down. Funny how some days contentment feels extremely new and unfamiliar, like new pair of shoes your skin hasn’t gotten used to.
I wanted to say, “I am here”.
Because it was perfectly enough of an explanation. I hoped it was.
We had coffee and talked about important things.
Like people who are the personification of thank you and sunshine. I have them now too. I want to be exactly that, too. The walk. The walk. I’m going to walk, too. And life is a dance floor, so dance. Dance. You do you. Your own rhythms and moves. I will, I said. Death — nothing to worry about. I agreed and without the wrong reasons this time. And we talked and talked, and more and more I am grounded.
I am here.
Six years later. Still confused, not lonely, sometimes scared; but I am here, finally. Here.
When we walked out to the opaque gray sky of Jakarta, I took a long deep breath, filling my chest with its chilly post-rain air. Now that I had caffeine in my system and refueled my tank of joy, I didn’t think i despise the city as much as I thought.
“What’s the name of this street again?” I giggled to my own inside joke.
Amused, he answered, again;
“Jalan Surabaya!”
I laughed my brain out.
