MAKE BAD CHOICES

There isn't anything that I can say about the patterns we all fall into in life and the roles we sink into and become complacent to. I understand this sort of mutual acceptance and loss of will we all experience at some point in our lives because sometimes there truly isn't anything you can do about where you are in that moment, and the course your life is taking. It's almost as if everything you’ve worked hard towards achieving becomes nothing but a mangled mess and you're stuck stranded on a desolate road trying to somehow find your way home.

There's this sort of dull itching that comes from acceptance. No sense of fight or doubt just complete resolution in your current set reality.

Have you ever eaten a slice of dry toast? And genuinely felt some sort of excitement from the action because I have. And I genuinely want to feel sorry for myself for the dullness of simply accepting all the things that are out of my control and just riding the wave of fuckery that is my life. Because it's been so bad thus far there's simply no use fighting it.

I want to tell you to have faith and be strong. To hope for something better for yourself; as in darkness soon comes the sun, and everything will be alright. But as much as we all need some sort of motivation and reassurance we also need to up our doses of reality one red pill at a time.

A lot of the time things don’t go our way, life is sad, painful and downright a whole shit circus designed just to torture you. Life is by no means easy, it wasn't designed to be that way and if you're somehow one of god's favorites and the lucky ones please go out of your way to do something for someone who can't do for themselves because you simply don't know just how good you have it.

Life is crap, you are validated in whatever you're going through and it's okay to break down and just accept how shitty your life is right now. If you need a break from being hopeful and fighting and praying, take it. If you want to relax from constantly trying to be better, and do more for yourself, take a damn break. If you need to relax from reshaping yourself to fit the mould that society has created for you, please by all means do so.

Even if no one else gets it I do, because I’m doing just that. I’m currently living the meme of the dog sitting in a room on fire and you know what?

It’s not fine, and it’s not okay, but there’s nothing I can do about it so I’m just going to wait ‘till the flames burn out and see how much ash and soot I can wipe off the lenses of my glasses.

And that's honestly that’s completely valid and well within the new norms we should  allow for ourselves, too many of us have a superior sense of humour gifted to us by our mutual yet individual childhood traumas, and that's fucked up; I guess this has been your vibe check.

I’ve written about half a dozen article drafts on this topic. Being non-American makes it difficult to add anything groundbreaking to what has already been said about racism. So instead of commenting on a topic that I’m not well informed on, I have started educating myself and learning something new almost everyday.

So far I have been reading mostly—news articles, essays, and in some occasions, informative videos. I have also read the book Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall, and would love to read other books with similar themes. Maybe I’ll write a short essay on what I learned from reading it. If you have recommendations, any format, please drop them in our asks.

I would also like to learn more about social issues in my country. I have been apprehensive in learning the history of social issues in Indonesia mainly because it is uncomfortable for me to talk about and every time I talk about it with different people with differing opinions, they are mostly biased and I don’t get any closer to the truth. Although I’m not sure how ready I am to have conversations about it, now is not the time to step away from it anymore, I can get the facts with the help of the internet and books.

To anyone who might be reading this, I encourage you to educate yourself on racism and its related topics. With only less than a month of educating myself further, elements of racism are always present in other issues and it also gives me the chance to reflect on my own biases. It informs me on things that I already know, or what I think I know. Think about it. You can truly benefit from it.

WindSoap is a space created by two people, Wind and Soap, to be unapologetically unafraid and uncensored in the words we have to say. We’re idealists who’ve had to learn firsthand the harsh realities of life and just want more for those who are in the same position as themselves and their former selves.

It started out as an idea for a podcast; it came from the deepest of deep conversations we would have, on topics from life (living it and wanting to end it), self-identity, boys, and even the parts of the female body we’ve all universally never been taught about and have to search outside of ourselves to find out more about. We would talk for hours — and to this day still do — about things that so many people are too afraid to, especially because it comes from two unique perspectives.

WindSoap is exactly that, Wind and Soap; we met as international students in Beijing who during the first years of study didn’t know much of each other besides the others existence, and it wasn't until a mutual friend and the strange circumstance of the God awful cram week for finals in a coffee shop really brought us together. We couldn’t honestly tell you the exact point when we became friends, but what we can say is that seemingly overnight we went from being virtual strangers to the purest of confidants, how we became close friends, none of us can recall. Which is the best way to become friends with someone, not the fickle attitude of hating someone you don't know just because it's the norm until you somehow get to know them and realise how wrong you were, but that's something for another day. The greatest thing with us is we’re the comical odd pair, the best of friends to the point of being sisters despite this great divide separating us (distance), and the obvious telling us apart. Short and tall, Indonesian and Zimbabwean, our differences in culture, rich history, race and social standing are what could have stopped us from becoming what we are now and our similarities in love, life, and experience are what has prompted us to create something not just for us, but for someone out there who really needs it.

I think that WindSoap is something that came from an idea birthed by two people who found comfort, safety and acceptance in themselves. Two people who managed to shoulder the weight of their childhood, adulthood, and its scars on their own for so long, they didn't know it could be possible to find someone who would always be there for them; on their darkest days while crying heavily into the phone or on their dumbest days while one disways the other from shaving their head but ends up praising them for it in the end because that's what friendship is all about.

The night we came up with our podcast idea we went all in, came up with the name “WindSoap”, the tagline and more or less the basis of what it would be about. But with toying with the idea of starting a podcast and having certain entails in place is now an idea that’s been shelved indefinitely. But, from it sparked the idea to rather start a blog together, with both of us so far apart, it seems like a better alternative. The same name and tagline as well as content, but instead of it being a spoken conversation one could feel like their listening in on or are a part of, it’s a written one.

Even after taking the first steps towards it we both got caught up in our own lives away from the blog, but its always been something on the backburner, and now after all this time is something we’re ready to give to the world; no excuses.

Welcome to WindSoap, the inner vaginal monologue. A blog that’s simply a conversation about all the things you have late night conversations about, and all the things you’re also too afraid to say out loud and just generally, want to know so much more about. Its a conversation and a place where we’ll be able to explore and share our views and interest with freedom and no judgment. It may be brutal, and it will be honest, it may even be a bit graphic but its here, and we’re happy to share this with you and start this journey.