Time after time, she trembled with agony. It has been awhile since the last time she saw the city with her own eyes. She spent many hours in a daze in the comforts of her own house where everything was bright and warm. The sun shone through the big, large windowpanes. Every morning of these several months, she woke up too early even for her liking. She tried to live, even for a couple of hours, inside the darkness that enveloped her room and imagined how the room slowly expanded and filled itself with unimaginable creatures seemingly came and gathered solely for the purpose of hurting her. Above her head, she had something lurking. It sounded like crickets, seemingly forever rubbing its legs. She remembered it vaguely that she woke up to these sounds. Although not always. Sometimes, she couldn't force herself to get back to sleep. At one time, one of these creatures managed to chop one of her hands off. It pained her a bit. She took a deep breath as she put all her attention to one hand and thought hard to grow her arm back as it used to, cell by cell, vein by vein, before finally managed to grow her fingers back, one by one. There was a deep sting lingered minutes after it completely healed.Â
It was truly unbecoming to think about a old wound, especially when you needed to get a move on at life. Mornings often went unceremoniously full of unwelcoming surprises and she fully intended to digest them slowly, yet hesitantly for fear of how the crowd might mistake her routines as a life choice. It was not! Routines usually consisted of taking a quick, cold shower and cooking her simple breakfast before eating them while listening to recently curated playlist of sound of the 90s.Â
She didn't recall if she ever had any odd habits related to eating, but she thought she intentionally ate a double portion everytime because it meant she ate one portion after all. It was somehow there was one more guy eating half of anything she had on her plate. It frightened her, actually. Else than these oddities, anyone would wish if anything could go a tad bit differently from one day to another. She wasn't bored, she thought far from it, she had a lot going on in her head. Only today, one of her neighbors got himself caught walking naked out of the hypermart near the police station. Nobody understood what type of sensations he tried to bring to the community. The public only knew the Police was never as far as paying attention to him, so naturally, no one got inside any bars due to this simple, seemingly obscene, although comparatively benign conduct.Â
Last week, we had a sort of parade: a mini one. Nothing was particularly interesting about this parade. The neighbors just thought it would be awfully nice to go around and visit each other's houses in traditional clads. It would add a nice touch to arisan ibu-ibu. The children were involved! They wore make-up, too! Imagine going around in pretty frocks and blushes on your cheeks. The merriment lasted for a week. They prepared their clothes and bouquets. I said bouquet, but it was actually a few flags fastened together with a candy glued to each flag. I wasn't sure why they wrapped the flags together as bouquet and I never asked them why either. I thought this year would mark the third year I joined in the parade. This type of crowd never failed to evoke in me a certain emotions that I tried to avoid feeling whenever I could. They made me feel I wasn't invited.Â
There was going to be something different this year. I had with me a boyfriend to accompany me going around the neighborhood. He was tall and rather muscular. He talked non-stop of his work and his hobby that not much people would understand and, I guessed I was included in 'not-much-people' category in his mind, because he stood me up at the last minute and it was exactly because his not-much-people-would-understand hobby called him. I didn't see why he wasn't there with me in the parade. I felt really uncomfortable, all of a sudden. This was new, equally unpleasant feelings I felt. We loved newness. We loved updates. We loved the new feelings of promising new romance and how it probably ended before I even knew his cousins' names.Â
I didn't know how to call this feeling we had for this type of hype. There's nothing trendy about being by yourself, and thus, it was never a decision to live as if by yourself. Nevermind what the community believed about me. The world currently only needed two things: beauty and gold!
