#december diary

Afternoon

I’ve grown up I guess. Must have. I go to meet a friend for college for lunch and suddenly I can’t remember if it was Oxford or Cambridge where I was supposed to study abroad junior year. It’s been five years. I’m an attorney now. New, of course. And engaged. Also new. I feel it. Those years. Who are you? I know the answer to that one. But I can’t remember who I was last time he looked at me. She was 19. Maybe 20. Full of fire and wit and a sizzling, biting acid running in her veins. I remember her, of course, but he remembers her better.

“We would study all night and you would show up for the 30 minute review session and get the highest grade without trying.” He laughs. I crinkle my nose. That was me. Petrified of my classmates and too anxious to approach the dining hall. A shaking, glass eyed savant wavering in and out of view. How must I have looked to them? My fiancé knows.

“You have an allure about you,” tape ripping and patching up mangled wrapping paper, “a mystique. People want to know you.”

I feel my arms. Strong now. Encased in a ribbed sweater and toned with years of hearty stews and carrying groceries until I could afford a gym. I try to remember.

I once thought I should pace myself with how many invites I accepted. I have to let people have time away from me, I thought, time where they can really have fun without me bringing it down.

My heart aches now. The remembering is a kind of pain. Not quite grief. More like tragedy. Watching a play where you know the ending but can do nothing to help the characters.

“You’ve always been so sure. Always wanted this. It’s good to see you get it.” He tells me. I trust him.

I blush at another memory. Summer heat sticky across my cheeks. Carrying in plastic bags full of pasta and rice and eggs to a humid, stuffy apartment. Blinking up coyly. Giggling. Wrenching away from the pulsating mass slowly eating through my skull. And later that summer. A swinging bench in a garden. No one on campus. Brown eyeliner smudged across my eyelids. Every sentence inching closer to a request. Every gesture a dare. The mass clinging tighter. My eyes begging behind black coated lashes. One movement and it would fall away for good. Chivalry survived just to spite me.

She had many open secrets, I am realizing. All of them walking around with tongue behind teeth. Lips quivering. I thought it would feel the same now. That boisterous, slick skinned laughter. But now we look at it. And I lost the youth or circumstance that made such a long summer feel beautiful. And I am grateful to return home. And the mass is long gone and even the scars have been plastered over.

I have grown up. And I am afraid I have been beautiful the whole time.

•••••

Evening

Sometimes I see a gorgeous piece of clothing and it tears me to pieces because I can feel the two-year later bargain bin edition that will trickle down to the world. The scratchy polyester lace and sheer, puckered chiffon. The bastardization of quality in the name of capital gains for a shrouded, sniveling crew of mega yacht billionaires. And I wince because I become that blouse. The linen trails through my bones and the cotton lace snakes up my throat.

Here I am. Young enough. A lovely thing meticulously crafted from a fine enough education and midnight mass of two. Something with the tailor’s chalk still visible. And I see it working. Those wide, grinding gears.

I become a caricature of myself. The light shines through me. And suddenly I am a suburban fantasy only vaguely yearning for the principles that were once woven behind my eyes.

•••••

Night

Ah, yes... 

It’s almost been a year since my last post. 

I’ve been writing a lot during these times, though, in my own journal. But most of them are just too personal to be shared with public. Or, most of them are simply not “qualified” enough for my standard to be put up on social media (well, now you know that i have this tendency to look “perfect” or at least, “classy”)

But now, i decided to put up some writings i have done in my journal, in this blog. All because one reason: I’m pregnant.

By the time i write this post, i’m 28W+1D pregnant. And there are so many learnings and contemplations that i want to share, not only to anyone who accidentally stumbled upon in this blog, but also--and most of all--my future children.

Yes. I want them to know their (my) story before they were born.

I have a pregnancy journal/diary though, which i intend to give to my future children once they’re married or reach my age (27). So, my upcoming posts will be taken from that journal/diary. I will put the date i originally wrote each of them, so it make sense to you because you’ll read it chronologically.

Also, most of them are in Bahasa Indonesia. Or maybe, sometimes, both Bahasa Indonesia and English.

So, um...