I have been asking myself why I didn’t post my annual year-end reflection. I did create something on New Year’s Eve, but as much as it felt good, it never felt right, so I never hit “Publish”. It suddenly makes sense now on my birthday eve: 2020 was never about the year itself. 2020 was always about the dichotomy between Twenty Seven and Twenty Eight – the most depressing and the most enlightening years of my twenties.
Today marks my last day of being Twenty Eight.
Growing up, my birthdays were always made to be special. It is a celebration of two kids. Twins take pride in the fact that they are never gonna celebrate a birthday alone. And celebrations they have been. Always full of warmth, food, hugs, and sincere prayers. Always a happy day.
More so, I really looked forward to be Twenty Eight.
Twenty Seven was tiring. It made me want to kill myself – the main reason why I frantically searched for therapy. Surviving Twenty Seven and reaching Twenty Eight felt like an oasis in the middle of the desert. I needed not to identify myself with being Twenty Seven. I knew Twenty Eight wouldn’t solve all my problems, but at least it was a validation of being officially a failure; it was a definition. I could at least live with being defined.
Twenty Eight started as a normal day at the office. Surprises from colleagues. Messages from friends and family. A week after, my birthday gift (from myself, of course) was materialized: a 2-days meditation retreat. Boy, was it a good start to something most unprecedented: a global pandemic.
Lockdowns were scary, because it could only mean one thing. I had to be back home, to the place I avoided as much as I could in Twenty Seven. The source of my happiness and sadness, juxtaposed in the angry conversations with the person I loved and hated the most. She is always a contradiction. And I, too, inherit those contradictions in the best/worst way possible (see the constant contradictions of my words here?).
I didn’t know that Twenty Eight would inspire.
I didn’t know that Twenty Eight would be wise.
I didn’t know that Twenty Eight would stop running away.
Because Twenty Four until Twenty Seven never stayed still. They ran away from their problems: self, parents, brother, friends, lovers, colleagues. The panaceas always came at the right time: business trips, holidays, conferences, long-term assignments, movements. But why, why then, did the same salt water always ran down my cheek, be it in a Doha prayer room or a Saint Petersburg apartment? Why did the same tugs at my heartstrings were persistent? They booked a flight from Boston to Melbourne. They followed me to the streets of Paris. They went with me to the lonely malls of Jakarta – always wondered whether my place in the world would ever exist.
Twenty Eight made me sit still. She made me listen to the inner-most voices. She had plenty of time not to rush.
Life is made of little things instead of grand gestures. At least that’s what Twenty Eight told me. She was the one who urged me to have heart-to-heart conversations, and I cherished that. I learned, that hatred was easier to dissipate once I sat down with the sources of my misery. Twenty Eight connected me to more people than I could have been connected with before. Maybe because she was genuinely interested in hearing people’s story. She was determined to help others: to mentor, to consult, to listen. Because the world might not have understood me, but I could try to understand people.
Twenty Eight re-affirmed one of the hardest pill to swallow for someone who yearns for certainty.
The journey into this complex enigma of mine is a never ending one. Twenty Eight knew that too well, and that’s why she never resisted. It was always an open-minded dialogue between souls, between different time frames, between different channels of emotions. Feelings were always valid. Because who was I to judge? Modifying Taylor Swift’s song a bit: There was happiness because of my past, and there is happiness because of my present. My Twenty Eight mantra was always let it be. It wasn’t let it go. Maybe things will never go. Some things are meant to be eternal, but it doesn’t mean they always need to be at the surface.
Twenty Eight reached out to my core.
I thought I had a brittle heart – well, I wore my battle scars proudly. These shards of broken pieces still beat to life. This chunk of missing puzzles never fully assemble themselves, yet they are functioning. And maybe that’s all there is to this mystery. That meanings are not found in perfection, because cracks really let the lights in. That I am as good as I can be, in this moment of time… without any pretension, or hidden motives. Am I at peace now? I don’t know, but what I do know is that peace is attained by just accepting things that come into my life.
There was a question of what I would eventually find at the end of the tunnel. And that was scary. I’ve so got used to having a conclusion, because my “all or nothing” mentality is too deeply ingrained and hardwired into my brain. But Twenty Eight taught me that, by now, I should be comfortable with the unknowns. There are always going to be grey areas everywhere I go, and they don’t always have to be expounded. Maybe sometimes, even nothingness can still be read.
What I didn’t anticipate, though, was that Twenty Eight saved her secrets indeed.
There really was something hidden at the end of the tunnel.
Every now and then, I take myself for a walk in the Haruki Murakami park. Sputnik Sweetheart was the first novel of him that I read (11 years ago?), and there was this passage that I remember:
“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”
Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
Twenty Eight assured me that satellites could cross paths for longer than the briefest moment. Maybe they even build up components of a space station together – they don’t always have to burn up and become nothing.
They could concurrently exist.
Thank you, Twenty Eight. I shall bid farewell to thee. Erstwhile, thou wilt return to me.
For nú, wit welcometh Twenty Nine!
her soliloquy 