Stars of Emotion

Recollection of memories I don’t want to forget

This is the recollection of memories that I had on 3rd March 2023, there might be a lost memories along the way because I wrote this 1 week after the fact.

Yesterday, Saturday 2nd March 2024 I contacted my university counseling team that provide a counseling service towards my Uni’s students by the faculty of psychology students. I hastily contacted them on 5 PM because I really feel that I can’t handle these emotions anymore and I want someone to listen to me a bit…. I really feel that my head really went berantakan and ぐちゃぐちゃ so I asked them to provide me a counseling on the next day. They can’t provide a counseling on the night because their counselors schedule are already packed up so they offered me to do it in the morning, which I gladly accepted.

The morning has come and I prepared a little bit for today’s counseling with 3 pages of notes about how I felt yesterday. As expected, I can’t read a lot of them because most of them are really unreadable due to my terrible handwriting during my bad mood regardless we proceed the counseling session. During the session, one thing that I really noted is the fact that I have a lot in my minds and I cried during my counseling session. I was talking about how I empathize with a lot of people on their struggle as a working class and how I feel really close towards my Mother daily job routine. It made me cry feeling the experience of the cycle of being an adult working class, doing the menial things in your day and come back tired up without someone to interact to, the loneliness that warped me, the mind that tired me, the body that has worn-ed out and the soul that asking about ‘how long am I supposed to do this‘. Exarcebated by the mind that can’t keep on thinking about ‘Did i do the right thing?’ and the anxiousness of my future.

Regardless, we come out with the conclusion that I really have a lot in my minds and I need to sort things out if I want to solve them. one. by. one. It was not a long session, only about 40 minutes, but I think it was helpful to talk a bit about how I feel and what I’ve been thinking these past few months being alone. Last note about this session is that, my counselor has literally the same name as the person I am interested with currently. This is how I reacted to it.

I then contacted my older brother’s girlfriend, which is already quite close to us brothers that there is something I want to talk with her. She told me that when I am in the time of need that I can contact her if I need something.

The sun has risen up, and It’s already 11 AM, I decided that I want to read うみねこのなく頃に one more time to experience it the second time and with the new perspective as a second time reader. I downloaded 11 gigabytes of it and went off to the Perpustakaan Cikini to read it there. Finding an empty seat is a difficult task in this great library, but I eventually found it near the entrance in the computer section of PDS HB Jassin. I seat there and there was an old lovely lady in the left of me but I pay no attention to it and went to read Umineko for about 30 minutes.

My time was interrupted when the old lady left to me asked me on how to drag and move an image in Microsoft Word. I helped her move the image she asked and taught her on how to do it. I made her do what I did and I am so glad that she is able to do it and can do it. It’s really lovely to see someone asking for your help and they being able to do what they have learnt from you. The lady continue asking me about how to extend her time on using the computer. Unfortunately I have never done it before and but I went and asked to the staffs desk about the viability of doing so. There is also an old lady in the right of me, it seems like these old ladies are both a friend of each other. The lady on the right side of me can be described as emak emak yang gak mau lu bikin marah cause she seems to be that way in my opinion. Well, this old lady told us that we can extend the usage time and just need to ask on doing so to the staff, I told the lady on the left to do so but It seems that she does not want to bother the staff that much. Oh, what a kind hearted soul, bless you madam.

Well, back to me. After I finished my session on reading Umineko again, I continue on writing in the book that Diandra gave me. I finally write nine things that I need to sort out and what really is in my mind right now.

I prepared this because I wanted to have some discussion point when I next talk with Mbak Fira. It’s already 6 PM and I went out to get a bus to go back at my kos and talk to Mbak Fira.

The time has come, I asked to talk with her at 8 PM but I postponed it for about 30 minutes because I am quite tired and I just want to be ready to talk with her. She actually never met or talk to me so It is both our first time interacting directly.

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I talked to her about of lot of things but there are some points that I remembered very clearly during our talking session.

The passing away of my father. I realize that growing up without a person being called a ‘father’ is quite an experience one. It really can have an impact to your personality and how you growing up. I told her the time, second, minutes before my father pass away.

It was during the late afternoon where my mother asked us to ask for help from our neighbours, I really did not know how to react to it really. Like, why should we asked a help? What really happened? but, I eventually asked the neighbor in front of our house for help but no one really came because there was no one there.

I eventually come back to my house and suddenly my mother was crying in the bed where my father lie. She asked us to give my father a kiss in the forehead. This was truly a strange experience for young me….. I have never kiss someone in the forehead before, I have never experience something called physical love from my family for years, to experience it first time and first hand on the person you called your ‘father’ and on the last time that you see him is… truly a bizarre experience…. I…….. watched my father lying on the bed without breathing a single second there… at that time I really thought that I have no emotions because on my mind I was thinking …. ‘shouldn’t I be crying right now?’ ‘Shouldn’t I be emotional right now?’….. the last was… ‘I truly am a scum for not reacting how a person supposed to react when their parent pass away’…. this was on 2016….. second year of my junior high school year….

I broke down and cried when I talked about it to Mbak Fira… I told her about what I feel about my father, how I resent him for a few years because I feel like he is an irresponsible person for how much damage he had done towards our family… how shaken our family has become because his passing… how many we have sacrificed for him and how tough it has been for us to live after his passing away…. how my school life was robbed, how I changed my school, how lonely I’ve become in my first year of high school and many more……. but…. it is what it is….. I can’t asked a dead men for a debt they need to pay…… I just need to face it for what it is because….. yeah………

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I cried a lot, I pulled tissue one after another when I talked to her about it… It truly is my first time…. what a mess of a person I became.

When I finally calmed down we then move to the next discussion point about my future. We talked about my insecurities and my lack of confidence because of how I viewed my self and how people around me had labeled me. I told her that I’ve done some research regarding extending my study but to be honest, the result was kinda bleak because it’s just very expensive. I decided to give her the excel I’ve done regarding doing study in Jogja and my research on the universities that provide an extension program…

The last thing is about… Love. This is the thing that really complicate me quite lately. Love is very complicated and very nuanced when you get older. You can’t just date a person and break and move on like what a kid does in their elementary or junior high school years. When you are an adult, you have become emotionally mature and It really can impact your life and your work and your study. Love and commitment is honestly quite scary for me.

My past romance really does not help it either. I broke down on a good term on my last relationship on 2021 because I feel that I can’t provide enough happiness and love towards my beloved partner. We were doing a long distance relationship and I asked her that ‘what if we can’t meet in the next six or twelve months? how would you feel about it?’, the answer is quite obvious…. It would be hell for her. I decided that this time I truly crossed the line, I made a big mistake and I need to fix it before it hurt both of us in the long run.

I decided that I can’t during that current state, provide enough happiness and love toward my partner and It would be much better if we go on separate way instead of both of us hurting each other in the longer and more painful way. My decision to be in relationship with her was truly egotistical and my decision to separate was even more… but I believe that I truly did the right thing…. until she told me one year later that because of how her relationship has gone for the last few years, she developed a ‘trauma of meeting people.’ She went to few professional helps and all of them said the same thing that she has a trauma over meeting people or in Indonesia would be trauma sama orang.

I broke the stroke and I still feel the guilt to this day. I don’t want this to happen again, It truly was just too evil for something like this to happen to someone…….. but at the same time………. I am really lonely right now…. What I’ve been doing right now in the past few months are.. waking up, working, commute, and rest repeat that again and again without any meaningful interaction with people you love, in the city where you have no one, no one without a sprinkle of affection or love. I was in the blanket of loneliness, with no family, no close friend, none to share my life about. I was…. lonely.

I want an accompany really bad but It’s really evil to have someone dating you because you just need them to fill a hole in your life. It’s too egotistical…. but still… there is still a hole in my body that I want to fill up with love and affection and meaningful interactions but I can’t. I am not supposed to fill it. I have no right to fill it. After what I’ve done? how could I even think I have the right to do it? I am not ready yet to do it.

I don’t want the same thing happen twice. I really don’t, Mbak Fira told me “Bintang, aku tau kamu lagi lonely banget dan butuh support system sekarang. Tapi Mbak Fira pengen banget kamu punya orang yang bener bener nyaman sama kamu dan kamu nyaman sama dia. Mbak Fira nggak mau kalau kamu sedih karena hubungan kamu… nggak mau juga kalau ada trauma kaya gitu lagi… Soalnya kalau udah dewasa ini kamu bener bener butuh orang yang kamu beneran nyaman… kasihan kalau kamu hubungan sama orang itu tapi in the end malah sedih kaya gitu dan impactnya ke hidup kamu yang lain lain” there was never a person in my life that told me something as kind as this…. I am shocked that someone could be sad over it…. Thank you very much mbak for dating my older brother.

In the end love is very complicated and I need to be really ready if I want to embrace it…. if I don’t want the same mistake to happen twice. Love is complicated, even more so if you are an adult.

We talked few more things about how Mbak Fira relationship with my brother has been going, how my little brother has been opening up to her and how she usually reply to my mother WhatsApp story. I am glad that I knew someone who is as kind as she is and how she has been helping my family a lot by just existing and being a person that I can talk to and even my little brother open up to. She truly does have kind of a soul.

That concludes it… Recollecting this memory is quite tired for me honestly because It made me a bit emotional again. Writing my father section is quite tough and I even stopped a bit because I can’t handle the emotion on what happened that day.. but I’m glad that I’m able to recollect this memory 🙂 thank you for anyone who has been reading this and thank you to me for writing this long ass paragraphs 🙂

I hope everyone have a nice day.