Bra1n-w@shed

It’s another hot sunny Wednesday in Jakarta. I mean hot hot.

The piano’s playing soft tunes on the speaker inside Starbucks I’m sitting in. People chat away with their peers, some talking about business stuff, one couple just throwing eye-look to each other with silence smile and some other just enjoying the free air conditioner and Wi-Fi, like me.

Well, actually I just finished one meeting with a client. He’s a friend’s friend of mine who happen to open a wine lounge in South Jakarta. I like this guy I meet with. A big round cheeky smile flourish his face, likes the world doesn’t have a problem at all. We talked about business for like half an hour then continue gibberish with our personal matters. What a fun guy to talk with.

Then he left when his woman friend picks him up. I know it’s not his spouse or significant other because he’s gay. Like me. The wind touches my back as I felt the heat wave passes. I grabbed my backpack and moved in. The only reason I was sitting outside was because the client is a smoker and we can’t smoke inside Starbucks. And as a passive smoker, we always get indirect lung cancer with no further complain. Like me.

People still busy with their matters while as if they don’t notice I’m here, typing some nonsense in my notebook. The music has change to this chill jazzy tune with sound of clarinet hypnotizing my mind away from this place. A mind full of spirit as in my third day in my new job in an advertising magazine is really boosted up my days. Just like me and every people in the world, looking for money is one of the famous hobbies besides jerking themselves silly.

It’s just a normal day in one of the wicked city in Indonesia. I still sat here thinking a million things at once while my thoughts can’t process them all. I got my book beside me, Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom, which was a gift for my birthday from Juan. Just like me, I think people wants peace of their own in one of those (very) sunny days. And I’m happy that I have it.

I open my old journals that I wrote since I was nine-years-old. It wrote every single journey of my life as a happy child that I once thought only a dream. Everything back then was beautiful and golden. My relationship with my mother was going well. But as time goes by and changes started to kicks in, those dreams are vanished like my ray of light dimmed by the strength of the mighty shadows.

My past life is just the same yours, well maybe not much the same just ordinary to some people. Going to school, being told what I must do, having friends, starting to get curious about my sexual orientation and so on. But most of those days are religiously-logic and damn it, I was happy. Even though not everything I wanted in my life is what I always get.

Seemed to me if I re-collected pieces of my memory back then, everything I want is a struggle in life. I lived with my mom and my cousin sister until she left for evangelist school. My mother is a person who’s not really into her adopted son’s life and feelings, well let just say no such thing as “how you doing today son?” or “do you have a problem with your life son?”. She’s a great woman though, raising one bare child alone since she never married since the day she adopted me.

I have many friends in our neighborhood, spending the whole afternoon play together when school’s off. Discovering places we never been to, climbing and picking rose-apple fruits, fights and laugh together. Until one by one some of us have to leave, either studying abroad, living in another island, or just moving to another part of the city. It was good times and not a single moment is ruined as time getting older.

Then I started to think what my life going to be in the next fifteen years and there I made my plan for myself. I want something I could be proud of as I get older and look back to see how far I have become. When I’m turning twenty-five I must live in New York City and have a great career with a good life. Living in a simple-modern apartment, with one white Siberian husky, with a view to Manhattan and Governor island from my window [or at least what's my GPS said].

Down the street is my black Ford 4×4 that me and my partner just clean up last weekend. The sun hit our cozy apartment just so perfect, while in our sound system I played Björk - Hyperballad of her last concert in Radio City Hall. In weekdays I’m working as owner of an art gallery downtown, dealing with curators and premium-class collectors from Europe and Japan. That’s my plan exactly.

Back to reality with no mercy at all its cut my wings to pieces. Down I go and as I open my eyes, here I am in precisely four more days I’m officially have wasted twenty-five years of my life and achieve nothing. Stuck in Jakarta with a career that goes to nothing. Still living with four of my aunts and mom; in a tiny room with only less than ten dollars in my hand. I got debts to clear and endless bills to pay.

A thought just ran in my head as I filled the gas tank in my motor bike. Maybe the Lord has some other plan for me. Well to think of, all these times I always make plans for myself. Maybe, just maybe in my small perfectionism lays a great arrogance. And why something precious in me are being taken away from me to teach me a lesson that not everything I want must happen. Patience is a virtue and what makes it hard to swallow is, it is true.

But I still cannot hide how disappoint I am to myself and maybe a bit to Him. Is it wrong for a man to have a dream of being happy and change his life after spending all his life in a gutter? I was not and never raised in a rich family that I have to work my ass off just to get what I need, not what I want. And at least life could give this man a break that in his twenty-five years living that way, that man could enjoy living his dream since he was merely a kid in a small neighborhood.

And then I looked into myself and say it’s not God’s fault and never was. Maybe I just haven’t doing the right thing and not work hard enough to fulfill my dreams. Who else can change his destiny except himself? The only thing that kept me insane is my never-giving-up -attitude. Sometimes the sweet Lord sent His angels to keep reminding me not to give up and that has become strength in me to passes days of my life.