Bra1n-w@shed

My pages in this year has almost comes to an end. As I take a glance to what I have done, I see a person with pieces of regret with his head down low. Some chances I had blown; some hearts I couldn’t avoid to break but still I couldn’t count how many blessings I received this year. Again, myself has failed me to bring me to that point of expectation of someone with great hopes.

This year is very special to me because I have felt deep down inside that something big will happen. I don’t know when and what but my hunch is so strong it scares me. My eyes is not the all seeing eye that sees everything, I couldn’t predict what will happen to me. The universe is very kind to just let me feel what’s next in my life chapter.

I did what I have to do; I challenge my fear everyday to do at least one thing I’m scared of. In my 25^th years of my living of the unknown past I dare to ask that to my family. The secret they had hid for many years are dig up so deep by my curiosity. I ask my aunty one morning the truth about my past, about my parents, the true story about me. What makes me didn’t do this years ago because I don’t want to deal with the drama they will involve me in when I ask this big question.

She began to cry. As she explained, I didn’t react to the memories that strikes her at that moment. Somehow my numbness has creates me a layer so thick I am protected from all the lies in the world. Everybody lies, that’s the only thing I believe its true. Not that I’m telling her a liar but she did lied to me all this years, making up stories that my dad was a Javanese and my mom from North Sumatra. I’m not stupid and the mirror never lies. This face shows that either one of my parents were from Middle East somewhere or Mediterranean at the least.

My aunt continues her story and she finally get a grip of herself as I get bored with her tears. She was my mom’s closest friend in campus, Indonesia University back in the 80’s. She was knocked up by some guy that left her during her nine month carrying me. My dad was a real jerk that crowned himself as the King of the Jerk Island and people bowed him for his Jerkiness. Mom hid her pregnancy so well her family never sees the changes on her.

When it’s time for her to deliver, she went to her friend: my aunt and asks for help. Together they went to the nearest hospital and I was born in the afternoon, according to my aunt story. My dad never showed up for years and my mom had passed away. Her last resting place are not far from where I lived now, that means my real family also living in the same area. In my logic sense, back in the old days not many cemeteries were there like nowadays here in Jakarta.

I asked what was my mother’s name, but my aunt stay silent. The air that morning felt chill, eating my nerve and surrounding my bones and it felt much colder inside the house. Then she told me she can’t give out her name because she doesn’t feel right to say it. Not that she doesn’t want to, but she just couldn’t. She asked for time and will discuss it with the rest of the family if it is ok to give out my mother’s name to me.

I felt that my freedom is taken away from me at that moment. The truth I have been waiting to have is not fully mine. But at the same time I feel relieved in a very awkward way. My thoughts began to work; the engines inside my head are starts to move forward fueled by my curiosity. Once I have my mom’s name, I will first search her name on the ground, go the cemetery management office and find where she was once lived. I don’t care the promise I made to my aunt to never search my past, I have my own reasons.

That’s why I hate Christmas time. The happiest time to share love with your family, they all said. What family do I have? This family has fallen apart. I have seen for myself how brothers and sisters taking revenge on each other, they lies for the smallest reason, self beneficial and arrogance has taken the love from them. The monsters are crazy, there are monsters outsides. I have grown and educate myself since I was a child with lesson from people outside from my own so-called-family.

Nature give her hand to lead me to the path I am now, makes me strong and little bit crumbling inside. I believe everything will worth it when I’m in my New Jerusalem that God had promised me. I never deny how much I missed my mom and dad. It repeating so many times it builds hurt so deep taking the hollow space where they both supposed to be. The truth is hurt but the honesty will give comfort.

Josh Stone - Security, 2004