Every year I grow more and more faith about coming home to Ubud. Yes, it's a home, a place so dear in someone's heart that you keep longing on coming back. It officially steals my heart and I have a hard time to accept that it will be sometime before I actually move in to the hut. I always come to Ubud with a million of things to resolve in my head. I remember the first time I came, I filled my luggage with pieces of my broken heart. Last week marked my 6th visit to the lovely town and I came with a mission: to find love.
HAHA.
As soon as I wrote that down I realised how cringy it was. But that's how I felt. Well, it's not that I abruptly decided that. I've been thinking high and low and I thought, well, Ubud is always like a lover to me, could I actually find a real one? Or it's probably because the Venus Retrograde that my head kind of making up things, I wasn't sure. But that's how I felt. I wanted to find, or at least encountered, a possibility of romantic relationship.
The thought was driving me a lil bit crazy. I shopped, so I had something chic to wear at Ubud. I masked, cause I wanted my skin to look as amazing as possible. I did a lot of things that I wasn't used to do, all because, I wanted to find love. I have to be honest that I felt silly at first, I felt, embarrassed, cause I put so much effort for this. And I have to also state that I'm all about cool and effortless kind of person so this finding love conquest was surely, terribly, contradicting with me, not to mention how meticulously prepared I was to so many possibility.
But that's how I felt. For the first time in a very long time, I felt that I needed to do this for myself.
I actually worried that I put too much pressure on this trip. I meant, realistically speaking, it's not possible to do thing as complicated as love only in 7 days. Also, I really wanted to get relax and chill at Ubud, to recharge my energy before going back to the city. How on earth did I plan to do this, really? I couldn't explain how my mind work sometimes. It's as if going against a whole different person but it's actually you, your head, your mind. I did it anyway. I was sticking to the love plan and packed all of my brand-new-with-tag clothes to embrace the hopefully amazing journey at Ubud.
To my surprise, it's going pretty well. I didn't take a guy home with me but all of the moments leading me to a brand new perspective and understanding. I did push myself to talk to new person everyday, not just to someone I might romantically interest but also to a lot of amazing individuals I met during UWRF. I even initiated a convo with a girl after she performed her poem on a open mic event. I congratulated her and told her she's amazing. I hugged her for being amazing on stage. And she hugged me back thanking me for coming to the event. Wow. That's amazing, at least for me. That's not what I use to do. There were many more moments like that, moment that I pushed myself so hard to do something I wasn't comfortable to, in a good way. At the end, I felt so so happy cause I gained many new friends and involved in so many interesting conversation. Oh and about finding love, well, a guy asked me out to dinner. Even though it's not really happening cause he got an emergency with one of the writer he liaised. But someone asked me out! Ha! And he seemed like a very good guy too, not the kind that fooled you cause he bet on you with his friends. He's not. So I guessed I wasn't really curse at dating hahaha.
It's all starting with a simple idea of finding love and turning out to be a relaxing and adventurous trip with many new names on my phone book. You know, having courage to put yourself out there facing the world is both scary and exciting. Now, I can say that it's leaning more to the exciting part. And I'm not giving up yet on the quest of finding love, even thou I'm back at the city now. There's always be next journey, next opportunity. But to be able to say it out loud (or write it down, in this case) is such a relieving act. I feel like another door is opening for me. Finger crossed it will lead me to wonderful place.
