There's only less than 100 days before new year? Wow, 2020 is batshit crazy. How come time rolls out so fast when we spend 8 months out of 10 months, at home, quarantening?
This year is the least busy year for the last 4 years of my life. For the last 10 months, the only thing on my plate is working on myself, my sanity to be exact. You might notice I do a little gardening; gaining kilos since the gym was close and I couldn't keep my hands away from the donuts; and spending way to much time on Netflix and MangaGo.
I didn't set any goal this year. I surrendered myself completely to the stream of my thought. Some day, I was in a good mood, the other days I was extremely sad and upset. I let it be. Ever since May, I detached myself from any expectations, both from my own and from others. I literally just tried to live day by day, took as much joy as I can and went to bed before 12 A.M.
Gradually, I start to feel better about myself again. I don't know exactly when. Lately, when I open my eyes in the morning, my first thought is no longer about hurting myself. I'm no longer crying in the bathroom or empty parking lot. I start writing again. I enjoy my current work more and more everyday. I've distanced myself from Instagram since July and not planned to go back any sooner. It honestly makes such a big impact on my rehabilitate self esteem.
I hope this doesn't make me a bad guy, but now I can say I'm grateful the world forced to shut down in more than half of 2020. I'm not happy with people suffering from the global pandemic or people getting hurt because of their skin color. I'm not happy that a lot of my friend's business struggle, they barely can make the ends meet. But I won't lie, that this unusual circumstance has brought me, personally, a clarity.
First of all, I consider myself really really lucky for finding a job right before the virus hit the nation. That's one less thing to be worried about after I resigned from my previous job. To be financially secured is really important for me cause I can't depend on anyone else, not even my parents, to help me with money issue. It's truly a relief for me to find a job that pays me well and accomodates my creativity at the same time. I planned to stay for 6 months, but now I can see myself explore more potentials if I decide to stay longer. So I'm 80% gonna do that.
The second, I'm grateful for being forced to stay home and quarantine. I used to think I was a homebody, so I took quarantine lightly. I did enjoy it from the first couple of weeks. As you can read on my previous post, I started gardening, I had time for a 30 minutes morning walk, I did a lot of things I couldn't do back when I was still working at my previous job. Then some unsettling thought creeped in, slowly took space more and more everyday in my head.
It's a bit peculiar indeed, when you have everything securely planned and arranged, what is there to worry about? I realised the source of my restlessness was all the big changes I made in a quite short time. I quit a job I thought I would never leave, I spent majority of the time home with the whole family, I tried to understand why I couldn't get romanticly involve with a certain guy. I thought, I got them all figure out. But what I was facing actually some ghost of my past, those that I carefully hide and lock in a closet. Those that always give me shiver and uncomfortable feeling so I avoid to deal with them at all cost. As long as it's avoidable, then I can always put them aside till I forget they exist. Now that I hit dead end, which is widely known as qurantine, I can no longer run away. I needed to give myself sometime to process these.
I was upset of how things didn't go my way. A new job, a rebellious attitude, a revelation of cutting the ties, a deleted contact; those still couldn't substitute the things I recently lost. It's like a funeral of my own belief and I was in a period of grieving. There lied my expectation and sky high dreams I was force to burry, cause some people murdered them with their words and actions. I was in denial, thinking that murderers also human and they might regret it deep down in their sleep. But at this point, I don't think so, not anymore. Some people were given the role to test you, as you probably also tested them in your own way.
I was trying so hard to find the answers when turned out, I didn't have to do anything at all. What I needed was learning how to accept those dissappointment, living with them, letting them remind me on my journey moving forward. I didn't have to understand everything. I didn't have to be happy with everything. But accepting the good and the bad, the beauty you show and the ugly you hide, will be an important part of finding peace within yourself. Eventually, probably, most likely, lead me to feeling content about my own existance. Then I start to remember how to be fine, once again.
If the world is still running like the usual, I probably still doing the same thing: working like crazy 24/7, telling my own self sweet lies to cover up my fear, being a person that think happiness will come after you sacrifice every bit of you and your life, until there's nothing of you left. I'm glad that this happen to me now than later in life. I'm glad that I want it so bad, to make it work with myself, than giving up to those dark spiralling thoughts whispered in my ears. I'm glad that the universe, the world, the fate, the God himself, all conspired to lock me down, so I could think and work this through. I'm glad that I got to pause with the rest of the world and re-evaluate our life individually and accumulatively.
I'm honestly really excited to see the world when this challenge comes to an end. I'm excited to see the world rebuild by the people that a little more forgiving, a little more compassionate, a little more mindful, and most importantly, feeling a little better in accepting their own self; the good and the bad, the beauty you show and the ugly you hide.
