— on loving and being loved.
As someone who claimed herself a bibliophile, I love to read everything around. From words on billboards to words on a tiny receipt, from a word standing alone in front of a house’s address board to words in a book with hundreds of pages. Reading has been one of my forever favorite things to do and has always successfully kept me sane for the past quarter of a century I just passed in life.
And I did fall in love with some of the writing I read, which might include yours: the man whose writing I could not read anymore.
I still remember when the first time I knew about you. It was not through a long-deep conversation like how Celine and Jesse from Before Sunrise knew each other on a long walking night in Vienna. It was neither like how Dimas Suryo and Vivienne Deveraux shared their past in one of my all-time favorite readings: Pulang. There was a day when I was in my kakung’s in Klaten when I read your writing through one of the online platforms you used to write, and I suddenly smiled a blink after the last paragraph I read.
That day, I finally knew that there was a man named you in the universe whose writing, surprisingly, I enjoyed so much.
Since that day, your writing has been on my reading list, along with some other writers everyone knew: Seno Gumira Ajidarma, Aan Masyur, Eka Kurniawan, and many more (Actually, I forgot whose books I read those days).
The universe then played its role in sometimes joking people’s life, and when it was my turn, we suddenly got to know each other. We met in some moments and got closer day by day (at least for me, you are one of the closest friends I have ever had). We shook hands properly, mentioned each other names, and discussed thing to things. We even went somewhere together just to have some meals, share some stories, or run away from the reality we had to face for a while.
At that time, I still did not stop to read your writing. Every time a notification popped up on my device that you had posted new writing, I would suddenly stop everything I was doing and have some rest to read yours. Until I realized it was not just about your writing or your stories, it was about you. I did not just love to read your writing, but I loved everything about you.
The day I realized that I might fall in love not just with your writing but also with you, yourself. I started to think about what can I do to stop it. To stop every crazy heartbeat every time you visited (intentionally or not) my day. I knew that was love, but that was not the kind of love I was comfortable having. So, I did whatever it took to stop uncomfortably loving you: I blocked each of your social media, deleted your contacts, and confessed to you foolishly, hoping to see you felt annoyed or mad for it. I did literally everything to make myself stop loving you that way.
Hoping that I can comfortably love you through your writing that I can read forever.
But then came the day when you did not write anything for years, and I could no longer read your writing. Could you please imagine how it feels?
This time, I felt like the universe asked me to stop loving you in any way. Is it the answer to all my prayers, asking for direction in loving and being loved? After years, should I?
— — —
a fiction.
February, 2023.
