Diana Kurniawan

Perhaps it my fate to die alone, but who cares, right? I'm not a new victim to the lonely fate and the single life. I'm not ashamed of it, but I can still dream can't I?

 

I dream I'm in Paris, just like Emily, but with myself and standing in front of the Eifel Tower just letting the sun beaming down on me. I ask a stranger where the entrance to go up is and the person ignores me. I finally find it on my own and I walk myself up there to take a picture from the top with my cell phone. Download the picture to IG and memorialize it. Eifel Tower, my highest climb in France. 

 

Scratch that, I'm in Rome, where I always dream to vacation. I will be inside the Vatican, and I'm happy that confession is going on, or do they still do that? Who knows.

I'm finding myself surrounded by majesty and I don't care what I look like or how I feel. I'm always feeling lesser than and I think it's the child rape. Not my fault. It's sort of a condition that was injected in me by a predator. But, in this dream, I'm captivated by Rome and the Vatican, and it won't be long until I can go to the Gondola river, that's what I'm going to call it, yes...which is not what is proper, but who cares. I'm dreaming and I'm doing the creating, so be it.

 

Then I hop on a plane to Portugal and see the Arms of Jesus standing in the center of the country and marvel. It's love at first sight, Jesus. It must be love and I will forever be with Jesus all of my life. I will travel to Greece and see the whole country, how can I not? And it's all in the budget of Google Earth. I will travel to see these great lands and not spend a dollar, but letting the eternal wonder seep inside my eyes of these magical travel plans. If I was to die alone, will there be extra credit in heaven for being well traveled through the computer? I hope so, because it's probably my grace to do it on my own. 

 

I consider it a gift, being alone, and I'm going to stop letting myself get sad, instead gloat on the freedom of it all. It's not everyday I get to live in a peaceful state without the chaos of a large family. I'm me and all of me is all I have right now, and I need to be okay with it. I will be, once I am getting good at looking at the bright side of being single and poor. I'm preparing for it and I'm not going to be sad about being alone, instead I'll make travel plans, even through Google Earth. There is a dream that someone will be there and we will even be able to see Disneyland Tokyo, or go to Singapore and see the temples in Thailand and the beaches of Vietnam. I'm not sure how it will all pan out, but I will dream it and create it and make it a master plan. 

 

In the mean time, I'll install Google Earth.

 

#JustWrite 

My head spins when I write and it isn't because of confusion, instead I have so much complicated emotions that left me discombobulated. I figure they will all come out in time, but it turns out I have to make time for them all to come out. I couldn't just sit there and meditate in silence or pray them out on paper anymore. I needed to write it in my blog. I kept myself away from it for so long because of fear of what I would write when I'm tattered, feeling alone, confused and broken. I am ashamed of the emotions I keep, but lo and behold it keeps me out of my dignity if I won't let my emotions out. 

 

I wish you understand what I mean and how my emotions and stress levels have heightened in the past nine months, but it's not like keeping a baby inside my belly and releasing it out, instead it is keeping stress inside myself and ingesting my stresses knowing full well that it won't come out until I break down. 

 

Finally, it did. I told my own mother that I was tired of taking care of her.

 

She looked at me with teary eyes after a weepy moment of sadness from losing hope that no one would take care of her. 

 

I told her, "I love you, Mami. I'm here, but I'm burned out."

 

"But, you must to be happy that I'm still alive," she said. 

 

I am happy that she's still alive after her battle with coronary heart disease, diabetes and so much more things that she was diagnosed with, but I am still burned out. 

 

I caress her cheeks and wipe her tears, as she almost sobs, and told me, "I love you, Diana. I'm here for you, too."

 

I realize that care-taking an elderly parent is a two-way street. You take care of her, and she sends out love towards me in return. I'm lucky that I'm taking care of my Mami. Other people do this as a job and they take care of strangers who won't be able to return the love extended to them. In my case, my Mami supports me and instills in me, hope from her Bible verses and through talking it out together. 

 

At this moment, my head is spinning and I feel like a piece of trash, but I'm trying to understand my emotions. I feel guilty, but I also don't. I was being honest, and maybe I shouldn't have told her, but she needed to know too, in case I am distant from her and I get so lazy from the burn out. The discomfort inside my head and my heart has to subside, right? It makes me tired and I am wishing for a vacation, but I'm not privy to that luxury. At least, not now. The confounding sorrow beset me with grief as I type these words, knowing full well that it might have been my own fault for keeping things inside me instead of utilizing my coping mechanism of journal writing or blog writing. I think I did this to myself. 

 

I don't know what to do, except to pray it out and keep writing, and keep going to therapy. I have to excrete all these bad energy from my head and my heart and my core. It gnaws on me for the past nine months and it bore a hole inside my brain that I feel paralyzed when I'm writing. It's very complicated and I don't even know if I am making any sense at all. I figure I will just write, and keep writing.

 

#JustWrite