012 - On The Idea of Home
Home to me at the moment is an unknown place that lives in my future plans, it exists in my memories of the past, in some thing and some people, both close and apart.
Hello, how are you? So many things have happened since the last time I spoke to you. I’m sending a little love as I know it continues to be such a tumultuous time in the world.
In February, I had my second near-death experience (the first one was on the plane from Singapore to Jakarta, but this story is for another day). So what exactly happened was I suddenly fainted during work at home. I didn’t know how long I was gone but I woke up lying on the carpet, peed myself and when I tried to stand up, I couldn’t feel my right leg. It was numb and I had to drag myself to the toilet to change clothes. My head was throbbing so hard all I could feel was a squeezing pain on both sides of the head.
Next thing I know, I was on the hospital bed, still trying to hold the pain, my husband sobbing uncontrollably next to me, while the doctor explained what happened. They said I had a brain aneurysm. Basically there was a weakness in the walls of blood vessels in my brain that balloons and fills with blood. In a short and non-medical way to explain it: something exploded in my brain. What's the cause? The doctor said because I was under too much stress. Oh well.
How is it possible to live your life without stress? Don’t give me that meditation bullshit because that doesn’t work for me and I just think it’s impossible to never get stress. At the end of the day its more about how you manage stress, not avoiding them. What happened to me was over the last few months, I have been experiencing a daily kind of anxiety that’s been creeping in through my veins. The main reason for this fear had something to do with our visa status in Australia. I have been having panic attacks and I couldn’t stop thinking about our future, what should we do, what we should have done and have not done. The thoughts and fears start as soon as I wake up. They are in bed with us and eat with us at the table. They are with me in the shower and I have spent more days than I could count in a worried haze thinking and worrying about our life and how I’m so scared to leave Melbourne and go back to Jakarta.
Back in July 2018, I left Jakarta, the place that has been my deepest anchor since I was born, to take a big leap of faith and move to Melbourne. I wanted many things, but mostly I wanted to escape. I craved more from life and needed a change and I wanted to see how I could create a different life, somewhere new and outside my comfort zone. I wanted to know how this experience would change and provide me.
I spend my whole life wondering about what kind of person I am, what I want to do with my life, and what I’m looking for in life. My beliefs about myself often conflict with one another. I have always felt different, like I was born in the wrong time period, or maybe even on the wrong planet. Most of the time, I feel like I just don’t “belong” anywhere or with anyone. But “to belong” is kind of an abstract concept anyway, isn’t it? How do you know where you really belong? I have been living in Jakarta my whole life, yet I have never felt like I belong there. I don’t feel any sort of attachment to the city that made me proud of being born there. Something about this place made me mentally and emotionally exhausted. Maybe it’s the infamous traffic jams, or the inescapable signs of environmental degradation, or is it mainly just my routines, or the people, or the combination of all the above?
After 5 years living in Melbourne, I came back to Jakarta for the first time. It was a very short trip for my brother-in-law's wedding, so short that I didn’t have the time to actually grasp everything. What an overwhelming trip that was. When I walked into the house that I grew up in, I felt a sense of familiarity yet distant feelings. I can see every version of me, at every age, scattering around the house. I was sobbing as I hugged my mom again after what felt like a very long time as I felt her tiny fragile little body close to mine. I slept in my bedroom that was filled with things that I kept because I thought they mattered to me but now seem useless and ridiculous. I sat at the kitchen table having breakfast with my parents as I remembered how many times back then I was longing to avoid and escape this situation. It felt like watching a montage appear before my eyes as I stepped into every corner in the house.
The idea of home is complicated for me. For some people home is the place, people, and things they return to at the end of a day, a place where they feel loved. For others, the word “home” may mean loneliness, a reminder of pain or even abuse. There is the ideal and then the reality. For me personally, I have never really resonated with “home”. I have always felt like a shell, and all I know how to do is run.
For most of my life growing up, as an only child, I wasn’t much for playing outdoors with other kids in my neighborhood or from school, but home was my ultimate playground. I would spend hours and hours in my room and create a world full of imagination. My room became a safe space for me where I can create things — from a dress for my Barbie dolls to my first novel at age 12 which obviously never saw the light except my notebook. My room was a lab where I could dissect my thoughts and pay attention to my own voice, louder and clearer than I would hear it anywhere else. For me, home was a room of my own.
Maybe I have been away for too long or maybe I just don’t resonate with them anymore, but while I was back home in Jakarta, surrounded by family and my things, it didn’t feel like “my home” anymore. It almost felt like I was visiting my parents’ house. Where is my home? I wouldn’t dare to call Melbourne my home. There are days when I feel like Melbourne was molded around me, like the streets were paved around the crevices of my body, the buildings an expansion of my limbs, the soul of Melbourne an extension of my own. But there are other days where I feel small, insignificant, lost and alone. As if the strangers on the street don’t see me, the buildings swallow me, and the sounds drown out my voice.
There is a quote from one of my favorite books by Alain de Botton called ‘The Architecture of Happiness’, which goes “Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.” and I would like to think that is so true. I think for me, I could feel at home in meals, in furniture, in clothes, in pictures, in songs, in my favorite park, in my local coffee shop, even in the smell of my husband’s hair. I believe that home doesn’t necessarily have to be a place where we are currently live or have lived. Home could be people that inspire and support us. Home could be the things that we like and enjoy. Home could be anywhere and anything that makes us comfortable and happy.
So, whatever and wherever home is for you, I hope you find them.
Talk to you later? x