Friendships are great

Friendship is really cool. I am blessed with good friends and I hope to keep them forever, though in the past year and two apparently I cannot always do that hahaha.

I have friends who have become a constant to me. They are people whom for some reason, in my life, just stays, never really going away, for the longest time. More than half of my life I spent with some of them. We don't even talk about our feelings or woes, sometimes. Sometimes, not even the people I go to when I have problems. But they're just there, you know? People whom I just know will be around if I need them to. 

Some friends I have are special. Not really because I am especially close with them or anything, but for the fact that I can go to in any point in time and I can expect them to get back to me. We don't even share news regularly or whatever. I sometimes only know what's going on with them through the updates of the social media--if any, or not at all, if they are not the type. But they're my friends. And I know I am too, for them. 

I do have some friendship lessons, though. I had came to a realization that sometimes, I am just not that much of a good friend to some people. And I think it's fair for those people to evaluate our friendship and no longer consider me a friend. I too, find that some people are not able to handle me or understood me, in ways that being myself hurts them. So not being in vicinity of them should be the most logical conclusion for me. I guess for these cases I still have a lot of things to learn, and perhaps growing to become better person is just something you need to do to be a good friend for some people you have lost. Who knows if time could heal as much as it grows you, and perhaps some things are not lost anyway? Only time will tell. In any case, the things we lost make us who we are as well, and for that, I cherished all of these encounters and hopefully they heal me more than they broke me.

But at the end of the day, friends are great. Friendships are great. The time spent with friends energize me, and I learnt so many things, feel so many things that are positive, and help me become the person that I like being. It's so cool. I hope everyone have good friends that love them and care about them, because it's amazing.

Update Until Today

Things are different than it was since I last updated my blog. To be honest, I think in the past year I didn't get that much time to just be reflective in general, just on the mode of keep going and distracting myself here and there. But here is some updates just for the record of me being alive in 2023 despite has not looking forward to long life since ever.

Anyway, I am well. I am in good health, and I am happy. Things around me are good too. My loved ones are close by and well. Working has never been my passion but I am in one where I can do it remotely forever so I am eternally grateful for it. Still prefer not having to get up in the morning and think of the work I need to do 5 days a week, but it is good. I am content.

I get my birthday blues like usual, and of course being confused is what I am--with no ambition, dreams, and having a good life already what is there to seek? The thing is that I do know I can do whatever I want to do, and there's little things that hinder me from it. But what is it that I want to do exactly, when I am happy with all that I have and that there is little out there that entices me? It's a quiet, mediocre life with the daily complicated questions of what to eat for dinner, and I think it's a good one.

I finished so many games last year, and I hope to continue to do so this year too. It's just January and I already finished 2 AAA games (well... I started P5R in December but I finished this month so it counts) and I really hope to have more and longer horse trips this year.

I learnt a lot too this past year. Some about myself that I never knew, and I am proud that I went pass the difficult and uncomfortable phase. There's always discomfort in figuring things out, and anxiety in uncertainty, but I have grown to learn to be more and more patient about it, more conscious about my effort and my laziness, more grateful for the support I get from around me.

I hope to always be close and closer to what makes me happiest, and I am glad to know that I do, always.

I am not a saint and I also get upset sometimes

My sincerity only extended from the fact that it has always been about myself. In my head, even the things I do for other people, it was an extension of what I feel and what I value. At the end of the day, I would see things that I did in the past, and how could I regret them?

They're all things that I do for myself. Sometimes I got a lot of help, and sometimes it's nice to have some people to cheer you on.

But I am stubborn and uncaring, and it feels so natural for me to think that way, that people don't owe me and I don't owe anyone, because I thought 'why would you do something that isn't for you?'

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Sometimes I will get hurt in the heart, and I imagine it like a bruise or a scratch. Not an open wound, or anything that bleeds, but just a minor thing. It stings a bit the time you got it, but then it will pass. It will probably hurt for a few days or so, and it will be a bit raw when you touch them directly, but perhaps you wouldn't think too much of it. 

Sometimes I can see that I was hurt, and I don't even remember when or how I got them--but I wouldn't care much, because it will heal, and it usually heals fast.

I get bruised in the heart so easily lately. 

Does not seem like a good thing at first, but I wonder if I have always been easily bruised, I just never noticed because I don't care enough.

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There are days when being normal is very trying. I don't think people around me really comprehend how much I suck up to be normal. I mean, they don't need to. But I tried really hard, at being normal thing. Whatever that means.

And it sometimes it crushed me a bit... or a lot, when I get told that I didn't pull it off as well as I thought I was.

Sometimes I want to tell them I don't even wanna (be normal). Sometimes I want to tell them I am really not (normal). Sometimes I want to tell them that this is already as normal as I can get and please just accept it.

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When I speak I tone down so many things, I feel. I am actually awkward, and I practice so I get to talk in more eloquent manner. For difficult subjects, I will rehearse it in my head, or to the darkness of my room, or write it down, hoping that when I talk it would at least has a good resemblance of what I have poured out then and there.

It usually didn't. But it still work out in the end, so I'll take that.

Sometimes.

Sometimes the subject will never come up, and I will never bring it up.

I will forget it.

And in retrospect, I feel like maybe, those are perhaps things I never need people to know anyway, and that it's enough for me to have an imagined scenario in my head, where I get to say things I want to say, even when I will never get an answer to it.

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I am patient enough.

I am very indulgent so for some things that is hard for me, I will probably take forever. But I hardly ever rush myself for those kind of things. I can wait.

I am proud of it, you know? Patience is a good virtue. I apparently have more for myself than I have for many other things in general.

It's just I think that people will not have enough for me, and I wonder if I would care.

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Sometimes I get a mood like this, where I talk about things that mostly upsetting, when I am not upset at the time.

I process awful feelings in a way slower rate than I am with better ones (and the better ones are pretty slow already).

It's a double-edged sword, I guess.

Because perhaps I don't feel truly miserable when it happens, because I have little clue of what's going on. And yet I don't feel truly miserable now that I see it in retrospect, because even though I understand more it's a feeling that no longer around.

I will get better in due time.

The New Year

Last year had been a lot of things and I hope this year would be kinder to me. 

I am happy. For some reason, I feel like whatever it was that I have had accepted cognitively, had just registered in my heart. In other words, I think I finally succeeded in accepting them emotionally as I was cognitively. I am happy to know this development as well, because it seems that I didn't really wait or notice if things I "take" as truth in my head is processed properly for me in the heart.

Among other things, this includes the idea that I am unashamedly selfish and that I am not bothered with the idea of not knowing. I thought these are just facts about me that I have known and embrace all this time, but growing up apparently also meant that the extent of my selfishness and my ignorance are challenged, and at this point I come again to a point that I feel is a new equilibrium. It's nice!

Every time I remember that I am my favorite person, it made a lot of sense why I'm so easy on myself. Maybe my growth stunted in certain way because of it but it's the price I pay for this much convenience and peace, that feels like an alright bargain.

When I was in Salatiga I was really happy. Last week there was a time I thought "I want to be happy again,"

Am I not? I think about it, and it seems wrong to attach so much happiness to a place and a memory. There were so many things that made me happy at the time, but ultimately, it was that I perceive them as a source of joy that it felt like a dream.

For me, a lot of things are a "I'm glad it happened". Some things I want to stay forever in my life--a constant, a routine, a bond--but that I got the opportunity to taste and experience the joy that it have given me, I am happy already. 

I want to continue to be happy and free, at some point I forgot that I could wait for my death enjoying life for the sake of it.

A bit of a note, it feels like I have been experiencing time or days in a very... conscious manner. I feel it passes. It makes days and weeks and months feels a bit like forever all the time, always feels like I experience a lot of things. Not sure if it's a good thing or not, but it's nothing horrible I guess. Don't know if it'll last.

Happy new year!

The Council in My Head

As I now have a divine confirmation of the fact that I am more emotionally inept than I thought I was, I have a few reflections:

1. It is more common than not. I am not special in this case. That's nice to know.
2. I am grateful for what it does for me. It hadn't hinder me from making meaningful connections and I'd even say that it's a quality appreciated from most of my peers.
3. It is now a bit of a chore to learn about them and unlearn about letting them hang around in my heart or head space without acknowledgement whatsoever, because I am just that untrained.

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I am unsure if they are the same, but whenever I come to a situation that is unsettling (supposedly conjure uncomfortable feelings like anxiety, fear, sadness or the likes) I imagine that there is this council in my head.

They're pretty amazing. They would sit down with me and told me things that I'd like to hear and agree in the end. They all come with compelling arguments and so much compassion for me in many ways without actually making me feel pressured for anything at all.

They're so easy to listen to and I don't remember an instance where I ever had fights with them (nor them with themselves). They're a united front, they can be wrong but we'll be wrong together, and we'd be fine because we all agreed to whatever we were wrong about so there's never any hard feelings for mistakes and such.

It's like a government without opposition and for so long I've been comfortable with them. It's convenient. Imagine a tyranny but since the authority is utterly devoted to your wellbeing, feels like they pamper you instead. Most times, I think they are. It's just I have quite rigid perception of "what's right" and "what's good" that they adhere to that sometimes made me feel like perhaps I am not as pampered, then again I too am happy to be subjected to that ideal so... I don't know if that cancels things out or not.

As much as I am blessed to have them, there are times when they are not very helpful. It's when we are facing something that is out of our depth. Because they are so consistent with each other, when they have nothing, then there will be no voices in my head.

And I cannot work with anything from that silence.

I will have no clue, and perhaps nothing to say too, and I would also be silent until I can gather whatever bits I can come up with at the time. I am also quite good at admitting things that I don't know about, and sometimes I can be quick enough to conjure a good argument too, but well. I am not always sure if they're as sincere or true as when it was coming from my council.

I thought they're perfect already--and in some ways, perhaps they are--but apparently, I have found myself in novel situations where they are not as reliable. It's humbling to be reminded over and over again that the need to evolve and grow will never cease in your lifetime. 

But well. I know already that it's an inevitable consequences from staying for a long time. I just hope I will always have enough of everything I need to not loath life because I'd hate if that were to happen.

/crossing my fingers