Of youth.

Prompted by the 100th anniversary of the beloved campus, #SeabadITB, social media felt like a travel back in time. Life was so much simpler — our concern was whether we’ll pass the UTS, if we’ll get enough sponsorship for our event, and whether it would rain on our event day.

I found it hard to find one representative picture that summarizes my life in ITB, too many highlights to pick! Each of the three years I spent there had a different version of me. Every nook and cranny has its own story.

It’s almost amazing how browsing through the photos is reminiscent of the campus breeze, or the cozy chilling air after a Bandung rain (although the bricks in Boulevard will then be like a landmine). The hustle and bustle of people going in and out of gerbang belakang, donned in their own jaket himpunan or unfashionable t-shirt and jeans God knows how long ago were washed last.

ITB to me is so much more about graduating cum laude from SBM, or about the competitions I were able to participate in my third year. Granted they were one of the highlights (and probably how I managed to snatch jobs LOL) but so much more went behind into shaping who I am today.

It’s about the euphoria getting into these organizations and extracurricular activities which were a novelty for a new, private-schooled high schooler like me. It’s about the desire to explore all parts of ITB as we were confined in the blue building of SBM tucked at the edge of the campus, craving to know as many people as possible. It was the silly Miss TPB (which on hindsight, is slightly…sexist?), the Caringin-Sadang Serang and Ledeng-Cicaheum beatbox, that feeling (which again, on hindsight, is cringe as heck…) when you put on the weird (and low quality because the button keeps on falling off), tosca green jamal ITB.

It is about the eyerolls you gave (well I gave) when attending 1AM “forums” (essentially participants shouting mod yang bener ajalah mod), the whole dictionary I learned from ITB, spewing words like AD/ART, kaderisasi, tridharma perguruan tinggi as if I know what they meant. It’s beyond me how I could have the energy to juggle between Semester Pendek and Oddisey and Wirasewaka, often waking up (too) early in the morning to do army-like training — push ups, running around in laps, memorizing people’s faces, being shouted at by seniors. On hindsight, it was such a bizarre, cringe-worthy thing to do but well, I did gain close friends from it…!

It is about the ayam cobek and the Indomaret across the street of Cisitu, the nasi uduk Stallone you ate after the evening meetings and the excitement that arose when your friend from another major stepped into that orange tent, the dodgy Gelap Nyawang (and the typhoid fever you contracted from it) and the numerous canteens you go for your lunch fix (special shoutout to ayam kantin bengkok and crispy chicken kantin barrack).

It is about going to Balubur to buy properties for the Performance Art performances, learning to do stage make-ups and memorizing choreography (sebenernya kuliah apaan sih.). It is about the presentations I practiced and the X-Banners that came with it. About the group study work I did at Payung SBM and cafes, or just hanging around at Kresna because I can.

It’s about the friendship I forged from the Bandung-Jakarta-Bandung drive at 5AM to meet a potential sponsor (you know who you are). About the hopeful love stories and heartbreaks, the hand-holding and dates you don’t want to officially call dates. It’s about the people I met from whom I took a piece of to forge myself.

It’s about the simple walk around campus, aimless. Still young and green, not knowing what the future holds. Feeling as if I know everything (sotoy aja sih) but still eager to learn and very hopeful that I can be whoever I want to be. The confidence that I will be someone, truly internalizing the idiom “sky is the limit”.

It’s about that just do it mentality, making decisions in the blink of an eye, borderline reckless. Just go and like that guy! Go and join that activity! You make friends so easily, absent the ulterior motives you often suspect when you’re a working adult. You love freely, not thinking too much about if this is going to work or a waste of time, like a mid-late 20s love would. I didn’t think too much about my health and safety when I decided to sleep in sekre unit (yaolo) or stayed up late to make properties for arak-arakan wisuda or going for MUN practices. You just do.

Maybe it’s not only the campus or friends that we miss, maybe we miss that part of ourselves. Of feeling young and free and able to achieve anything.

Thank you, ITB, with whatever flaws that you have, for making me who I am today.

Twenty-five (or, the boulder on the road)

I am never one to celebrate birthdays — cakes, candles, gifts, presents, even an annual self reflection are a rarity. The way I celebrate my birthday has evolved from bringing cakes back in pre-school, to lunch treats during school years, and now a flurry of LINE stickers in my family’s group chat and short Instagram direct messages from my friends. There would be the occasional long cheesy post by the husband (then boyfriend), or sometimes the sweet messages from closest friends.

This year, however, was different.

For heaven knows what reason, since the beginning of this year I have been feeling very… contemplative. Very aware that my birthday was coming in a month’s time, and that it would be my twenty-fifth. I didn’t know why, but I just dreaded it so. No, it’s not because I’m a year closer to dying (because everyday when we wake up we’re one day closer to dying?) nor is it because I feel old — it’s just, like, if I can evade it, I would.

Consoling me like a good husband that he is, Andhika said the magic words: oh, it’s just your quarter-life crisis.

Okay, first of all, bold of people to assume that we’d all live to 100 years old (Cahya, get off twitter!).

Second of all, oh.

It first began as a simple realization that being twenty-five is not-so-young anymore. Twenty-five is that age when the world internationally recognizes you as a full-fledged adult: youth railcards in Europe ends at twenty-five, many of the youth competitions and conferences set twenty-five as the age limit, and no more $5 off for your museum admission ticket because hey! you’re not young anymore!

If the world could, it would send me a letter that says “Congratulations, you’ve passed your probation on becoming an adult,” magically delivered to my bedside table to be opened at 00.00 on my birthday. (It can be helpful if it can then send me a list of things I need to do as a full-fledged adult, starting with once-and-for-all clear instructions on how to do my taxes because taxes).

This realization then started to grow into fear and insecurity. You’re twenty-five now, my brain said, so you better get your shit together. I began comparing: the up-and-coming Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and many of the new wave of Indonesia’s hopeful/would-be legislators) is just four years older, many of the world’s innovative companies were built by their founders at my age, and so many others create a positive impact in the society by creating grassroot organizations, write eloquently on a cause of their choosing, voicing out injustice and the likes. Malala Yousafzai is twenty-one and a Nobel laureate (although to be fair, you can’t expect everyone to be a Malala). These people seeped through my brain and got me thinking: what have I achieved?

Turning twenty-five felt to me like a pit stop for me to decide whether I want to live the rest of my life as an ass-kicking, rocking person or as a passable, but nonetheless happy person. I spent my childhood till my university years thinking I would be…something, someone memorable. Forged by the reality of life and having traded views with people of different backgrounds, I have now realized that really, most of us will most likely be passable and mediocre — but by no means is it wrong, nor sad.

I guess I can attribute this to having matured, coming to terms that there’s so much more in life than having your name printed in the newspaper or a certificate, winning an award or being associated with superlatives.

As someone who has spent most of my life pegging my self-esteem and achievement on how young I am, it’s pretty shocking to lose this predicate. My life was full of being “the youngest” — two years younger than my peers, the youngest person in my class of 2010, the youngest graduate, the youngest employee in my first workplace, the youngest employee in my current workplace, the youngest person to be interviewed by this panel of directors I got them asking “I’m sorry but you’re 19, what the hell are you doing here working?”. Now I’ve run out of titles to be grabbed — there’s no pride and no such thing as the youngest person in this apartment block? There’s a bit of panic and stress seeing waves of new recruits at work being born in 1996. (Okay, that sounded more stupid in writing)

All of a sudden, I felt worthless and less significant compared to my glory days a few years back.

It took me a few weeks of self reflection (and frantic texts to friends — you know who you are) on what it means to grow older, what (or more precisely, whether) specific metrics measure one’s success in life, what makes me happy and such to be at peace with myself again. At the end of the day, there are no wise words to part or mindblowing revelations to make — it is just what it is. People grow old, you grow old and there’s nothing you can do about it but accept it. Embrace it. As a wise friend said, self-acceptance matters.

If I had to re-do my life all over again, perhaps I would whisper to my younger self to stop obsessing over age-based life targets and pegging your self-esteem to how young and achieving you are. Age shouldn’t define you and most definitely shouldn’t limit you on what you believe you can achieve.

Having this conversation in my head, I can’t help but mockingly jeer to myself that all this is just a sorry excuse for being mediocre and not living up to my high school dream of being “someone big”. To her I say: yeah and so what! So what if I fail or if I didn’t win a national prize by the age twenty-five — it shouldn’t, doesn’t and wouldn’t deter me to keep trying anyway.

Twenty-five is just a big, massive boulder on the road called life. And I’m not just going to make a u-turn or shrug as I find a way around it; I’m going to climb it and jump over it gleefully.

Happy twenty-five, me.

On being married.

A lot has happened since the last time I was able to commit to myself to sit down, open my laptop, and jolt something down in this dusty, neglected site.

(To be fair I did write in other medium (hence not mentally burdened by the “write more” goal of 2017 I imposed upon myself) which you can find here. That bit is actually quite cool — I convinced myself to participate in a 15-days writing competition about energy, my field of work where I am passionate about, and apparently got selected as a finalist! Two of the articles I cross-posted on Kompasiana also got featured in their homepage, Twitter, and Facebook which made me excited and nervous at the same time, as these babies got viewed by thousands pairs of eyes. Anyhow, that’s a side story.)

Early last year I got engaged — and in the process of convincing myself that this isn’t a decision I would regret, I wrote down my thoughts hoping that those words would serve as a reminder should I start to falter and freak out (it did help, by the way).

To cut the story short (and no, I won’t delve into the vendor-hunting bits of it), we got married on the eleventh of November last year and as of writing we’ve been married for half a year (shy of one day!).

This is the clichéd part of the blog post where I say “time flies”.

—–

If you ask me, then, how does it feel being married?

To be perfectly frank with you, it feels nice. It is indeed a very anticlimatic and boring choice of word, but it does feel nice.

I used to freak out at the thought of being committed to someone “for the rest of my life” (paraphrasing my engagement post), but many of these days when I see Andhika doing house chores or simply sitting there with his laptop open, I feel grateful that he’d be there for the rest of my life. (A-year-ago-me would feel icky typing that, but well as I said, you can’t logic your way out on this subject.)

It feels nice that someone understands that the number one thing you hate most is doing laundry, and that he’d willingly do it for you. Likewise, I have to understand that he has… different anatomy leading to sleep apnea and rendering you to wake up due to his loud snores.

It feels nice that you can discuss on which Hyrule shrine you should go to next, and hours later in the middle of the night discuss your Individual Development Plan for work and plan your careers together. Sharing notes and lessons learned from our own mentoring sessions are quite productive, too!

And as there won’t be rainbows without rains, there were, of course, down days — those that are more than petty fights over failed dishes and small daily annoyance. I think it’s inevitable — after all you are putting two people with different personalities together in an extended period of time. I still stand by my opinion from years back that these fights will only make you stronger.

We spent more than half of our married months so far being physically apart from each other. I got an assignment in Singapore (another big life update from the past year!) and have been working here since January. This role also requires me to travel quite a bit. Likewise, Andhika’s new job (in which he moved job partially to find a workable arrangement to join me in Singapore!) requires him to travel every now and then, too. This, on top of the first few months of the year where he was still based in Jakarta ends up in us meeting only on few weekends and not more. Some people frowned at this thought of me working abroad and us living separately — certainly not ideal for a newlywed, they thought. However, Andhika and I had agreed before getting married that the marriage should not restrict us in our career and that we’ll find a way to work it out. And after all, there isn’t one model ideal type of marriage and more often than not, overthinking about what others expect you to do don’t get you very far.

More than one person warned me that being married will limit and prohibit you — from reaching your goals, from taking daring decisions, from hanging out with your friends, … and the list goes on.

I would beg to differ. If any, I feel like it expands us. And in a crazier way still, I feel like it grounds us, giving us a firm standing — and in turn propelling you to roam, fly higher. It gives you assurance that there’ll always be something, someone there to return to and catch you should you fall. It strengthens and heals, at once.

—–

 

On putting a ring on it.

Earlier today, through a private family event, Andhika and I got engaged. It was a simple lunch between two (later on, one! :p) families, followed by a sincere conversation expressing the good intent and our plans for the future.

For us, the decision to get engaged (and subsequently, get married) was not an easy, I’m-certain-he’s-the-one-upon-first-meeting kind of decision. It was a decision made over the course of five years — five years worth of dinners, discussions, and debates.

Andhika and I knew each other from a selection round for an ITB MUN team back in 2011. Months later, catalyzed by our love for museums and evening stroll to fetch a document we left in the Indonesian Embassy in Washington, we started dating. Since then, we’ve been together and witnessed each other grow from university students with awful hairstyles to office workers trying to make our marks in this world.

When we realized we’re already a fully-functioning adult, it can’t be helped that we ask ourselves (and peer pressure, and family, too), what’s next for us? Surprisingly, it’s easier to answer such question in career and goals-related context rather than in a romantic context. We are in love and undoubtedly have grown fond and dependent on each other, but we can’t quite figure out if, when, and how we’re going to get married. It was a topic that we usually shrug and dismiss, replying instead with an answer “the time will come, just wait and let it come naturally”. Only later did we realize that shrugging, dismissing, and “waiting for it to come naturally” is akin to, well, not letting it to come. Simply because the topic is in uncharted waters for us, we chose to put it on the back burner. Perhaps we were afraid (mind you, it was a big decision to make).

When we finally sat down and talk about what we’re going to do about this “marriage thingy”, a lot of questions pop in my mind:

1. Aren’t I too young for this lifetime commitment?
2. Do I really, actually love him, or is it just a matter of habit to having him around?
3. Holy cow, I’m gonna be with this guy for the REST OF MY LIFE. Is he really the dude for me?
4. Will I still be the Cahya I know today? Will my friends steer away from me? Will I still be able to have an impromptu solo lunch at Yakinikuya?
5. Do I get to achieve my career goals? Will I be limited in any ways?
6. People say once you get married you’ll lose all the freedom in the world! You won’t enjoy life!
7. and the vilest of them all… do we deserve better partners?

When faced with difficult questions, I resort to the way I’m most familiar with: being my own devil’s advocate. After many monologues made during the hour-long drive to-and-fro the office, I wasn’t able to find enough solid answers not to get married, and was apparently able to note down more practical reasons and benefits of getting married (jokingly to my colleague: “it seems like a decision that can bring a higher overall IRR to my life”).

Some of my closest friends could testify my worries and doubts I had about choosing a life partner. After all those lengthy discussions and video call, trying to contact different friends with different personalities, I realize that there is no single person I can consult to give a silver bullet for all my questions – eventually I have to decide on my own, take a leap of faith, and just… go with it. After all, I believe that there could not be a person so perfect at any given time, as the definition of “perfection” evolves as we do. It’s not in human nature to be fully satisfied with what we have, hence I reckon that at some point in our life, one should just be selfish and decide for one’s self  on the grounds of what feels right (which, by the way, can also mean not to get married to someone at all. You don’t need a “marriage” to complete you. Someone is not less of a person without a spouse or a partner. Just a PSA.). Anyways it’s intangible emotions not a science on how to fly men to Mars — you can’t logic your way out of this subject.

Being with Andhika for the past five years wasn’t always a smooth and enjoyable ride, but most of the time I was happy. Seeing myself as an independent woman, I’ve always thought that I want someone who will not limit me and respect my personal space and goals, but is still able to love me whole. Thus, I consider myself lucky to have found someone who can be my punching bag and trash can, and at the same time my biggest supporter.

Claire Underwood of House of Cards once said this, affirming its position as my #1 favorite series:

We’re two independent people who have chosen to live our lives together

which I think smartly summarizes how I contextualize me marrying Andhika (go Claire!) (we don’t aim to be a despotic White House couple, though).

I believe that this decision will not negatively alter who each of us is today and what we aspire to achieve in the future. If any, it will positively impact me as I will be able to live with the person I love and provide emotional support for each other. Create synergies and climb the mountains we want to climb together. Walk side-by-side as we unravel life’s challenges and pleasant surprises.

There are days where I still have doubts, and I guess in a way I’m grateful that I constantly question about things around me. It put me in a state of non-complacency and drive the hunger to better our relationship and the two of us as a person.

Eventually, I realize that as much as I’m afraid of the commitment and consequences that entail, I am equally excited to officially live my life together with Andhika, even more than what we have thus far.

So, yeah, we put a ring on it!

Four winters

Four winters, forty eight full moons (technically we don’t have winters but for literature’s sake just take it as it is…)

We can count our blessings in numbers: forty eight months, nineteen cities, eight birthdays, seven countries, six companies, three continents, two degrees, two universities, one car – you name it.  Numbered milestones are used as a measurement of how we have been and how we’ve changed (hopefully for the better) for the ­­past years. We have evolved from a frugal university students into interns-trying-to-make-things-work and finally an aspiring young professionals (or at least that’s how we wish we are) and on the process, shifting our ways of communication and responding on the process.

Keeping numbered achievements also feel nice – it makes people feel valuable, achieving, successful. Isn’t it nice to put statistics and color-coded map of the world?

I invite us to highlight the fact that it is less about the numbers and the successes, but more to the things we have gone through in order to keep the wheels turning and the counts up. Behind “nineteen cities”, for example, lies endless bickering on where to go and which transportation we should take and behind “six companies” lay week-long discussion on career paths and self-development (in which each of us plays an important role) plans. Behind three anniversary blog posts lay spiteful LINE messages (which usually mean I miss you but I’m way too high in my ego to admit such) and numerous fights hidden by those shiny numbers. These are the things that matter, even more so than the numbers – because they were the ones that made us grow and made us who we are today.

In the fourth of the fourth day of the fourth month (basically, fourth anniversary), let us shy away from the past milestones and instead, look ahead.

It is no time to boast on what we’ve done – it is time to think on what we are going to do. What are we going to do next and how should we shift ourselves so that we fit to each other’s missing puzzle piece? What have we been lacking and how will we address them in order to make things work on the long run? What have we done well and would they still be relevant in the future? Have we been focusing on the right things? Aren’t these the questions grown-ups supposed to ask themselves in a mature relationship? After all, we’ve grown, haven’t we?

There are lots of questions to ask and consequently, lots of answers to be sought.

And I believe we should try to seek those answers together.

Happy anniversary, more to come!

P.S. thanks for tolerating me at my worst

P.P.S. On another note I really think I’ve had too much self-development trainings hence lots of self-reflection questions.