I am a nobody. Not in the sense of not having a name or identity or existence, like the Face-less cult's No One in the Game of Thrones world. But, yes, I am a nobody. Still, with all of this nothingness, I'm entitled to have an overwhelming feeling—a compilation of anger, disappointment, hopelessness, sadness, and all kinds of them.
This is a ranting piece. It's a morning page I should just keep to myself, but I believe someone out there might have similar thoughts.
A funny quiz, sobering reality…
For starters, a couple of years ago, I found a random tweet from the good old Twitter before that petty man took over the platform. It was just a funny one about counting your privilege points. You started with 1,000 points, and from each aspect, you got a minus score. For example, being a woman took out 200 points, being the oldest daughter took out another 200, being born into a non-rich family took another, and so on. There was this one aspect that I thought would take a lot of points, but it didn't. Instead, what made the final score minus 3,000 was being an Indonesian. I laughed.
I was taking the quiz as a random thing you do to pass the time because I wasn't taking it seriously. But now, with everything that's happening in my country, I can't help but think back to that score.
The pull of home
God, I love my country. I love Indonesia. I can't even begin to describe how I always cry during the independence day ceremony and when the anthem plays. I love my country so much that it feels natural to compare everything I find outside of it with what we have back home.
I haven't really traveled far or to many places, but as much as I enjoyed a quick trip to Penang, my head kept comparing the sand on their beach with our beaches on the west coast of Indonesia. The food? Don't even get me started. Nowhere in this world would we have food as amazing as what we have in Indonesia.
I love Indonesia. No matter how far I go to roam the earth and experience a lot of things, I still dream of spending my old days there. I dream of the small town where I grew up with its beautiful rows of hills and mountains, with the lake behind my grandma's place, and the beach with pine trees and white sand. I dream of the local market that has everything fresh.
I love my country, even in this current situation where I don't even know if it's going to get better or if we're doomed to have it worse. So here I am, with the cost of having this feeling: a different kind of broken heart.
Broken hearted but different
A few days ago, I was talking with someone about this situation. We agreed that we have a strange feeling that somehow feels like being heartbroken, but different. It almost feels like grief, but there's a peck of anger hiding in between. It's like a part of you is hurting, and you don't realize it has been affecting the whole system in your body until it's too big of a mess.
A collective ache
Now, in response to that specific part, I have a theory that has been playing in my mind all this time. Someone has probably said this somewhere, and I'm just here being inside my bubble, thinking it's a new thought. But here it is: No matter where we are, we all have this invisible thread from our feet connecting us to our motherland. Of course we're feeling this way lately because our homeland is hurting, our people are suffering, and they are all part of our system.
But I'm a nobody. What I say or do isn't going to make a big change. Hence, all I can do is keep an eye out for updates and news from my country and share the good information as much as I can. No matter how much my brain hates the news and how badly it has been impacting my well-being, my heart keeps wanting to be fed with these things because I care a lot.
The helplessness of distance
As a nobody, I'm also entitled to feel irrelevant rage about all of this. For example, how the price of a short flight to my hometown is skyrocketing so much that I might have to cancel my plan to be with my family in this time of crisis. I am a nobody, remember? A crazy number outside of my affordability isn't going to work with my situation. But who can make it work? All of these people, who decided that this is the right time to travel to Indonesia because it's a cheap country to travel to, and the currency will make them feel like kings and queens, resulting in an illogical price for the flight.
A simple hope
Oh, God, it's so bad. I wanted to write this as a letter to whoever has the power to fix things in my country because somehow, one day, it will reach them. But then I remember, if thousands of people were marching, hundreds of people were speaking out, and dozens died, yet nothing was done, what would this long rant do?
This nobody, at the end of the day, can only hope. Not that much hope, just a simple one: that we who are connected with this invisible thread on our feet can survive this time and heal together as time will answer that one question: Will our country ever get better?