Full Body Workout : Easy Plan 1

The result after seemingly endless 30-days workout from a random app I found.

The only thing that clearly benefitted from this is my chest, which has a clear mound that can even push any of my tight shirt forward - if only I was a girl, then maybe it would be a delightful view. 

Other than that, my arms' muscles grow, but not to the extent of when I was still rolling my wheelchair. They looked fine from the side or when I fold my arms, but when I extend them, it'll be clear that my body is still like a thin tree, be it the fault of the trunk or the branches. 

My abs also haven't formed anything, and I feel like my stomach is actually rounder than what it used to be.

Oh well, let's keep going and see if there's any notable changes several months later.

Essence of Freedom

Since today feels like a right moment to sit down and reflect a bit about my life and its significance to this day, I want to write something about my take on ‘independence’.

As far as my memory goes, I never remember making a single major decision in my life by myself. Like a train with a set course, I become an obedient kid that knows nothing but just to believe that whatever my parents choose for me might be the best. Because I know nothing better. 

As a result, I can’t complain much when I suddenly transferred to Bandung in the 4^th grade of elementary school, and then moved out again to Jakarta during my highschool. Both gave me some kind of culture shock because of the difference in how people act in the respective places, and I need some time before I can fit in.

This also continues when it comes to choosing the major I take for college. Never once in my previous teenage years I imagined myself to become a doctor. But when presented with an argument like ‘there’s no one in our big family who has become a doctor’, ‘we know you are capable for it’, or ‘our society needs it, we lacked people from medical field’, I concede. There are also thoughts like ‘they have raise me to this age, I have to repay the favor by doing what they told me to’, ‘I don’t really have anything I want to pursue, might as well follow their guidance’, and so on.

Later I realized, that I becoming less of a person by doing that.

When I’m at lost, I need some kind of escapism. Anime, manga, drawing, writing, all of that become something that defines ‘me’. So then there’s the two of me. The one that always says okay in the surface, and the one who stray off the rail without anyone knowing it.

But since I can’t find a balance between them, the train goes off the track and crashed. I lost the opportunity to continue studying as a med student. I also lost the passion of doing what I thought was my passion. A lose-lose situation.

But the story didn’t end there.

Now that I’m in the mid of my 20s, I realized that I can’t be a kid forever. I can’t just follow whatever other people told me to. I need to build my own argument, find something I actually want to do, and get to recognize what actually makes me ‘me’?

When I was attacked by TB and meningitis, I thought, ‘ah, so this is it’. I thought I’ve met a full stop. And then syringomyelia also come to say hi, and I become less and less a person every day. I can’t live without other’s help. My days are mostly empty. I never know what purpose do I have for waking up every morning. Why am I still living anyway?

Eventually, I was cured. People around me see it as some kind of miracle, but I see it as another trial. Now what? Okay, I’ve been able to walk again and relatively free from any imminent disease, but what about it? On the inside, nothing about me has changed. I’m still unable to find a new path I want to walk in. I still silently curses whenever I see other people showing off their happiness.I feel empty, with only a little bits of pieces remained to define me as a person.

After so much detour, let's get back and talk about independence.

Human are social by nature, so it's impossible to define independence as 'never depends on other' in the context of a person. I think someone can be called independent when he's fully aware that he's his own person in his life, so he can choose whatever road he wants to take in life and get to be responsible with his choice. Well, maybe ideally speaking, it would be something like that.

Recently, my parents have this idea of marriage. I'm on the age, and maybe pushing me out from the family register would make me my own person. Good idea! So far it makes sense. But then when it comes to who's the future partner, they still have the final say, and not me.

Now, I don't want to go against what the religion says on holy book as a matter of principle or against my parents which I still leech their money to continue living everyday as I have no earnings on my own, but I thought this : if I can't decide who I want to spend the rest of entire life with, then between the two 'me', the 'me' that always says okay will win, and I will never become my own person.

I will never have my own argument. I will never have my own choice. I will never have my own freedom.

Disappointingly, I don't have the power to argue against whatever I've been told to. In my entire life, I never tried to speak with my own voice, so it's no surprise, that I have no ability to firmly stand on my ground and say 'I want this' by my own. I was never independent. And so I lost.

Is this the end?

Beats me. But the dice has been rolled, and now all that I can do is just to wait for fate to announce its result. If by chance I can make things turn around, that it'll become an amazing comeback. But if things go in the set track like my entire life prior to this has been, then so be it. I care less about what will I become as a person, and I will live as long as this body can still breathe and pump bloods everywhere to move.

I just wish that in one point of my life, I will arrive at a point where I could say 'yeah, this is me' without worrying about anything else. 

I hope so.

Revival

It's been three years since I made this blog, and since then I never actually add anything to it, leaving it as empty as a barren wasteland

During these last three years, I have gradually reduced the activity of writing something, be it a story or Facebook post. Speaking of Facebook, I feel like the place has become too toxic for the current me. Sure, in the early 2010s it helped to provide a gateway for me to get acquintanced with new people who have similiar interest in literary and Japanese media. But later as my own life go downhill, I can no longer feel that I'm standing in the same place like everyone. And so, I begin to frequently deactivate my account in an attempt to distance myself with the others.

But still, it's not enough.

Twitter become the second place I feel like I can post anything there. But since some people already followed my account, I create another alt account just so I can follow anything I want without other people knowing it. Twitter also become the perfect outlet everytime I want to rant about something, despite the limitation of number of words per tweet so I opted to write short but long-chained series of tweets everytime I feel down.

But still, it's not enough.

I always make a comparison that Facebook is like a city street where you bump into everyone who come across everyday and see the group of buildings that contain different communities, while Twitter is more like an isolated room where you get a view of everyone from binocular, and sometime it also feels like a confessional box. Google+, while pretty much deserted, is still a platform where anyone with Google account can easily see me. So all things considered, all that's left for me is to revive this half-dead blog and start writing something again.

This time, it's all for myself.

If I can't be honest with everyone in real life, at least I want to write down what I really feel and think with everything that happened in my life. In short, I want to write down my own story. A collection of thoughts that people around me may never hear, but actually embody me as a person. Even if I have no choice but to become an empty husk, a zombie without any will, at the very least, I want to become true to myself in any way I could.

I hope so.