2015: The Messenger Had to Die

Around the end of 2014, I got to know a guy. After a while of talking, we felt that we could be together. Somewhere in December, between my birthday and Christmas of 2014, he asked if I would marry him. I told him I wasn’t convinced enough to say yes. He then made a proposal that I thought look solid, so I said yes.

In January 2015, he noticed a lump on his neck.

In March 2015, the lump was confirmed to be cancerous, a late-stage one.

In May 2015, he passed away.

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Have you ever thought how “the lesson” in your life was crafted in a particular way that would only work for you? Because, looking back, that’s how I feel with what happened.

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Growing up, I felt something about me was off. Maybe it was how I carried myself, or how I look, or how I dress myself, or how I spoke — or the combination of all. I couldn’t pin the exact point but I grew to believe I wasn’t good enough to be liked by other people. I was just grateful for those who wanted to be friends with me.

I remember how whenever I entered a new environment (new school, new office, new community) where I didn’t know anyone, I used to think, “Why would anyone here want to be my friend?”. Most of the time, I would try to introduce myself out of politeness and quickly move to the background, hoping nobody noticed I existed. But somehow, I always managed to have friends. Not many, but I know they are the genuine ones. And a good number of them became very good friends of mine until today.

That’s basically how I survived childhood, teen-hood, until early adulthood.

When I started working, I realized I was good at what I did. From then on, I put my worth in my work. Basically, my work defined who I was. I didn’t care if you didn’t like me as a person, but I was confident enough to know that you would like what I could do for you at work.

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Romance has always been an appealing emotion for me but when I didn’t even believe anyone would like to form a platonic relationship with me, I removed romantic relationship off my agenda from a long time ago. I had a boyfriend once in college but the bigger part of the relationship was me trying to get out of it because he tried to shrink me (when I had so little to begin with). Quite oddly, that college love started in 2005-ish, around 10 years before my second relationship that ended tragically.

On a side note, I kinda like how my life is “numerologically designed” — 5 years chunk, 10 years chunk. Easy to remember hahaha…

—

I was highly hesitant to start another romantic relationship, despite truly wanting one, when my uncle introduced me to his colleague in 2014. Maybe my hesitation came from my soul knowing how it would end. But who would’ve known.

It started very typically, through text messages. It was a long-distance one because he’s on the other side of the country, far enough that he’s in the timezone that’s 2 hours ahead of where I was.

He worked at a mining site as an HSE (Health & Safety Environment) officer. When I first met him in person, he showed me a simple animation that he did for work. It was weird because as an HSE his main job was around safety. What did animation have to do with it? Apparently, a lot of employees didn’t really pay attention to safety briefing. He decided to learn how to do basic animation so the employees would listen to his briefing.

One of my best friend once told me, “Why are you looking for a life partner like you’re looking for an employee?” I will never forget that statement because while I was laughing the first time I heard it, it was true. The first thing on my “checklist” for a partner is work ethic. So when my late ex told me about why he did the animation thing as an HSE officer, fireworks popped in my head.

There’s something about people going the extra mile (that they didn’t have the obligation for) to ensure the other person in the line of work is safe, and this isn’t just about physical safety. I always appreciate when a colleague/co-worker did something extra that they didn’t have to do, because they thought it would make it easier for me.

So he checked the “work ethic” box. I thought, “Okay… Not bad.” Then came the other thing that’s difficult to describe. After a while, something clicked in my head and my heart, and I felt a feeling I was unfamiliar with before.

For the first time, I felt that I was good enough to be accepted as a whole, including the parts of me that felt off. It felt like for so long I wore a clothing that’s too small, and finally somebody gave me one that fitted me well. I still remember how wonderful the feeling was.

That’s when I changed my mind from “not convinced” to “saying yes” to his marriage proposal.

We haven’t even had the chance to talk further about it when the lump on his neck showed up, then turned to cancer, and eventually took his life away. But the feeling that he introduced me to — the feeling that I was good enough — didn’t just go away with him. And that’s why losing him was so painful.

“How can I ever feel that I’m good enough again now that he’s gone?” was the question that kept spinning around in my head after his passing.

I didn’t like being sad so I tried so hard to not be sad. Naively, I just followed “The Society’s Guideline to Getting out of Depression” which include: give yourself at the service of others in need and get busy/drown yourself with work.

I did exactly that and ended up with my first suicidal thought.

My late ex came from another province. After he passed away, I flew to visit his grave because I needed to see with my own eyes that he’s actually gone. While I was there, I encountered a church in a village with a library that had very few books, and almost no children’s books.

“Give yourself at the service of others in need,” right?

I rolled my sleeve, raised funds, and did some renovation to the library so it’s physically more comfortable for children to hang out. And with help from so many friends, we added a lot of children’s books. I was truly happy to see what we came up with and hoped it actually brought happiness to the children there.

Apparently, giving myself at the service of others in need, even though I was doing it sincerely, didn’t do much to help with my depression. For a while, it was a good distraction. But after it’s finished, I was succumbed back to the darkness.

Okay, that didn’t work. But there’s still another advice I could try: get busy.

Around the time after my ex passed away, I had a few projects lined up from our Russian clients. We were so ready to go when suddenly Russia decided that it was a good idea to annex Crimea, Ruble went to hell and with my client’s money suddenly had very little value, all of the projects had to be cancelled.

First my boyfriend went to the heavens, then my projects followed suit. The timing was no less than perfect.

—

October 2015

In order to get busy, I had to find another job. My boss at that time understood the situation so he let me go. I got a job at Leo Burnett, one of the fanciest advertising agencies where (almost) everyone in the industry wanted to go to. The tricky part was, their office was located at the metropolitan side of Jakarta. I don’t know why but skyscrapers tend to make me anxious. But at that time, I believed with all of my heart that getting busy was the cure to depression. So if I had to go through skyscrapers on a daily basis, so be it.

I ended up getting even more depressed.

After three months at Leo Burnett, I told my boss that I couldn’t continue. To be honest, it wasn’t an easy decision because I had amazing bosses. Even within that short period of time, there were things they taught me that became some of my operational pillars to this day. I spoke with HR about my situation. I explained to them that if I kept going, I had a strong feeling I would break down to the point where it would be much harder for me to recover. The HR told me that the Client Service Director heard my story and offered to get psychological assistance for me. Even though it’s not part of the company’s medical coverage, they would work things out for me. But I just could no longer deal with the skyscrapers-induced anxiety.

And so I moved to a much smaller agency located at the edge of Jakarta, far away from the skyscrapers. There, I started the actual recovery, about 8 months after the passing of my ex.

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January 2016

It’s not uncommon for advertising agencies to have people with pretentious characters, especially at fancy multinational agencies. The new agency I moved to was also a big name but the unit that I joined was a small one that’s assigned to deal with fighting brands. I believe it was greatly the work of fate that the people within that small unit happened to be genuine people. Like almost zero pretense.

Whenever I reflect on my recovery journey, the friends I made there would always pop in my head, because while they might not realize it, they’re actually a crucial part of my recovery. Them being inherently genuine people made it easy for me to just be me. The extra work of trying to read between the lines, there was almost none. It was one of the emotionally safest working space I have ever had.

You know how life keeps happening around our core problems. While gently nurturing my emotional wound, my work friends reshaped my view about stubbornness. To a certain degree, I am considerably stubborn. Those genuine people I worked with, 90% of them were considerably stubborn. Our brainstorming session was always messy but it was never hostile. A lot of time it stressed us out, but it’s more because we couldn’t crack the idea that rang true in everyone’s head. Questioning each other’s ideas was never taken as an offense. For whatever reason, we had enough trust that none of us were trying to hurt anyone.

I believe that their passion — that showed up as stubbornness –for the work that they do (cue back to “work ethic” on my checklist haha) and their genuine kindness, was like frozen peas on my bruise. Wasn’t curing but definitely made the pain much more bearable.

—

There’s another cure for depression, that the Society often deems as the solution to all of our earthly problem, that I hadn’t actually explore: the almighty “don’t forget to be grateful”.

Somewhere between trying not to follow the dark thoughts that came on and off, I came to realize that I had to be able to feel that I’m good enough, on my own. Even if I got lucky again and found another guy that could make me feel the same way, at the end of the day he’s still going to be a human being who’s bound to die at a certain point. Relying on another human being for “good enough” feeling is just not sustainable. I needed to figure out how to feel good enough on my own.

At that point I thought that was the only way out of it. And indeed it was.

Spiritually, my ex’s passing made me lose all senses. I couldn’t make sense of God’s love. Yes, I had some anger. If I could visualize the feeling at that time, it was like I was a satellite detaching myself from the pusher rocket, and just left there to float weightlessly in the orbit.

“What did I do that I deserve such deep pain?” I tried to reflect back as far as I could to find what I had done in the past, that I had to pay with this kind of suffering, and I couldn’t find any. At some point I thought maybe it was from my previous life, if such thing exists. But did God have to be so cruel to send me something so beautiful only to take it away immediately?

I grew up with Sunday sermons that include “God is love,” “Jesus loves you no matter what” but also include “God will avenge,” “you will pay for the sin you commit,” and some other discouraging messages.

In the beginning of my struggle, I believed it happened to me because I did something terrible in the past and I deserved such pain. But after a while, I started questioning, “Really?” What if that’s not true? What if God doesn’t avenge? People always say there’s a reason behind any suffering. What if there isn’t always a reason? What if it just happens? What if God is always trying to protect but it’s just the nature of life where misfortune is an inevitable part of it?

Who would know what God exactly think? Just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t mean it’s true. Especially because it’s another human being who wrote it. A human being, just like me.

That was when I stopped going to Church. Firstly because I didn’t have the mental capacity to hear another discouraging message. Secondly, I wanted to start from square one and build my faith based on what my heart believes. If that turns out to be against what Christianity preaches, so be it. I don’t mind going to hell if in the end God decides that’s where I need to be. I have enough knowledge of how Jesus critically judged things/situation and that’s what I would use as my anchor and leave the rest.

—

At that point in time, the emotional pain started showing up physically. It felt like something stabbed me in the chest. The pain felt sharp. It happened quite frequently that I decided to shut down my emotions completely so I could no longer feel the pain, emotionally and physically. And it worked like a charm, but with one catch: I was not able to feel any sadness, but I also wasn’t able to feel joy, happiness, and practically the whole range of emotions became unavailable.

I started doing “don’t forget to be grateful” by noticing the smallest thing my body does for me. I started being grateful for my feet who faithfully got me to wonderful places, despite having to carry my overweight body. I started being grateful for my internal organs who kept working despite me continuously feeding myself with foods containing minimum nutrition. I started noticing what myself did for me, and turned out there are quite a lot SIGNIFICANT things. I think that’s where my love for myself started.

The things that I love myself for might not be significant for others, but they are highly significant for me.

—

Somewhere in 2017

In one beautiful day, still at my edge-of-the-city agency, we got a TV commercial project with a decent budget and managed to engage an amazing film director.

I could become very judgey when it comes to seeing how people work (again, cue back to the “work ethic” checklist hahaha…) This particular director crafted so many details in his treatment and when he presented his work, his energy was so “loud” yet nothing felt intimidating. It was just pure passion and some optimism which somehow stroke me as “Wow, how nice it is to be able to feel so alive.”

—

“What if we try to feel things again?” I asked myself.

—

I was so compelled by the energy that the director emitted because I used to have it and I still remembered living life while having it.

“But if we open this gate for emotion, yes we’d feel the spark, but we will also feel sadness again. Are we ready for that?”

“Ah, fuck it. Let’s open it. I’ll figure out how to deal with the sadness.”

And so I opened the emotional gate. Come what may.

Not so long after that, sadness started to show up, and for a second I doubt if it was a good decision but I told myself to be patient. Somewhere at the back of my rusty heart, I had the believe that I’d be able to sort it out.

—

Somewhere in 2018

The TV commercial we started working in 2017 was finally on air. At that moment, my love for myself had grown deeper. At the very least I already understood why I ought to love myself. Maybe still trying to fully grasp emotionally but whatever my logic had approved, my heart didn’t have problem following.

Dark thoughts still came on and off but I knew I was heading toward the right direction. After about 3 years, it was nice to feel alive again.

—

Back to the question: “Have you ever thought how “the lesson” in your life was crafted in a particular way that would only work for you?” I think so, yeah. At least for this particular part of my life.

I can’t think of how this “lesson” get delivered through another way that would have me respond the same way — that I face it instead of running away.

If the relationship ended because of a break up, there’s still chances that I tried to reconnect with my ex to get the “good enough” feeling back. If he stayed alive for a little longer, I might not be able to handle the heartbreak. This is a difficult yet important lesson that my stubborn ass wouldn’t care to learn if it’s delivered nicely. Because the message of “self love” has always been everywhere. But they just never got into me.

So, yeah, I’m not going to deny how cruel the delivery was. But I was imagining maybe I was like a hungry child, whose mother had tried to tell me to eat, nicely. The food was nice but me being a child just didn’t feel like it even though I was truly hungry. Then after 100x telling me nicely, I still hadn’t touched the food so Mama just shoved it to me. “Eat! You need this. I wish you don’t have to cry while eating and I tried a million ways to have your eating moment tear-less.”

My ex was only assigned to deliver the lesson to me. It wasn’t something that I was meant to figure out with him, only with myself.

The messenger had to die for me to learn to be truly alive.

Lesson learned. But like any other lesson in life, there are chapters in it. One down, some more to go.

I had a few good years to practice what I learned, until the next chapter in 2020: When The Emperor Said “Stop”.