Home.

It took a concert ticket to bring me back. It took the words Death Cab for Cutie and some feeble persuasion before I had the guts to confirm my plane tickets for home. This was a month ago.

I thought about staying another year longer to work, to learn and to travel around the archipelago. I had a rough plan worked out. Several months in Jakarta for work and on weekends I’d explore its enclaves like Kwitang, Kemang, Tebet and Tanah Abang. When that is done, I’d travel.

My family is scattered all over Java and Bali so lodging is secured. There are plenty of lonely grandaunts I can visit. My route will be Jakarta – Bandung – Cirebon – Yogyakarta – Bali. I’ll live for a few weeks and move on when I’ve had enough. I can rough it out on the public transportation system. I have enough sense to fend off people who may be attracted towards my kidneys. Elections are coming up. If I needed money I could always send my writing or my design portfolio and pray someone would employ me for projects. I’d live simply, pack light and wash often. It would work!

Part of why I love Indonesia is that my solitude takes on a physical form. The place is claustrophobic which keeps me moving. I love the sense of physical independence it gives me. This is not derived from living in a safe place but that I have to ‘fight’ and be on my feet against the madness of this urban monstrosity to remain alive and sane. The strangers here are different, especially when they are old. You can poke them and they will pour forth with their life. I laugh but never at their expense, just at the thought that each of us are dying with a story encased inside. I listen and that is all I ever do here.

At times, it is frustrating to really feel how alone you really are fenced inside a very dusty house. While I listen, I have no one else to talk to save for the random frenzied bilingually-confused phone calls to the parents. Though I am alike, an Indonesian, and all at once I am too different. I mold myself to fit each little circle; most people can only accept a facet of who I am because all the rest would seem incongruous. So I learned that it benefits to pretend that you are innocent, indifferent and dumb. Paris Hilton got something right. People expect that you don’t listen, read or think critically because that is what most people do – they do not listen, do not read and do not think – and an entire industry devoted to digesting information for you flourishes.

Three months and I have learned so much more than I could ever utter, but for you I’ll say it simply that it was an amazing experience and leave the dark and delicious details for me to keep.

I’m back to doing what 19 year olds do best because I am in danger of getting too far ahead of myself and feeling so much older than I really am. It is getting harder and harder to relate, only to a certain few but they’ve remained constant for the last 2-4 years. Some of them are coming back in a year and I can’t wait!

This process comes with arrogance and arrogance can kill you. I have so much more to learn. There is so much more space for growing up. I may not write as much because I’m still working on the same project I started this summer and I aim to do well. I’m also editing at a discounted rate of $15 per chapter, more as a filial token of how it wasn’t such a waste to put me through education.

For now I need to be nineteen with all its mindless fun and frustration because life passes by too quickly. I have Death Cab for Cutie ringing in my ears, too much durian in my tummy and East of Eden easing me to sleep. All of these things are what makes me feel at home.