I Love You

It might not be the kind of expression you expect from me.
But you know that when I say it I mean it and I know that your response will be the same too.
No others know me as well as you do, and hard as it might, you manage to understand the real me, the bad and the ugly, the good and the raw me.
There are times when I feel like I’m being a pain in the arse and I can’t stop myself from doing it and still, you are there with me, holding my hands and helping me through it.
There are times when I feel like the lowest form of creature in the universe and you are there to help me crash … so I can rise up again.
There are times when I feel like I want to say whatever that’s on my mind and you will be nodding your head, totally knowing what I mean, and so I don’t have to worry of being the freak that I always think I am.
Even though we know that we all are freaks.

To let you know how scared I am to lose you, is probably the hardest thing for me to say, but I do. We all know life isn’t always as peachy as we would like to think but I hope that no matter what happen we’ll still have each others and stick through together when we’re old and grey and pass it.

For now, I would just like to say – I’m so happy I’ve got you.

Abortion

Such word is deemed taboo especially in the country where I live in, because the common misconception of the meaning of the word itself is filled with negative connotations, implying that this procedure is done by women who are irresponsible for their actions; having premarital sex and left with growing fetuses that will become babies that they can’t afford to have, whether it would be physically, emotionally or financially.

I have seen one too many biased news on local television programs of women who kill their own new born babies because the men who fathered the babies had done a runner and simply abandon their responsibilities. I say biased because most people respond to such cases by shaking their heads and murmuring words like ‘how could they?’ or condemning those women as ‘murderers’ and offhandedly say ‘so many people are having problems to have babies and yet these women are killing their own’.

But the media rarely blames let alone mentions the role of the males who plant the seeds to form those fetuses in the first place. The spotlights only focus on the women who cover their faces with their hands, heads down to their chest as if their crime is miles worse than those suicide bombers who kill thousands of innocent people. No one bothers to find out the missing fathers. No one cares, to be exact. It’s just too easy to put the spot on the ones who did the obvious crimes, no matter what reasons might go behind them.

Few people seem to realize that when a tiny living creature is formed inside a woman’s womb, there are basically two mature beings involved; the father and the mother. Both carry the same amount of responsibilities and in the case above, the same amount of guilt.

Funny too, how the media rarely focuses on women who got pregnant through rape or incest. No one ever seems to want to know how these women feel.

Having their rights and liberty taken off from them, and in most cases, their youths too.

Carrying something inside their wombs that is a part of the evil-doers who had done the unthinkable to them, knowing that it is growing inside them.

In war with their own selves because of the hatred they feel towards the unknown creature inside of them, yet the realization that this creature is living and most of all, innocent.

Knowing that either way, there is no getting out of it. Keeping the baby equals to having shame and guilt thrust upon their faces, and from the day the babies were born, they will be fighting the urges to hate the innocent yet unwanted child who have turned their lives completely upside down.

Terminating the unborn baby will leave the rest of their lives haunted by the images of the child they never kept, knowing and doubting about whether or not they have done the right thing, finding justifications through many other justifications made by other women who had done the same.

Again, it is about women not having a choice.

So men, look into your own hearts and try to put yourselves in these women’s positions. If you were them, what would you do? Would you have done the same or would you risk the accusing judgmental world we’re living in and put your chin up and brave yourself to keep the child? Would you loathe the person who has taken away your rights so cruelly, forcing you to carry on with another living being inside you, raising it and bracing up for the ignorant society who seem to think it’s much easier to derogate you and your child, mocking you for not having the other half and mocking your child for not having a father?

Or is it easier to abort?

Sex

And the City.

Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha have been what I call them ‘my semi-imaginary friends’, simply because they exist in my life to a certain degree that I think of them as my conscience when I simply get confused about being a woman, handling my life and being in and out of relationship.

Simply put, the girls are figures I look up to, despite all the fucked-up problems they have. Not denying that they are characters from a TV series, they are somewhat undeniably real and close to my heart. They’re what I want from my friends. They’re my dating gurus. They’re the ones to turn to when I feel lonely and there’s no one there to make me feel better. They’re my feminist semi-reality idols who prove the world that women over 30s are not ‘old and pass it’.

They’re the conventions of what women should be; those who choose to be what they want to be.

Sometimes I think being a woman is the hardest thing to do. True, we have the advantage of multiple orgasms, but we’re the ones who cope with period pains, labor hell, sagging breasts and tummies – not to mention the things we have to endure in order to stay beautiful as the common image perceives it; all the waxing, shaving, bleaching, trimming and God knows what else.

Now that the Metrosexual era is becoming more common, we see a blurred vision of what is considered feminine and masculine. Some men might wax their chest. Frequent the gym to tighten their six packs. Get regular meni-pedi treatment at spas. Use moisturizing lotion – from Clinique Men, of course. Even get Botox treatments for those who fear that the Clint Eastwood look is no longer appealing. All of this new ‘men’s stuff’ is still bollocked by those who have not embraced it, but I can see it creeping its little way slowly to the little unconscious minds of young men everywhere, over-poisoning and consuming them, by the growing demands of popular culture, as seen on television, to be the new hip and happening generation of men, sipping their mocha frappes at Starbucks, dressed in Marc Jacobs suits from head to toe, looking so hip it actually hurts.

And women are preferring to opt for Jockeys Women underwear range for comfort and reliability, simple and stylish grey stripy pants for flexibility and movement, medium-heeled pointy toed shoes that won’t stop them from juggling the tasks in their daily activities, ditch the heavy make up and go for the natural look, carry condoms in their handbags and putting ‘career’ as their top priorities in life. Domestic skills such as cooking and cleaning are no longer things that belong to only women, but mainly skills that need to be retained simply because women don’t want to be left behind as the men are catching up. In the meantime, as the men learn how to cook and change diapers and embrace living at home and not force themselves to be the breadwinners, women are working out their roles in the police department or being bus drivers and security guards.

The masculine recognizes and admits the feminine, and the feminine discovers the masculine that has been buried deep down in their minds that they don’t even know that it’s in their every cores and nerves, waiting to be found.

Someday, I hope, the sex differences between men and women will gradually diminish, and as we live and complete each other, with all our strengths and weaknesses, the differences in our qualities will be met, and we can finally understand the opposite sex.

I guess that optimistic Charlotte is in me somewhere, after all.

Panic Attack

I’ve just spent eight hours translating shitloads of pages of articles as sample attachments for my job application as a freelance translator. And I don’t even know if this is worth it. God knows how many CVs I’ve sent and how many job interviews I’d been, with me coming back with no positive results whatsoever.

Most probably God is doing my head in too.

Nobody knows why no one wants to hire me. Perhaps I don’t have enough experience. Or perhaps I’m over qualified. Perhaps they’re just too freaked out that I’m gonna ask for a bitchin’ high salary or perhaps they just think I look too plain freaky to be working for them.

As I type away, squinting my eyes over the many words to convert and browsing pages after pages of my English-Indonesian Dictionary, I start to feel sick. The air is too hot, my stomach feels queasy, I can’t breath and my head is spinning.

I don’t know what happen to me. I need help.

Missing Out The Bride Gene.

In this world, there are basically two different types of women: Those who are content enough to be married and have kids and be devoted wives to their husbands, and those who are scared shitless by the idea of marriage itself and prefer to live their lives as spinsters who pursue their careers until their breasts sag down to their shoes.

I happen to be classified as the latter type.

Such is my luck, because I have come from a broken-down family, born and raised by a father who is the least of the figure I expect and a mother who told me that being married is like trying to walk with an iron ball chained onto your foot. On top of that, I have married aunties who always warned me each time they see in at family gatherings – with their fingers wagged in front of my face – not to get married too quickly and if they ever had the options themselves, would have probably never got hitched so quickly, if only they knew.

I am also brainwashed by many American movies who seem to depict the reason why divorce rates keep on increasing over there. The dogma is ever imprinted onto the nerve systems in my brain that whenever I see a lovey-dovey romantic movie that shows two people in love and ending up with the couple embracing and kissing each other while the camera shoots all around them in circle, the cynical bitch in me can’t help not to snigger and roll my eyes, thinking, “This movie’s got bullshit written all over it!”

If ever there was a person who witnessed so many flawed marriages in her life, that person would be me. Everywhere I go, I always stumble upon them – the married people I see on the shops, on the streets, even on wedding ceremonies for God’s sake. So good I have become that just by simple observations I can tell whether or not these people have issues within their marriages, one way or another.

And if I happen not to notice these things, someone else, like my mother, for instance, will be more than happy to point them out to me; “Look at the way her husband just stands there while his wife is putting all their grocery bags in the car – I bet he’s a selfish prick who thinks his wife is equal to a doormat or something.” or, “Oh, that’s nice, he’s just standing there while the wife’s paying up for everything, he must be a total loser who only sticks with her because she’s got money and he doesn’t.” And then there’s “Look at those pretentious old bitches sitting on their arses over there, I bet all they do is ask for money from their husbands and spend it all on clothes, jewellery and Botox and God knows what else.”

Yes, I know. They are pretty nasty and judgmental comments but I got to hand it to her because she is right. Not because I am very much under the heavy influence of my mother and not also because she is my mother, but it’s because the chances of her observations being right is something like, nine out of ten. I know this because my curiosity is strong enough to want to prove my mother wrong. And most of the time she isn’t.

That is why I have grown to be a person who thinks it’s okay not to be married and have kids.

Because I have a choice not to be. I might be one of the rare women who are missing the bride, the mum and the wife genes, and that might freak me out every now and then, but that’s okay.

Perhaps when all of my girlfriends are married and pregnant, I’ll just smile and wish them good luck. And when they have given birth to their children and proudly become mums, I’ll wish them plenty of luck. When their children are big and they start to tell me to do something about my life and I am still not married, that is just my luck.

Later on people might label me as the sad old spinster who will die alone being eaten by her dogs, but that day may or may not come. God knows what’s in store for the future, and there is no use worrying for things that only time can unravel.

In the mean time, I am fine and I will be fine.