Monday, 17 May 2021
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If this is posted, it means that you didn’t show up.
How was this year’s Ramadan for you? To me, this year was particularly hard. Workload didn’t get any lighter and I spent almost every day up until 1 AM so I can complete my work on time, perform taraweeh before suhoor and still have some time to sleep.
How are you? Yesterday, I noticed you removed me from your followers list on Instagram and unfollowed me, too. I’m not sure if me screenshot-ing your QnA post about interview triggered it, but just know that I’ve regretted it ever since.
Are we good?
You told me that you don’t see the two of us working out and I’ve been working very hard to keep my distance and treat you as a friend. I’m proud to say that I’ve made great progress in doing that but, when you locked me out of the only social media that we can mutually see what we’ve been doing with our lives, my heart dropped. Do you not see us being able to move forward as only friends?
Do you have a community of like-minded people who identifies the same as you? You are a man of faith that have accepted your sexuality alongside your faith, and it gives me faith to slowly go back to the promise I made to younger me — that I will never give up on faith and to continuously learn to find me in it. I’ve never ceased from performing acts of good faith that I learnt from religion, even if I’ve detached myself from it for the longest time. Meeting you have given me more reasons to go back to it all.
Watch this before you continue. Or don’t. I can’t make you do anything. I can’t even make you go see me and help me heal from this hurt.
However, I’ve started seeing you talk down on people who are atheists or the one who chooses to not be associated with any religion. You’ve found your community within religion and that gave you peace and assurance. Some people found enemies within that same communities that you found love, and they have yet to find peace in other communities and faith because of the unresolved trauma caused. As long as there’s heaven and hell, there will always be an us and them. Take a look at the ways your communities have excluded the other and realise your role in perpetuating that hurt. The path to god doesn’t have to be so bloody. Love doesn’t have to hurt you or the people around you.
I care about you and I’ve learnt so much about life here because of you. I don’t know what went wrong and I’m doing the absolute most to reconcile with someone who doesn’t want anything from me. It’s because I care about you.
Can we move forward as friends? Your lack of presence says it all, but I’m still hoping otherwise.
I’m moving to Jakarta at the end of June and will move even further out to The Netherlands in mid August. Leaving a place with fresh scars will only make it more prominent and everlasting. I hope we can reconcile that before we properly part ways. How stupid am I to hope.
Baksil is so nice. It hurts to think that I’ve associated this place with happy memories of you.
