Why I Write

 

Some of you might be confused since I sometimes write in Indonesian and occasionally in English (hang on, this is unusually manipulative. I'm lying to myself. I'm creating a scenario as if I've got several readers regularly visiting my blog. On the other hand I can't help it because I don't know how to start this writing without being deceitful, so let's continue). I fully realise that my English is not that good, nor my Indonesian so in the following pages you might just find a shallow piece of writing. I'm just a learner and I really need to practice so that's the reason why.

 

I would like to convey my motives to write. Nothing is peculiar, you're not going to find remarkable causes I'm warning you, it's just about a simple person who tries to be able to do something unexpectedly hard while some others might find it quite easy. I never liked Indonesian subject when I was at school. I hated a lot when teachers told me to write stories every time I came back from holidays. I didn't write diary when I was a little girl. I wish I had one but I was so afraid that my sisters or one of my friends would read it. They would humiliate me, and the humiliation might last in several years.

 

However I really loved reading. I read children's magazines, comic and picture books, detective stories and novels (mostly in translation) when I was a kid. Maybe it's not the reading that fascinated me so much but the situation of being trance. I liked to be kept away from my real life which I considered to be less adventurous.

 

I was born as a girl (and I'm still right now), in a very modest family, in a developing country called Indonesia. I'm the third child of four. Dwelling up that reality I didn't know how it felt like to be a boy, a princess, a transgender, a paedophile, a witch and so forth. I couldn't experience the lives of people staying in distant countries or witness tragedies happened in the last decades or even centuries ago. By reading, I can.

 

When I got older I found life was worse than I could imagine. The economy of my country collapsed and its impact really hit financial situation of my parents. The government was useless, greedy and corrupt (I'm sorry to say but they are still now). My parents couldn't afford to put me into college since they already had to pay tuition of my two older sisters. I went to a cheap Vocational High School, I was always the best in the class, I got scholarship three years in a roll, but that wasn't enough. Money is the most important if you live in Indonesia and education in this lovely country is frustratingly expensive.

 

I needed to get rid of that shit, or at least I had to find a way to ease the pain. And again I tried to get away from those unpleasant things and find the joy in life by reading books. I started to read the works of realist genre. I didn't find any romantic tales on them; the main characters were not always virtuous, good looking or member of royal families who fought against the evils. They told the stories of commoners. They didn't always end up happy. For instances a wife who left her poor husband on the village and went to the city with another man, she finally ended up as a prostitute. Young couples who couldn't get married because they were so poor. They guy still lived with his parents and shared the bedroom with his grandfather. If he got married with his lover, his grandfather would have to sleep outside somewhere in the sofa every night. Dilemmas appeared on those books are not artificial; they are real, happened on our daily life.

 

After reading those stories, I came to the point that my life is not that bad. Many people experienced the situation way worse than I did. Life indeed sucks sometimes. Well you might think that I'm not a social being so I relied on books to comprehend situations and lives. That's not the case. I do have fiends. However sometimes I feel that life is like being trapped in a circle. I make friends with people from the similar social stratum. Even though they are not exactly the same, they could be a bit higher or lower but the difference is not significant. When I make a comparison, the range is not very wide, and the first and foremost the perspective developed around me is "the grass is always greener in the other side". I was still in an unstable stage to believe on that stupid phrase. Fortunately, books really open my eyes, so I can come up with holistic perspective.

 

I'm completely aware that the characters and plots on the books are not true but I convince that they are the representations of the real life. How great the writers who can represent the world in such entertaining way. I'm amazed in the way they put the words together beautifully. They must be gifted or something. I truly admire the ingenious people behind those books. They seem to be heroes to me. I want to be like them someday. I know this is not going to be easy, I get alarmed already every time I think about this idea, but I have to try.

 

Life doesn't work in the way that I expect most of the time. It's tremendously hard to get a job these days. Continuing study is not affordable. I'm stuck in the vicious cycle. But that's alright. I will try to move on by learning how to write. Bad experiences can turn to be good materials in writing. Life isn't so bad when I write.