The end

After nearly ten years, ati-the-reader.blogspot.com is now concluding its final chapter. The blog has been a definitive part of my life, and I have enjoyed being a part of yours (whoever you are) in all these writing years.

If you need to reach out to me, I can be contacted at nurhidayatia@gmail.com. We will probably see each other again, in one way or another, in the physical or virtual world.

Until then, here's wishing that you will have the life you always dream of!

Stronger than you

Here is the thing: I am the kind of girl who relish in abandoning things.

I couldn't remember how it started. But I didn't set out to be strong. I was a doted child. The only girl in the family. The kind of girl who is always buoyed by the assurance of a slow haven of a flowery swing.

And then someone came and cut the rope that held me to the sky.

These days people often commended my calm exterior, and always, I would laugh a little inside. If only you knew.

I was an angry kid, and my blinding rage sometimes made me feel like I could kill myself.

First, I kicked a window until my foot bleeds. Then I shoved my standing fan from my desk to the ground, rendering it useless and pathetically swinging to its death.

I hit my head against the wall. I cried. I lost my faith.

One day, in my anger and with tears stinging in my eyes. I stood up and started to clean.

When I was done, I was sweaty and breathless but with what feels like an amazingly calm space inside my head.

I learned then to be strong I need to cut the frills away from my life.

From a hoarding princess, I became a spartan soldier.

I found with great joy the satisfaction of purging things I don't need. I threw away boxes and boxes and boxes of letters. I passed along gifts I couldn't and didn't want to use. When people find it difficult to stay in my life, I didn't stop to wait for them.

I learned Stoicism,  dived into Objectivism. I walked so fast sometimes my legs hurt.

Now can you see why I cannot stop and wait for you?

Because I am afraid.

I am afraid, if I stop for even a second - I will explode.

Letters to a friend: When you encounter an unlit road, take it and shine.

Jalan Sepakat Indah 3, April 19, 2013

Dearest friend, 

I begin my letter with a heavy tug in my heart. As opposed to our last correspondence many years ago, we are now in different junctions of our lives.

Then, I had no idea who you were, but your presence was a comforting anchor for my wayward sail. 

Today, you are no longer in my life. 

I hate to say the word "I lost you". 

I don't think you can ever lose a person once they had been in your life. 

When someone important appears in your life, it is as good as finding a piece of yourself back, and when you lose them, it is as good as losing a part of you - again.

I had doubts about writing today. But I am reaching the point in my life where I have to try everything because nothing seems to be working. 

Do you know what I mean?

Sometimes I feel like I am carrying a hole the size of Pennsylvania in my heart.

It's like an itch that never goes away. 

No matter how hard I scream, "for God's sake, I'm fine! I feel freaking fabulously fine!" to myself, no matter how euphoric I feel in my moments of happiness, I can't help but feeling like I'm walking on a glass floor - ready to break and suck me into a vortex of dark and barren void.

Do you remember when I said you were my attempt at healing? 

"It's unfair", I told myself. "It's unfair for you to put a responsibility so heavy on one person's shoulder and expect them not to crumble.". 

"It's dangerous!", concurs a friend.

But I was at my wit's end.

People are always telling us to be adventurous, to take our chances at happiness whenever possible. 

Here's the fine print,

#1, Once you start breaking free, you cannot stop. No small or diamond-studded cage will ever satisfy you. You will always be in constant and flighty need to try something, to go somewhere, to be someone.

#2, No matter how many chances have you tried and adventurously taken - none, I repeat, none of them guarantees you a happily ever after. 

Life is just one big giant mess of randomness.  

You were my random, 

and I am that one flighty bird who broke free from her cage, lost and frantically jumping from stone to stone, finding my way home. 

You proved my hypothesis true, 

but I am not stopping from walking on and soaring high. Because I have no choice, because I believe it's not our fault, because what else can I do but continuing to believe?

Yours truly, 
Ati. A. Aziz

Someday this pain will be beautiful

Our minds are a funny thing. The way it hangs on to the most inconsequential memories. The minute ones. The ones that shouldn't matter.

How do you trust your own judgement when it has never made the right decision?

Correctness is relative, you say.

Perhaps, but uncertainties has a way of getting the best of you. Especially when it never make sense.

Conversation about god - II

I am not an atheist.

a·the·ist [ey-thee-ist] 

noun: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.  

Origin:  1565–75; < Greek áthe ( os ) godless + -ist

I believe in god. Perhaps no longer in a way any organised beliefs would expect me to, but I believe in something higher, larger and more expansive than life.

I had doubts, of course.

In moments when I find god cannot explain the unfathomable, I find it easier to be a rationalist -  relying only on what is immediate around me. My question at times like these would echo in my head over and over and over again:

"If you truly are omnipotent, how could you let all of these happen?"

When I am confronted with the magical impossibility of life and its beauty, however, I know I could not deny god.

When I see a cat sunning itself under the happy sun, peacefully co-existing in my close presence.

When I find myself in a company of a complete stranger, so different from myself in nature and worldviews, yet so similar in our hopes and dreams.

I would find myself saying, "that's you right there, isn't it god? Looking at us, smiling at us."

Do I believe in religion? I believe religion is an organised set of beliefs and values systems, and nothing more.

Religion is not necessarily interchangeable with faith. In the same way one can be religious but not spiritual,  one can also be spiritual but not religious.

I believe in indiscriminating god.

Whether we are man, woman, white, black, straight, gay, rich, poor, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. I do not think it is our god-given mission to decide which religion/sets of faith/values/personality should triumph another.

When I am presented with a question - are you a believer? I said yes.

And when I was asked, then why are you not a Muslim/Christian/Hindu/Buddhist? I would go back and ask myself, but how do you know (what to believe in)?

Do you believe in something because it's right? Is something right because you are told it's right? Or because you are convinced it's right above all others which are wrong?

How do you know if something is right above all others which are wrong until you have made enough examination to understand the limitations that lead to their imperfection?

If they said, it depends on your faith. So I say, well, my faith is in god.

Then, they asked, what is your moral guidance?

I answer, to equate irreligous to being immoral is rather simplistic, isn't it?

On the days when I was religious, and I met others who are not - I ask myself, what's stopping them from doing evil? What's encouraging them to be compassionate?

What is it in my religious bearing that they don't have? And if we are different in religion, why are we the same in our conducts as human being?

Bam! It struck me. Religion, rituals - are physical, social conduct, they are what gives you identities, labels. Faith, beliefs, moral values - are inherent, and can be manifested in many forms.

I believe human beings - any human beings - are inherently good.

So does it matter if they are Muslims, Christians, Buddhist, Jews, Hindus, straight or gay?

No. To me, it doesn't matter.

Does it matter to god? I don't know.

I'm not exactly in god's place to say so or otherwise, am I?

Your map of uncharted shore of potential

"Hence: every moment of every day of this year, and every year that follows, what I want you to map is the uncharted shore of potential: the capacity of life to dream, wonder, imagine, create, build, transform, better, and love; the infusion of the art of living into the heart of every instant of existence."

- Umair Haque on How to Have a Year that Matters.

I am afraid I am not good enough. There, I said it. Out loud. I didn't see it when I wrote about my niggling fear of life and its potential to grow big and monumental. Or rather, I didn't want to see it.

But as I was sitting in the hall, six thousand kilometres away from my home last month,  next to my good friend, who flew all the way from the five degree Celsius country, witnessing our friend cementing her commitment to love in a ceremony neither of us could understand - I thought to myself;

This is your life - and what are you doing about it? 

You see, none of this would have happened had we followed what Umair Haque termed as a smoking trainwreck of a so-called life. By this - I mean US. Our lives.

Had we devote ourselves to the mere conquests of wedding bands, MBAs and superkids - and not strive to extend beyond ourselves to explore the fullness of human possibility - that girl from the countryside of New South Wales would never imagine that one day she will find a girl in a hijab stepping into her hallway, quietly pronouncing I'm moving into this house. 

This was eons ago. When my life had felt like it had been explosive. 

Now it feels like it fizzles, all it's making is a hissing noise of drowning embers.

I am afraid of affirming my values and beliefs to stay true to who I really am. I am afraid I don't have what it takes to be amazing.

But what I'm afraid of the most is every day, every step I take will take me closer to my fear and further away from my dreams.

Evolution of the faith(ful)

There is a growing presence at my door and I keep trying to ignore it. It's called Life.

With the passing of a New Year, which I welcomed with an equal mix of apprehension and ease, I can't help but feel a sense of trepidation that something big and monumental is to happen. I've been going through my days guarding closely what is dear and familiar, claiming solitude and exception from being among people.

Yet, I know from the deepest heart of my hearts this lurking presence, with its quiet smile and coaxing spirit, will never go away.

Marrianne Williamson says "it's our light not our darkness that most frightens us".

As I sit in the corner, trying to concentrate in my book, tending to my cats, running - in order to drown the niggling knock, knock, knock of my subconscious - I am beginning to realise this tug of war between light and darkness is going to be around more often going down the road.

From embracing fully the faith I was born into, to charting an entirely new path - the prospect is a frightening one.

Nevertheless, there are times in life holding on to what you believe in trumps conformity, and the choices you make could either make or break you.

This is one such thing for me.