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. 

Finding meaning in everything

Sometimes I'm afraid of the kind of person I'm becoming...

This strength, this stoic contentment, this feverish compulsiveness to knead every aspects of my life into perfection - they somehow feels abnormal.

I am supposed to weep, I am supposed to double over with despair, I am supposed to scream my lung out and never wake up.

But I didn't, and it scares me.

Sometimes I would go on about my life. Smiling and laughing and cheering happiness, and then I would stop short and freeze myself - paralysed with fear.

Is it today? I will ask myself.

Is it today? That I will realise that this bright crimson sunshine, clear blue sky and endless green plains are actually a dream and I will be sucked back into the vortex of my own valley of darkness? Is it today? That I will finally see the bleeding, shriveling heart of mine, and scream myself into oblivion? Is it today? That I will see myself holding crutches and find myself unable to walk?

I told someone I loved him, he smiled, and he married someone else. I moved on, we became friends and we live happily ever after.

And yet, and yet - all I want to do is scream.

#4 - 18 November 2012

Today I'm leaving this place.

This formidable mountains and its limestone cave, this generous river that never stopped running as I walk, sleep, laugh and wonder in the past few days.

Having been on one's own with no one to talk to but trees, rivers and the stars, one can't help but wonder about one's life.

For me, one of the very reasons why I signed up for the trip is the inevitable purging of memories -

memories that are past, broken and need to be forgotten.

Sometimes I question myself, did I do enough? Have I taken all of my chances? Have I been brave and courageous, or was I too guarded? Have I conquered life or have I let myself be trampled by it?

I will never know the answers to these questions, probably.

"Perhaps you don't give yourself enough credit", a friend once told me.

Taking actions, and choosing paths based on what you feel, what you believe is right - takes insurmountable amount of faith, too.

#2 - 16 November 2012

I sat by the window, alone, as the scenery outside changes from the suffocating bumper to bumper I have been seeing in the past few days to the quiet and dry countryside of Kanchanaburi. 

There are still development here; tar, concrete, buildings and all. The square road grid and Japanese cars, the men in suits on the billboard and bottles of Coca Cola and Sprite; somehow, these one-size-fits-all development template tend to make you feel like you have never left your city. 

But they are not why I'm here. It's the lush and green spinal mountains, standing tall at the backdrop of the city and forming its backbone, that I'm after. 

From inside the bus, as we inch nearer and the mountains rise above me - I couldn't contain my smile. 

I'm answering the call of the mountains and its water. I'm coming home. 

#3 - 15 November 2012

We were stepping out of the mall when I first saw it.

The crowd were bursting with music, beer and sweat in the Oktoberfest-like atmosphere, and I was getting dizzy from the craziness of it all.

I don't really like crowd. They make my heart race. 

But then I saw it from afar, shrouded in golden light, and my heart quickens - this time for a different reason.

My stride turned into a quick run. I didn't bother explaining my euphoria to my colleagues. I only turned briefly towards them, while pointing in frantic to the other direction. "Find me over there," I mouthed, and then I was off.

Knowing I only had little time in the city and confined to certain kilometre radius around where I stay, I didn't make any specific plans to visit generous temple and wats in Bangkok. I was contented to just roam around its streets and find what little signs of devotion I could in its people.

I don't quite understand my obsession with all things religious. It's just ever since the moment when I found out I have lost my faith (in God), I am always in search of a way to fill this gaping hole inside me. And no matter what I do, I can't seem to fill it.

It makes you wonder if you have some incurable disease no one else can't know what it feels like. It makes you feel as if you are forever missing out on something.

"Having faith is a gift",  I blurted out to my friend. We were standing on the sidewalk, watching the locals stop by and pay respect to the towering Lord Ganesha, the one I was so excited to spot not a moment ago.

To be honest, I envy all of them. For having such devotion, such belief. Some of them are on their way home from work, some of them are itinerant youth with their spiky hairs and low cut jeans, bottles of beer in hand - but they all stopped, knelt, and prayed.

I concentrated my stare on the golden statue - elephant heads, four arms and all - and waited to see if I feel something stir inside.

Nothing, yet again - and I feel like a failure.

"Having faith is a gift", I blurted out to my friend as he walks towards me. A cloud of understanding wash over his face, and he looks at me helplessly. How I wish he knows what I'm talking about.

#1 - 13 November 2012

It is Tuesday. This morning I went out running again. I am beginning to love this ability to move around people so seamlessly, so anonymously.

It's been more than ten years since I am back in Bangkok, and I'm not sure if this lack of fear of the city has a lot to do with my previous relationship to it years ago when I was small, or if it just means that I've grown up, that I've grown formidable and strong that nothing fazes me anymore.

I'd like to think it's the former that's true.

Roaming around the streets of Bangkok in the early morning is beginning to bring home a lot of meaning I've been searching for every time I feel like I don't have enough answers for every questions I keep building up inside myself - 

that I am fortunate, that I am insignificant, that I am big and small and I am capable of doing whatever I want to do and whatever it is I do, they actually don't really matter.

As I step out onto the street, everyone else is already ahead of me. The man who yesterday wore an orange t-shirt is pushing a cart filled with goods. He is probably heading towards the same spot in front of the tower where I saw him yesterday. I tried to outpace him (seeing as I don't have anything heavy to push), but he was faster.

Another man, older, one of his legs cut short by a stump. His skin dark, probably from days and hours under the sun, is washing himself with a small pail of water by his side. He is taking his time, slowly caressing dirt away from his body with a white cloth.

I wanted to look away, but I didn't. 'Feel this." I told myself. I'm not sure how long has he been on the street.

Moments like these are why I go out every day, pushing my body, my emotions and my mind to the limit. This is how I connect myself to the physical world, to the outer world, to make sure I am still somehow anchored, grounded to the roots of what is making my being possible. 

Otherwise I will forever feel as if I am floating, drowning inside myself. As if I am not real, that I need to ascertain - I can feel something.

You are part of a beautiful story

As you fall, remember that you are part of a beautiful story that did not start when you were born.

- I Wrote This For You 

It's November and rain is pounding on our soil like a long-lost lover. One evening I was out running when suddenly the wind shifted and torrential rain mercilessly poured down on me like missiles.

There were thunders and lightning too, and I was forced to take shelter under the small booth by the bridge, laughing and praying to God to keep me safe.

It's been a long time since I felt so alive, vulnerable, strong, thrilled and at peace all at the same time.

I don't know if I qualify to be defined as a believer. But I'm beginning to think whatever happened to me in the past years, they cannot simply be random, disconnected series of events bouncing off each other like gaseous molecules in a closed jar.

One thing is always a cause to another, and had I not the littlest faith to take so many unknown paths - I don't think I would have made it so far.

Which is why, as I stood there in the rain - feeling afraid and exhilarated at my own helplessness and the possibilities of surviving and life and living, I look up at the sky and found myself saying, I'm all yours, God, do with me what you will. 

Like acid spilling out of a bottle

"...Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

That's what I basically believe, and I've lived my life accordingly. In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person's heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside. I think in my own way I'm aware of this danger - probably through experience - and that's why I've had to constantly keep my body in motion, in some cases pushing myself to the limit, in order to heal the loneliness I feel inside and to put it in perspective. Not so much as an intentional act, but as an instinctive reaction. 

Let me be more specific.

When I'm criticised unjustly (from my viewpoint, at least), or when someone I'm sure will understand me doesn't, I go running for a little longer than usual. By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realise again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. If I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have s frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself. That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story in a novel."

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

It feels like death

No one ever tells you it feels like death.

The tight constriction on the left side of your chest, like your lung getting smaller and smaller. The bitter saltiness in your tongue, when you are chewing your food it takes forever going down. 

The panic rush in your head when you close your eyes, because you know in darkness and in sleep is when you lose control over your mind, when your heart starts to manifest itself. 

You feel like you want to put something in your mouth. A cloth, your palm, a block of wood - because you're afraid a scream, a wail might escape from it, betraying your shame, your fear and your anger to the world. 

You want everyone to see you as being strong, because if they know you are heartbroken - the world will win, and you will lose. 

How to deal with losing

Life happens.

For every possession there is loss. For every meeting will end in separation. For every new thing flowering to life, an old thing passed on.

We all know it. Such turn of events happen to us every second of every day and we plug along. Like they are tiny little insignificant things.

Life happens, and death happens too.

How do you deal with loss?

Do you smile at it like a generous tipper? Do you snap its head off like a strong and indifferent warrior?

You opened yourself, you expanded yourself to fill with love - when love deserts you, how do you unfill yourself?

Does love turns into hatred? Does love turn into forgiveness? Strength? Weakness? Insecurities? Freedom?

What? What? What are you supposed to do with love bent and broken?

You walk on. That's what you do.

Who is your personal god?

I believe we all have a personal god we subscribe to and act for.

Many of us co-religionists will quickly say what are you talking about? My god is so and so! 

Collective god, is what most people would be referring to, the god everyone claim they believe in, the god everyone is comfortable in believing exists (without having to go through the hassle of proving whether it does exist or not).

What I am referring to is a more personal god. The underlying forces which drives each and every one of our actions. The reason for our beings and the cause of our survival.

Perhaps, a better question I should ask is: What do you live for? What wakes you up every morning? What makes you take that step forward instead of cowering in fear in your little corner? What dries your tears and props up your feet to keep you walking when you fall?

What makes you take that leap of faith?

Why I run

"For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that's why I've put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I'm no great runner, by any means. I'm at an ordinary-or perhaps more like mediocre-level. But that's not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be." - Haruki Murakami

For the grit, the pain, the need to keep going.

There are days when I feel like I am lugging brick and stones in my leg. There are days when I don't feel like running. There are days when I feel like I would rather sit at home reading a good book with a cup of tea.

 Most days I run because I need to.

Where the one ends, where the other begins?

“Everyone and everything is interconnected in this universe.” - Jeff

We were on our way back to the city. They were belting out to songs coming from my friend's MP3 player, a biographical collection of her life. There were songs I remember fondly, from our times together in school and the forest.

They made me think of the weekend. They made me think of the surreal, but memorable trip I had up north.

My friend's mom has cancer, and I wish I could give the world for her. 

There were fragments of memories of her in my life for as long as I had known my friend; him talking on the phone to her as her endearing abang chik, him berating us over the way we cook because they are never like his mom's, him telling us early in our friendship how he showed her a photo of us. 

For us, the trip was for her. For my friend, the trip was an attempt of fitting us in his shoes.

From showing us his playground, to his normal weekend jaunt at the harbour haggling for fish, to him sitting down beside his mom, comforting her in the dead of night, to her strong voice waking her grandchildren up early in the morning for school.

We have been made privy to her life, and as I sit in the back of the car I was shaken by the revelation how the mere fact of her existence is the greatest gift I've been bestowed and one I will not be able to return.

Sometimes we forget we have a past. Sometimes we forget our lives are much more intertwined and complex than we think. Sometimes we overlook how a person we think so insignificant could have so much effects on our lives and people around us.

"The first is the recognition that the great mystery is not death but birth. The great gift is life and loving and being loved in return." - Arthur Dobrin

Little daily miracles

"What is the meaning of life? That was all - a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark".

- Virgina Woolf and the Languages of Patriarchy

We were standing by the railing, looking out to the man-made water body in front of us. It's early evening and already dark, and I was remembering stories about how fish the size of a child can be found in the lake.

There was a group of tourists taking pictures. Besides them, we were on our own. 

"A lot of people say it's boring," I was telling him about how the place is growing on me, "but I love it here. It's like..."  

"...you own the place." He finished my sentence. I looked sideways at him, and he smiled. 

I returned my gaze to the dark and unassuming sight in front of me.