Live the Life you Love : A Detour, Blessing in Disguise


" If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it"
~ John Irving


Born in a middle-up family which everything outside is undervalued in order to protect me and my siblings, I mostly found myself in the brink of boredom. I couldn't live the way my peers did. My parents were the conventional parents who expect nothing good from the outside world: full of germs, full of bandits, full of thieves, and full of wickedness in general.

As the eldest child, I usually found my inspiration from the things I've seen or from what my surroundings and peers did. Anyway, my childhood was more or less a suffering. I got bullied, mocked, alienated and at home, I couldn't get even the peace. You know, as the eldest you should have been the role model that usually related to doing chores at your best.

There I was, as a non-popular mediocre little girl who got bullied every day, trying to make sense of the world.

One thing that kept me happy that time was my little cheesy diary. I used to write down my dreams, my hopes, wishlists and also people that inspired me.

I had no idea that all my dreams would someday come true...

Have you guys ever whispered to yourself of something that you can seemingly get whatsoever?
I did! I used to feel envious every time I saw people get new things, got a perfect score or a compliment, took a vacation.. so on
One day, I watched a documentary about living overseas. That's so cool! said to myself.
I knew I would love to live in the finest place ever since I thought I could touch a snow and not worry about getting dirty.

Here I am now, 21 years after I said to myself about my wildest dreams. I am standing before the oldest basilica in the World: San Marco in Venice.




***

My life so far is no an easy journey, just like what my colleague ever said when he tried to foresee my future through palmistry ( palm-reading) that my life would be fucking bumpy, challenging, full of tears and not to mention a detour. Yes, a detour!

I've got few life-changing moments, like when I met my future husband, and when I gave birth to a courageous little boy, but nothing compares when I decided moving out to Italy.

What is it like to bump into new culture that once you thought super extraordinary? to switch from eastern values to western ones? or How it feels to have not understood what people say but still try to be positive?

I tell you that it's hard! freaking hard! I used to see western values from my negative perspective and now I see by myself that what I perceived was none to be true. Western Values are so much different from Eastern Values, to compare both is such a useless gesture but what I realize now that Western values rely on authenticity, honesty, and liberation, and those make it so special.

By now, I think western values are more superior than the Eastern ones mainly because of their simplicity, non-judgemental point of view but once again it depends on how we see things and how they affect us.  For me, these values are the ones I am eager to live with and to raise my kids with. I feel I am so much happier now that I don't live in people's expectation of what should the version of myself be. I used to be afraid to go out of my comfort zone coz I thought people would think I'm odd. I used to be told to do something that I don't like just to make my parents happy. I didn't have many choices though, to reject what our parents said in the Eastern values mean that you're ignorant and paying no respect to the elderly, to the culture, to your upbringings, to your surroundings.

I was controlled, monitored, overprotected by most of my life then when I got married it all changed. My husband is totally supportive of everything I do, he never insists that I should do something or think in a certain way. He opened my mind, Men aren't there to control women but they are to support them in any way. That is what we call Marriage, my husband said, a supportive bounding.

I think I've found myself by now but sadly enough I almost lost everyone. My family is still there, they are changed or remain the same, I'm unsure but they know they can't tell me what to do with my life coz I am so much more assertive than I was.

Most of all, I am happier.
Isn't that matter? our happiness?
Oh yess, to nurture your happiness is crucial if you are about to make your surroundings happy.
That's all that I do now

Here's My all-time favorite poem by Robert Frost that pretty sum up the way I see life and the way my life evolved :

ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves, no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
    I took the one less traveled by,
    And that has made all the difference.


Live your life, for there's only one YOU that can make it right. YOUR VERY SELF.