Jakarta | Ko Ocep

"Thank you for being here, Tep!" Ko Ocep has said (or conveyed) it many times, on the text. To actually being told that in real life felt otherworldly. I chuckled and tightened my hug. Yes, I am here. I am here. Here. Warm and alive.

He let go, "I do remember you crying for hours somewhere in Kaliurang", I nodded. It was six years ago. I was seventeen—confused, lonely, and scared. Strange first impression, I must say.

"Gosh, all those years listening to you telling me all things... in English! Exhausting!" He shook his head. I erupted in laughter. Blame it on 'bilingual reduced emotional resonance' I wanted to say that, but my therapist would've definitely high-fived Ko Ocep.

It was true, though. Year after year, he constantly reminds me: "you're here. At least you're here." And I come back every year with the same old faults or brand new bad decisions. Again and again, he taught me that I had the permission to feel, and not to feel. To enjoy mistakes. Prayed for me. Held me for hours in the middle of freezing cold mountain breeze almost midnight while I purged a decade of rotten demons I have bottled inside the closet of my chest. Literally putting his physical energy to keep my hands from hitting my own head. So, it was only fitting that he was the first person I actually sat down with and put in words of what has been happening in the past year.

It was easier thought than done. In reality, I dozed off of the incredible banh mi we had for lunch, and the gloom weather of Jakarta, and thoughts. I did manage to tell him about poetry and beautiful people I am abundantly thankful to call friends and yoga and meditation and taking my own path on faith and creating my own mind space for solitude, and the lesson on compliments.

But it was the easy stuff.

In fact, I couldn't put together most of I actually wanted to say.

I did not know-how.

My whole heart and soul had been rebuilt out of gratitude, and I couldn't find a way to untangle even the slightest of how it transformed me inside out, upside down. Funny how some days contentment feels too new and unfamiliar, like new pair of shoes your skin hasn't gotten used to.

I wanted to say, "I am here".

Because it was perfectly enough of an explanation. I hoped it was.

We had coffee and talked about important things.

Like people who are the personification of thank you and sunshine. I have them now too. I want to be exactly that, too. The walk. The walk. I'm going to walk, too. And life is a dance floor, so dance. Dance. You do you. Your own rhythms and moves. I will, I said. Death—nothing to worry about. I agreed and without the wrong reasons this time. And we talked and talked, and more and more I am grounded.

I am here.

Six years later. Still confused, not lonely, sometimes scared; but I am here, finally. Here.

When we walked out to the opaque grey sky of Jakarta, I took a long deep breath, filling my chest with its chilly post-rain air. Now that I had caffeine in my system and refueled my tank of joy, I didn't think I despise the city as much as I thought.

"What's the name of this street again?" I giggled to my own inside joke.

Amused, he answered, again;

"Jalan Surabaya!"

I laughed my brain out.