This is a short one, since I don't remember most of the dream. This is the last part of the dream.
The dream:
I was in a building that looked really similar to my old high school. It was an old building and a bit dark. I was trying to wait for someone. It's not clear who the person was or why I was there waiting. And then I went to a different room, which looked very much like the school's nurse's office. There was someone on the bed, moaning and saying something about getting bitten. I knew what bit this kid in the dream, but I didn't say.
I went out from the nurse's office and headed to a classroom where I found myself only covered in a thin blanket. I remember I felt the confusion when I realised I was only wearing a piece of blanket. No one cared about my lack of proper clothes. People were very tense in the room, because apparently the teacher was giving out some kind of a quiz.
Her questions were simple: what were the factors that contributed to climate change? And what were the ways to rehabilitate the environment? (When I woke up, I was like, what the hell?) I was nervous because I came late (not because I wasn't wearing clothes) and tried to think of the answers so I could get good marks. The teacher was an old woman with glasses and a head scarf. Very much like a lot of female teachers in Indonesia.
Finally, I went to the blackboard (yes, old-fashioned blackboard) and got the chalk and scribbled something about cattle farming (and the land that was used for the cattle to graze, instead of used to plant food). The teacher just scowled even more. Maybe she finally noticed my nakedness. After that, class was dismissed. I didn't get any points for my answer.
And then I woke up. With a headache.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Monday, August 25, 2014
About cooking (which I don't do very often)
I don't know how many friends have been telling me that for them cooking is "fun", "therapeutic", "enjoyable", and other positive adjective. I don't really cook, even when I lived in the capital alone, I didn't really cook. I was too demotivated and just plain lazy. Plus it did feel everything was so expensive anyway. So I rather set my food budget daily than shopping for a whole week, and then cooking daily. I just couldn't do it, physically or financially.
But then this year I got to stay for a month in Holland with my partner. I wanted to introduce him to some Indonesian cooking that he'd never tasted before, so I cooked. Surprisingly, no one died and the food actually tasted good. I tried out several recipes that I got from my mum, tweaking them a bit to suit my taste (and partner's) better. I even cooked for a couple of friends and they liked the food too. It was pretty satisfying.
And then I went back home. At my parents' house (I moved back to my parents' house three years ago because of family issues and now it's almost impossible for me to leave. Long story.) my mum does all the cooking. I can, of course, cook for myself if I want to, but then who will eat her food? Not to mention the constant nagging when I decide to eat out with friends when she has already cooked something for that day. So, I opt for peace in the family and eat my mum's food every time she cooks.
On the rare occasion when my parents go out of town for days, I have the chance to cook for myself again. Now, I have been cooking for myself for the past week. I wouldn't use the word fun, therapeutic or enjoyable to describe my cooking experience, but there's a certain satisfaction when you can feed yourself with the food that you made from scratch. It doesn't even have to be complicated. Some simple pasta with veggies and tuna or just tomato sauce will suffice. But I get to appreciate my effort to cook.
For people who have been cooking since they're really really young, what I have written here may seem like a silly thing. Like, what's so special about cooking for yourself anyway? I've been doing it forever--kind of silliness. But I think I will continue to see cooking as a form of achievement, and not only for myself, but other people who cook. For someone who doesn't really cook, producing edible food for your survival is an achievement (because eating out here isn't too expensive, compared to, say, Holland or Australia). So, yeah, I think I want to continue to achieve more :)
But then this year I got to stay for a month in Holland with my partner. I wanted to introduce him to some Indonesian cooking that he'd never tasted before, so I cooked. Surprisingly, no one died and the food actually tasted good. I tried out several recipes that I got from my mum, tweaking them a bit to suit my taste (and partner's) better. I even cooked for a couple of friends and they liked the food too. It was pretty satisfying.
And then I went back home. At my parents' house (I moved back to my parents' house three years ago because of family issues and now it's almost impossible for me to leave. Long story.) my mum does all the cooking. I can, of course, cook for myself if I want to, but then who will eat her food? Not to mention the constant nagging when I decide to eat out with friends when she has already cooked something for that day. So, I opt for peace in the family and eat my mum's food every time she cooks.
On the rare occasion when my parents go out of town for days, I have the chance to cook for myself again. Now, I have been cooking for myself for the past week. I wouldn't use the word fun, therapeutic or enjoyable to describe my cooking experience, but there's a certain satisfaction when you can feed yourself with the food that you made from scratch. It doesn't even have to be complicated. Some simple pasta with veggies and tuna or just tomato sauce will suffice. But I get to appreciate my effort to cook.
For people who have been cooking since they're really really young, what I have written here may seem like a silly thing. Like, what's so special about cooking for yourself anyway? I've been doing it forever--kind of silliness. But I think I will continue to see cooking as a form of achievement, and not only for myself, but other people who cook. For someone who doesn't really cook, producing edible food for your survival is an achievement (because eating out here isn't too expensive, compared to, say, Holland or Australia). So, yeah, I think I want to continue to achieve more :)
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Dream Journal--01
I've been having bad dreams for a while--years--that I can't seem to remember that there's a time when I didn't have bad dreams when I slept. These dreams have a degree of horribleness, starting from just slightly weird and terrorising to a full-scale mind-blowing gore and blood festival. Some of my dreams were really really disturbing I don't even share them with anyone.
These dreams can be very lucid, like watching a movie in my head--well, a really weird movie. When this happens, I can always retell the whole thing. But sometimes the dreams will only be remembered as fragments, and unfortunately still leave a bad aftertaste in my mouth. The aftertaste usually affects me for a bit while, especially if the dream is particularly depressing.
I've been having very lucid dreams for the past two days. And very disturbing too. There's a recurring theme in my dreams lately: about guilt and failure. For some reasons, I am plagued by these two feelings subconsciously and they penetrate my mind when I sleep. A couple of days ago, I had a nasty dream.
The dream:
I was with several other people, stuck in a high building, trying to cross over to the opposite building. We were told that it's impossible to do that because it's forbidden to cross the glass walkway. Underneath the walkway was a huge murky pond. We somehow captured this person whom we thought had trapped all of us there. We tied him/her on a chair and started questioning him/her (this character kept on changing its appearance). I was the one who did most of the questioning, yelling at it for some unknown reasons. I thought I had managed to make this person confess and tell us how to get out from this when I looked to the opposite building and saw my "friends" were on the balcony cheering me on. I was glad to see them there but as I went back to face the dubious characters tied to the chair, he/she said, "Are you sure that you are seeing what's true or just what you want to see? Look closely, again. Look at the pond again."
I went to one of the windows and looked at the pond on the massive garden down there. I could see the glass surface reflecting the sole lamp on the garden. All of the sudden I saw someone running really fast on the glass surface, and just seconds after the person started to run, the glass surface broke open and the person fell into the pond. And as fast as it broke open, the glass flapped back out and everything looked normal again. There wasn't any sign of that person. The water's surface didn't break. It was very still.
I gasped and somehow realised that it meant all of my friends had died trying to cross that surface. I turned to face the bounded person again. And she/he was not there anymore. The people I was with minutes before were gone, and there were only four of us left in the dark room. I finally recognised one of the three other people. He was a friend from university. He's a good friend, but I have no idea why I would dream about him. The four of us knew we were done; that we had lost the game and that we wouldn't survive this...whatever this was. I shouted, "I love you guys and I'm glad you are my friends. And I'm sorry we can't survive this." The other three people said the same thing and then we hugged each other. The once bounded person appeared in front of us, and grabbed a chair. She was going to break all of the window panes above our heads.
When she broke the first window, one of my friend disappeared. And then she broke another one, and in a second the other friend disappeared. I was still hugging the last friend standing when she broke the third window pane and just like that, I was alone. I knew I wouldn't win and I didn't have any trick up my sleeves. So I stood there bracing what's inevitable. Instead of immediately breaking the last window pane, she stood to face me and said, "For you...for you I will make it special. You will live in darkness and solitude forever." And with that, she disappeared and everything went dark.
I woke up.
These dreams can be very lucid, like watching a movie in my head--well, a really weird movie. When this happens, I can always retell the whole thing. But sometimes the dreams will only be remembered as fragments, and unfortunately still leave a bad aftertaste in my mouth. The aftertaste usually affects me for a bit while, especially if the dream is particularly depressing.
I've been having very lucid dreams for the past two days. And very disturbing too. There's a recurring theme in my dreams lately: about guilt and failure. For some reasons, I am plagued by these two feelings subconsciously and they penetrate my mind when I sleep. A couple of days ago, I had a nasty dream.
The dream:
I was with several other people, stuck in a high building, trying to cross over to the opposite building. We were told that it's impossible to do that because it's forbidden to cross the glass walkway. Underneath the walkway was a huge murky pond. We somehow captured this person whom we thought had trapped all of us there. We tied him/her on a chair and started questioning him/her (this character kept on changing its appearance). I was the one who did most of the questioning, yelling at it for some unknown reasons. I thought I had managed to make this person confess and tell us how to get out from this when I looked to the opposite building and saw my "friends" were on the balcony cheering me on. I was glad to see them there but as I went back to face the dubious characters tied to the chair, he/she said, "Are you sure that you are seeing what's true or just what you want to see? Look closely, again. Look at the pond again."
I went to one of the windows and looked at the pond on the massive garden down there. I could see the glass surface reflecting the sole lamp on the garden. All of the sudden I saw someone running really fast on the glass surface, and just seconds after the person started to run, the glass surface broke open and the person fell into the pond. And as fast as it broke open, the glass flapped back out and everything looked normal again. There wasn't any sign of that person. The water's surface didn't break. It was very still.
I gasped and somehow realised that it meant all of my friends had died trying to cross that surface. I turned to face the bounded person again. And she/he was not there anymore. The people I was with minutes before were gone, and there were only four of us left in the dark room. I finally recognised one of the three other people. He was a friend from university. He's a good friend, but I have no idea why I would dream about him. The four of us knew we were done; that we had lost the game and that we wouldn't survive this...whatever this was. I shouted, "I love you guys and I'm glad you are my friends. And I'm sorry we can't survive this." The other three people said the same thing and then we hugged each other. The once bounded person appeared in front of us, and grabbed a chair. She was going to break all of the window panes above our heads.
When she broke the first window, one of my friend disappeared. And then she broke another one, and in a second the other friend disappeared. I was still hugging the last friend standing when she broke the third window pane and just like that, I was alone. I knew I wouldn't win and I didn't have any trick up my sleeves. So I stood there bracing what's inevitable. Instead of immediately breaking the last window pane, she stood to face me and said, "For you...for you I will make it special. You will live in darkness and solitude forever." And with that, she disappeared and everything went dark.
I woke up.
Quick reflection
Loneliness eats you if you let it. It will tear you slowly, creating thoughts that shake your confidence. You will tell yourself that you're fine and coping, but you still have doubts. They are like poison. It makes you feel sick in the gut.
The questions are: how can you stop it eating you alive? How can you stop bad thought creeping into your awareness and create insecurities that you don't need?
I guess you need to be brave. Sort of.
The questions are: how can you stop it eating you alive? How can you stop bad thought creeping into your awareness and create insecurities that you don't need?
I guess you need to be brave. Sort of.
Sunday, August 3, 2014
The end of happy week
Maintaining a positive energy when your body is not wired properly because of different reasons, and hormone is one of them, is really tough. I have been keeping track on my mood, trying to record how it goes on a weekly basis. It's been a good past week (proud of myself), but today feels like the first day of anxiety and bad mood again. My period is coming soon.
The bad mood or negative feelings sometimes can materialise into physical pain. At the moment, I am having massive headache and feeling tired all over although I haven't done much. Even though I have tried to ignore the negative feelings, I am still grumpy and irritable because of the physical pain. Unfortunately, I will also lose patience rapidly when I am in this kind of state, both with myself and other people.
Often I read that you need to concentrate on being positive and then you would feel better (or something like that). Some said meditation helps and there's a breathing technique to calm yourself. My question is how can you stay positive when your body doesn't even feel good? And nothing really helps. Food, tea, water, chocolate, nothing really works for me. So my preference is: sitting on my bed, either reading or binge movie-watching. Anything to distract the mind. And maybe try to nap for a bit. Or write a stupid blog post.
It's good to have a mental calendar of your mood, I found. I can tell that I am making progress in controlling inexplicable sadness and anxiety when I see the number of days I have been feeling good or positive. The more happy days, the better my control of my weird mood is. Although on a day like today, I feel I just want to throw the towel and shut down. It's very easy for mind to repeat this one thought: I am so tired, I just want to stop.
Kinda wish there's a fast forward button.
The bad mood or negative feelings sometimes can materialise into physical pain. At the moment, I am having massive headache and feeling tired all over although I haven't done much. Even though I have tried to ignore the negative feelings, I am still grumpy and irritable because of the physical pain. Unfortunately, I will also lose patience rapidly when I am in this kind of state, both with myself and other people.
Often I read that you need to concentrate on being positive and then you would feel better (or something like that). Some said meditation helps and there's a breathing technique to calm yourself. My question is how can you stay positive when your body doesn't even feel good? And nothing really helps. Food, tea, water, chocolate, nothing really works for me. So my preference is: sitting on my bed, either reading or binge movie-watching. Anything to distract the mind. And maybe try to nap for a bit. Or write a stupid blog post.
It's good to have a mental calendar of your mood, I found. I can tell that I am making progress in controlling inexplicable sadness and anxiety when I see the number of days I have been feeling good or positive. The more happy days, the better my control of my weird mood is. Although on a day like today, I feel I just want to throw the towel and shut down. It's very easy for mind to repeat this one thought: I am so tired, I just want to stop.
Kinda wish there's a fast forward button.
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