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I WAS 17, typing away from my desktop computer in my room from 7 pm to 3 am, non-stop. The fan was blowing to keep the CPU from overheating. We didn’t have an air conditioning unit back then. I typed letters I would never send, grammatically incorrect short stories in English, angry poems, sad poems, almost-love poems, teenage novellas, and many unfinished novels I kept on revising.

I was 17. I was lonely and sad.

I felt unwanted, unattractive, and unaccepted in a world that didn’t really belong to me. I ran into my books (they make me laugh, they make me cry, but they never hurt me) and my writings (my most genuine company). But books, with stories written by someone else, were like the world I didn’t belong. They were out of my control. Writing, however, was the opposite.

And that was how, when I was 17, I learned about the balance of life.

I wrote about things I’d like to experience. About things, I couldn’t (or too afraid to) experience in real life. In the afternoon, he was a popular guy with a popular girlfriend, and I was the best friend who silently loved him. In the evening, I wrote about how the popular guy fell in love with his best friend, eventually. Realizing that she was the ‘perfect match’ all along. Finding out that his popular girlfriend had been cheating on him all along. But the best friend was already in love with a more popular guy who had been kind to her all along—who had silently loved her all along.

It was only in these stories that I became cute and beautiful, cool and confident, rebellious and couldn’t care less of what other people think of me.

But the morning always came, and I had to go to school.

***

I HATED high school because I wanted to learn, not being lectured.

I wondered if high school would be better if I chose social major instead of natural science. Unfortunately, at the time, I hadn’t had the courage to choose anything for myself. So I tried to skip as many classes as I could, legally: being too active in the student body so I needed to visit other schools and attended school meetings, signing up for debate team and English-speaking club so I needed to spend many days competing in different schools or campuses, offering myself to help the choir team if they didn’t have enough people to sing that day… anything, as long as I didn’t have to be in class.

In the afternoon, my math teacher called me stupid numerous times, scolded me because I often missed his class during the month of the debate championship. In the evening, I wrote about a math teacher who looked down on his student and bullied her all the time. At the end of the semester, the student won numerous awards in various poetry-reading competitions and she made the school famous.

The day I found the Internet in college, I started reading about stars and supernovas, black holes and mutations, literary critics and the beatniks, Freud and Jung. I couldn’t stop asking more and more questions about the things that had always intrigued me, because it seemed as if the search engine had the answers for them all.

And then I found out about blogging. Where I could just write and threw my words away to the world, for some complete strangers to stumble upon them accidentally. It was the days of Blogspot and Livejournal and Friendster blogs. WordPress came last.

The blogs were my ways of both reaching out and reaching in. And I never stopped ever since.

***

MY FRIEND once told me that my blog is reserved for those who are heartbroken.

Maybe because in the old days, I wrote about sad things. I was sad. I didn’t know happiness back then. It was such an abstract concept. Sadness fuelled my writing in such a way that got me somewhat addicted to it. I couldn’t write when I was happy. So I made myself sad, sometimes subconsciously, other times consciously.

But I was tired of being sad. The idea of a troubled and angry writer didn’t excite me anymore.

I used to daydream about being broke and living in a rundown flat without electricity; about working as a waitress in a small jazz club and writing under the candle light at night. I used to romanticise the idea about being a struggling miserable writer. It sounded like an indie movie.

Then Rory Gilmore came along. She made me thought about how I, secretly, have always wanted to be happy. And so I braced myself to cross over. To be happy; even if it meant I had to lose my writings.

It was true that I couldn’t really write for quite some time, but then I started learning to write as a happy person. I learned about it all over again. When I came to think about it, the blog was all about that: about me, learning to write—and about me, learning to understand myself.

***

I AM 33.

I remembered how in my early 20s I found my childhood friend and got reconnected with her when we stumbled upon each other’s blog. About when in my mid-20s, I giddily launched an idea for a social movement with my best friend in the blog, and kind people shared the post to the point that we got more support than we thought possible—that 8 years later, the movement is still running.

About how people I didn’t know reached out to me (or I reached out to them) from the blog, and we poured our hearts out as if we had known each other for years, and then we became friends.

I remembered how in my late 20s I got hosted in New Delhi, India, by an Indian blogger who knew me through the blog.

About how I shrieked and jumped around the room in happiness when my Santorini blogpost got featured by WordPress for the very first time—a few days before my birthday. About how I still shrieked and jumped around the room when some of them got featured again in different years: The Answer, My Saturday with Mishka, Why I’m Keeping My 100-List & The Things I’ve Crossed Off in 2015, and recently, The Short History of Instant Noodles.

I remembered when a month before my 33rd birthday, an editor from WordPress, Cheri Lucas, contacted me and asked if she could make a profile about my blog in the Discover section of WordPress.

Processed with VSCO with f2 presetI remembered how, in some of my lowest days, I found comments or messages from people I didn’t know in or through the blog; saying that they had gone through the things I went through, saying that they could relate to my stories, saying that they enjoyed being around and read along, and then my days became instantly better.

***

THE blog has been running for 10 years.

I didn’t remember it at first. WordPress reminded me when I woke up this morning. It’s been quite a journey.

Some of my friends decided to create a new blog after a few years. Some said that the old blog didn’t suit them anymore. That some of the things they posted years ago embarrassed them. I understood what they mean. I did feel a certain level of embarrassment when I flipped through my first few blog posts here, but I decided to keep them around.

Because they simply reminded me of who I was. About how my writings grew with me.

I once read that we tend not to notice how far we’ve come until we looked back to where we were 3 years ago, 7 years ago, 15 years ago, 25 years ago. For this reason, sometimes, I look back. It keeps me humble when I read my old posts once again and be reminded of where I came from. It keeps me optimistic to know how far I’ve come. It keeps me wondering about what I would see when I look back to this moment 10 years from now.

It reminds me that no matter how much I’ve been broken, I am still here.

hanny

22 Responses

    1. Thanks much for reading and leaving your traces! (was reading your post about the emu “racing” :D)

  1. I started to write on blog with the same reason as you… I always feel sad about my life… And writting help me to forget all my sadness… I start writting on my blog when i was in junior high school. i don’t have any close friend at that time. I feel so lonely…. I don’t have any friend who want to hear my story…so decided to start writting because i can explain and tell about my feeling…
    I can have a lot of friends with blogging…
    Btw i really like your style in writting… all of your stories make me feel better 🙂
    Sorry for my bad english 😀

    Regards..

    1. Hai, Fahrizi! 🙂 terima kasih banyakkk! Bahasa Inggrismu baik-baik saja, kok ^^ thanks for dropping by and leave your traces! 😀

  2. We met offline, and even after countless hours spent talking every time I read your blog I discover more about you and how unique you are. :*

    1. You can do it! I miss my first year of blogging! To write as if nobody is reading is such a beautiful feeling! 🙂

    1. iyaaaa 😀 senang ya, kembali melihat kita di masa lalu and to be reminded of those times! 🙂

  3. Hai Mbak Hanny! You’ve been my inspiration since i was in Junior High and I’m working already rite now. Been a silent reader for such a long time and this’s my first comment ever in your blog. I really really amazed by how you can always use the right words to express everything. Its like, i’ve always wanted to say those things, but never find the right words and sentences—and then suddenly you came with the ideas and always with the right words. OMG. And honestly, its been a long time i didn’t visit your blog until today; i was so touched and suddenly remember those old days i felt my heart was broken and your writing always calm me down. hufff, idk what to say or what my point is. But, yeah….i love you.

    1. whaaat! junior high and now working… wow, I am old(er)! hahahahahahahah! thanks so much for following the blog for so long! *hugs* we should meet up some time! I love you, too! <3

  4. I remember the first time I chat with you, I was in Senior High around 8 years ago, I was taking computer class, and we talked about Chitra Divakaruni’s book. I did not know back then that you also ever liked Freud and Jung, that you also wrote sad stories like I did but then got bored, that you also felt unwanted, etc. And look at you now, you write very beautifully in language not-your-mother-tongue with happy and cheerful tone, and it has a unique beat.

    It always is nice to know you, Hanny. To this day, your achievement so far has been abundance, as long as your paths to travel, friends, and writings through time, and glad to see you are featured by WordPress.

If you made it this, far, please say 'hi'. It really means a lot to me! :)

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I am an Indonesian writer/artist/illustrator and stationery web shop owner (Cafe Analog) based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I love facilitating writing/creative workshops and retreats, especially when they are tied to self-exploration and self-expression. In Indonesian, 'beradadisini' means being here. So, here I am, documenting life—one word at a time.

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