to be loved, at last.

content warnings: spoiler of Pulang by Leila S. Chudori

A lot of people said that when the life you have lived has always been the same murky-brown-colored life, you will have the tendency to stop wishing for rays of sunshine. Well, that doesn’t happen to me, at least. During my whole twenty-something years of living, life is either so-so or rock bottom, even. Yet, instead of turning me into some pessimistic person that doesn’t believe in love, I become a hopeless romantic that always chase after a fairy-tale like love instead. Perhaps with the hope that this kind of love will bring happiness, rays of sunshine, into my life. The hope is still there, despite being bruised after countless times of being broken and hurt. It’s a dimming light, but it’s still there, at least.

A book that I read recently, Pulang by Leila S. Chudori, talks about various people and their desire of “coming back home”. For Dimas, going home is almost never an option, his home has been taken away from him, he has become an exile. For his daughter, Lintang, the concept of home has always been a question. And for me, home is a place I always long for, a place for me to rest and find comfort in the middle of the never-ending chaos of the world. By the end of the book, both Dimas and Lintang have fulfilled their longing, one of going home and the other of knowing where her home is. Just like them, I have also find the answer for my longing of home, in a man called Peter.

He is like the ray of sunshine in my murky-water-like life, pushing through and provides me warmth in this cruel, cold world. I found my home in one gloomy day in him who came like a blessing from the heavens (I do have my suspicions.. he’s just too perfect, you know). His embrace, hugging me tight, protecting me from all the bad things of the world. And when we kiss, I believe that I can conquer the world. He who listens to each one of my stories, attentively. He who finds seconds in between his work just to tell me he loves me. But mainly, he who comes home to me too. He is my once in a lifetime, and I will never let go, forever and more.

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles