My laptop decided to end its life earlier this month. I’m writing this post using its replacement.
It’s been so long, I always thought I bought her in the 2017, right before I started my undergrad paper. Turns out it was 2016. December. The receipt was in my old hard drive. It made her just a little over 9 years old before finally giving up. The average lifetime of a Great Dane.
There was a trend in January where people shared their pictures from 2016. How a decade changed you, type of thing. I couldn’t bring myself to join.
I rarely access my old hard drive. It contains my life between 2015-2019. It’s very disorganized. The manifestation of how my brain was. Is.
But earlier today, I did.
.
You know how the calendar gets divided between after and before Christ was born? The year 2016 was my equivalent of BC.
Looking at the pictures, it breaks me that I remember how fragile that young girl was. Bleached her hair blonde, went out with heavy eyeliner and dark lipstick under consistently humid Semarang air. Seen from the outside she was lively, definitely to compensate how empty she felt on the inside.
Then you came along.
.
You weren’t much of a help.
And you knew that. You never aimed to be it.
But you opened doors. You gave me the keycards to the elevators, so I don’t have to take the stairs. Literally, and figuratively.
.
I’m almost 10 years older now.
We’re almost ten years older.
Yet, you still open doors for me.
.
It’s hard to accept that there was time before you.
For most of our early days, I’ve prepared myself to say goodbye without ever actually saying it.
Getting ready to accept that the next time you open a door for us, actually, it’d be for yourself. To walk away from me.
Like many had done.
.
But you didn’t.
You always come back.
You always fucking come back.
Until it gets to this point where it feels impossible to see you as temporary anymore.
You’re too permanent. We’re too permanent.
So, yes, I really mean it when I said it’s hard to accept that there was time before you.
And it surely will be even harder to accept that there will be time after us.
.
I never had squid-ink risotto again since our first date.
Guess I’ll be ordering that this weekend.
