...and why do we miss what we never had?...

Currently listening to: Lost Then Found - Leona Lewis ft. OneRepublic

.majesty.

Panorama St, Clayton, February 2010

Around this time next week, I will be home.

For thirty days, I'm gonna have to trade the comfort of living in a quiet southeastern suburb for a temporary perch in a not-as-quiet inner suburban town at the outskirts of Jakarta; the dry and scorching hot for the humid and rainy; the traffic poles and flickering headlights of Princes Highway for busy, crooked inner-city streets full of beggars and buskers; the steady Broadband connection I have here for a less-than-awesome cable Internet subscription... The list goes on and on.

In less than one week, I will be inhaling the putrid, pollution-ridden Jakarta air. Soon I'll find myself getting caught up in the middle of the city's chaotic, seemingly endless rush-hour traffic jams. I'll stuff myself with so much good food that by the end of the trip, my long-time hatred towards those vile, judgmental weight scales can be further justified. I'll get myself reacquainted with Starbucks Puri's omnipresent comfy couches, rightfully so. I'll be able to get ridiculously-cheap movie tickets on weekdays. I'll gratefully take my time in catching up with old friends. I'll finally be able to shop without having to feel excessively guilty.

Heck, even my dormant seventeen-year-old rebel may or may not choose to resurrect himself and thus drive my twenty-one-year-old psyche back into the foul-smelling realm of thinking that authority figures are lame and life without cars is as troublesome and painfully uninteresting as watching Heidi Montag disfigure herself on camera.

Don't judge me. I was a bitter kid.

*smiles at the thought*

It always feels sad, and somehow sentimental, you know, talking about home.

The thought of going home feels eerily distant, unknowable, foreign. For the whole notion of having a 'home' still escapes my senses after all this time.

What does 'home' actually mean to this tired, wretched soul?

Yes, I have a roof above me, sheltering me from the sun and the rain. I have a bed, a half-decent wall art I continually show off to a nonexistent set of admirers, some shelves stacked with books, a pet fish housed in a far-too-small tank, and probably way too many clothes. This dwelling space has its own address, and my partial "ownership" of this property is temporarily bound by a lawful contract. This is where I sleep, and rest, and eat, and do silly stuff when noone is around.

Is this my home?

Well, yes, and no.

I have been away from my forbearing nest for so long, I'm now starting to view my life as always being in transit, not knowing where I could reside or when I should step up everytime this intriguing journey spins, or takes a turn. The many fragments of my life are sprawled, stretched thin across the globe. It takes far too much effort just to keep them all together, strewn across but not assembled, complete yet never whole. Within all the chaos I have somehow found myself a comfortable shed of hope, yet everything else seems cold and blurred.

It's like stepping into uncharted waters; you never know just when the waves will come and take you in. There must be a place to which you can always run and hide, if only to shield yourself from the engulfing chill the splashes bring with them. A place full of warmth, and love, and a plate of chocolate chip cookies whenever the need for comfort food comes around.

As sad as it is, I don't think I have such a place.

My comfortable bubble of a universe is scarily turning into one giant forest of uncertainty, crippled with fear and senseless paranoia. Gone are my innocent days of youth, when the world was an endless playground of sorts, the sun was but a big round ball of cheerful positivity and every rainbow arch housed a gleaming pot of gold at the edge of the horizon.

Reality is a bitch; it sucks the happiness out of you mercilessly, leaving nothing behind. It wakes you up and shoves its overwhelming presence down your throat, suffocating you.

When life calls, all I wanna do is escape. Hide. Run away from the absurdity of it all and just get back home, where the entire repertoire of my disentangled symphony lies.

Yet it becomes too hard when I can't even figure out which direction I should be heading to.

*sighs*

For now, let me pack up my bags and leave for that giant metropolis I once called my home. Both in a literal and figurative sense. This trip is like a final ode to my blissful days of youth, and the sorrowful prologue to the start of my mundane, adult existence. The final curtain call, one last chance to feel sparkly-eyed like a child, oblivious to the fact that once the game is over, my dreams will get pushed aside and reality will kick in.

After all, to quote a famous saying, I believe that home is truly where the heart is.

And since this solitary longing, this burning fervor in my heart is not yet willing to surrender and rest, I guess I'm just gonna move on, and keep looking.

For now.

"Why do we say things we can’t take back?

Why do we miss what we never had?
Both of us fell to the ground,

The love was so lost, it couldn’t be found..."