Burnt

I had it coming.  I knew I had.

Spending a weekend in Ubud with him was generally something of a passionate suicide. I live still but am dazed. It is not any label of feeling or hope or other banal beginnings of a description to any kind of established emotion. I refuse to declare anything except that the certainty I would come back to Jakarta, back home, in a daze of yearnings, is proven.  

Of course I would never have turned back even if I knew that with twice the certainty that I had. To make life simple, so says my friends.  Life is simple, just do what you want to do.  Don't over-complicate things, they say.  And I wouldn't. I would flow, leaping and frolicking like the froths of a shallow river over stones and pebbles and salmon spawn. The natural thing to do. But this stupor that I find myself in, on this gloomy Monday in my office, is not simple.

I am not over thinking or over analyzing more than normal. I have simply sat on my office chair unable to have a single coherent thought.  Just missing the wind in my hair as we cruise through the winding roads along green rice fields on his motorbike enjoying the little things and sleeping to the sound crickets and waking up to the sound of roosters and fussing over paintings and coffee. It sounds exotic, yes, and too obviously likeable and missable. Quizas, quizas, perhaps. So what. 

So fucking what?

Before we parted he gave me a book by Zadie Smith and inscribed in it he had written:  "To Stella.  A book filled with all the things you cherish:  Seeing, Reading, Feeling, Being, Remembering."   Each verb the title of the chapters of the book.

He watched the expression on my face and asked whether that was sufficient as an inscription.  I felt slightly crushed and could only manage a weak smile. The sensation of having someone know me and express it so effortlessly felt almost offensive. Tinged with the suspicion that he could find a million things fascinating to him whilst I am stupidly in awe of everything he finds fascinating. And he will leave and pursue his insatiable interests around the world whereas I am unsure of how to channel my insatiability, my millionth outburst of a half-baked idea.  Yearnings and yearnings piling up without form.

And I leave his atmosphere and his idyllic home to a place that has once more become confusing.  Every time I find comfort elsewhere, the comfort that I've worked hard to build at home falls away. Why does coming home always have to be hard? 

Yes. Yes. Yes I am disoriented today. Completely so. Like a little girl. I will get better tomorrow and work like an intelligent woman with a passion and vision.  But today I am burnt with pleasure and I am dysfunctional.