UNLOVE

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When I’m hurt, my typical initial reaction would be to call a friend avoid people. I would even leave my habitat and start over, meeting new people until I’m hurt again. There is a reason for this, at least. There is something about pain that makes you crave it. You see, for me, like love, pain is a life gift. You get hurt, you want to feel the pain, to celebrate it. Sometimes you do it by hurting yourself. But, unlike love, pain is not a limited substance – it grows. Sometimes it’s not enough to hurt yourself, you hurt others because you cannot contain the over-growing pain within yourself. I seemed to understand this mechanism hence I kept running away. Continue reading

PLATH: THIS IS NOT I 

SONY DSCSeven years ago, I was invited to perform my poetry in Jakarta on one of the two nights of a literary event.

I just finished, at that time, a poetry performance project with some young musician and artist friends and had successfully performed in two cities. However, the committee of the event in Jakarta wanted me to perform alone, just me and my poetry, or in the man-in-charge’s own words: “could you just come without your boyfriend?” He sounded bitter, and he was wrong – my then boyfriend had nothing to do with art except that of making me cry. Love, love, love… Continue reading