Good day to everyone! How's your summer going on? Remember in my last post I said that I'm going to update more about my short trip to Gotemba? Sorry, but that have to wait. This time I was rewriting my deleted post about what I promised in my instagram post a week ago.

If you followed my instagram, you will know which post I'm talking about. If you don't, please go and follow me now!, check it out now... In the caption I said I was rewriting the caption over and over and decided to save the long story for people who's actually care enough to want to know more about it. And to my surprise, a lot of people encourage me to share more about it. So here it is......

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WARNING!!

It will be long and boring, with sensitive topic. Turn back before you die of boredom~

You've been warned!

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For starters, I will explain the environment I'm growing up in, to make it clear where's my position and why I thought I was weird AF...

I was born into catholic family, in Indonesia, where's social value was hold as narrow-minded as ants' hole. I was raised with some value I found it weird and questionable. I never dared to question it out loud because we kids just follow our parents, teachers, and community's instruction, without questions. YES. Otherwise, you will be branded as troublesome kids or naughty kids, and the likes. So I love to keep everything to myself and in the end, I always feel like I'm weird AF. Not that anyone knows about it, even my own lovely siblings who've been supportive as they can be. And let make me clear, I was born nearly 30 years ago, with a little bit too small social boundaries that made my friends' circle as small as my bathtub.

What? You wanted to know what kind of value we have? Ok, for starters, we, Indonesian (well, most of us), believe we have to be straight as an arrow, get married and produce kids to fill the world. Other orientation? you'd surely be branded as sinner and would go to hell. If you're a girl, you have to wear skirt, be pretty, have long hair, pay attention to your physical appearance, and can do house chores. If you're a boy, you can't be seen crying, have to be macho, strong, and show all that masculine treats. If you behave otherwise, you'll be damned.

Yeah, welcome to my hell of society. And until I was in middle school, I thought nothing of it. What? I was a kid. A not so normal kid. I started to wonder about it because at that time, there's this one tomboy girl in my school who liked to tease me. A childish teasing if I think about it now. She liked to stand in front of me and prevent me from going home. I thought she was just being playful even though we never been in the same class or talk that much, until my best friends got angry and said something hurtful to her. I didn't remember what my friend said and I didn't even get what she was saying (I was super dense I knew), but I still remembered how she stopped smiling and let me go home. And after that, she never approach me anymore. That day my friend even told me to get angry or ignore her and say 'don't approach me anymore' to her if she continued doing it. I didn't remember what my respond were (I think it was my defense mechanism to forget events I don't want to remember).

For a while, her hurtful expression just stuck in my mind. I knew my friend just got ticked off and just wanted to make her stop, but she got hurt. I began to wonder if it's because her boyish appearance or her tomboyish attitude, but everyone I knew thought she's weird. After that incident, I got interested in why people thought she's weird and got to know some bad gossip about her (you know, teenage girls hang out together... most of the time, we only talk about rubbish gossip.. or maybe it was in my time only.. i dunno). Is being different a bad thing? She was kind enough and being friendly to me, so I didn't see why everyone saying bad things about her. But well, I didn't do anything at that time and I regretted it. Until now, I wanted to go back in time and smacked my past self in the head for being a coward and let her go her way. So if she's well and healthy out there, and accidentally stumbled upon this post of mine, I hope she forgives my friends and me.

With time, I found more about other sexual orientation beside heterosexual. While everyone I knew thought it was disgusting and just wrong, I was questioning about why do everyone think it is wrong? Even in the church, we're not welcoming homosexual people. For years, I was feeling so guilty for thinking they're no different from me, from us. They just like someone from the same sex as them. No big deal. I even thought why God created them to be different and being condemned and hated by others? Didn't He love them too? I was searching for answers for years. There's time where I feel like my religion is just wrong. They preached on love and forgiveness but do no such thing. They still judge and discriminate.

But well, God has His own plan. I was glad that I took psychology as my university major and learned a whole new things all together. It opened my eyes, a lot. Even though I got to know that it was just a matter of personal preferences, sometimes I still found myself thinking if I was weird for supporting their right as human beings, as I looking at the issues being brought to the media recently... specially in my own country. But with time and support from both people I never got to meet (all thanks to social media) and people I actually met, I will gladly say I'm not all that weird. LOL 

If I was born and growing up in different environment, I might not find myself weird. As you might say, my thinking was all fine and normal, but with the context and background story, it could be seen differently. My supportive fellas always said, we're all unique and one of a kind. We should embrace our weirdo side and just be who we are. I was glad I got to know these awesome fellas, all thanks to God (and some) with the help of social media.

We might have our own story. So this is my story. What's yours? I'd love to know your story too (doesn't have to be as sensitive as mine). I'll be waiting!

xoxo

Anastasia

credit:

photos are taken with Fujifilm XT20

lens: 3.5mm, f 1,4

by Sannie Xen 

 

 

 

 

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