The Great Escape

I have been in Bali for the last three and a half weeks. Yes, I haven't traveled much since COVID-19 hit. So I want to travel. Yes, my birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to celebrate at a place that's not my apartment. Yes, I had friends traveling to Bali, and I wanted to spend time with them not in a mall in Jakarta. Yes, I have friends living in Bali, and I wanted to see them because I haven't seen them in ages! But the real reason? The reason that reverberated deep in my being? I needed to escape.

I don't need to escape a geographical location nor a person. I need to run from milestones and all that comes with those milestones. I want to be 'away'. 'There' instead of 'here'. I know it all sounds very poetic, but I hope you get the gist.

I love birthdays. I love celebrating my friends' birthdays. (I know some of you hate birthdays, so I'm working on mellowing down. I am!) But I realized early on this year that my birthday will not be the same without my mum. How can it be? I wouldn't be here without her. My birth was more due to her efforts than mine. I don't even recall my birth.

I don't always spend my birthday with mum. Actually, I spent more of my birthdays celebrating with friends. I'd schedule a nice dinner for mum and me sometime around my birthday. On my birthday, mum would always call me and sing happy birthday. She's a wonderful singer, but sometimes it can be embarrassing. She's always taken the time to pray for me and bless my year. This year, she's not around. I didn't want to stay in a familiar place and notice a big gaping hole where my mum should be.

A good friend graciously spent the day with me on my actual birthday. I appreciate that gesture more than I can ever communicate because I realized that even when I wanted to escape, I also didn't want to be alone. (It's a conundrum, this thing called grief.) In the afternoon, I was at the beach. I dialed mum's number. I don't know what I was expecting. It's been ten months. Her cell service is no longer active. It was part instinct and part longing, and I almost lost it. On the beach. With a lot of strangers around me.

After checking the calendar, I then decided to extend my Bali trip because I had a massive realization. Mother's Day is May 8th. (I'm talking about the International or US/Australian Mother's Day. Please don't get political on me; this one is the holiday my mum and I celebrated for decades. If you have strong opinions about it, I beg you, please keep it to yourself.)

I didn't want to be in Jakarta on Mother's Day.

I usually order flowers for mum on Mother's Day, and we would spend some time together over lunch. (Food's really a thing in our family.) It's so weird not ordering flowers for mum. It's so weird not organizing a lunch for her. It's so weird not having a mother for Mother's Day. There. I said it.

My church has Ladies' Day on May 8th. They celebrate all the women in the church, whether they were mothers or not. I love that about them. But I can't physically fathom being there right now. I can't even write this without tears running uglily down my face. In a climate where everyone is talking about Mother's Day - every Instagram post, every promotional email on gifts you can buy for your mother, every Mother's Day brunch ideas circulating around Pinterest - I am sorely reminded that I don't have my mum with me anymore. How can I live through Mother's Day without a mother?

So I extended my stay in Bali. I'm coming back on May 9th. Hopefully, after the dust of Mother's Day has settled. 

But if my birthday was any indication, an escape doesn't work. I've been wrestling with anxiety every morning, as constant as the sun and my morning coffee. I'm exhausted. Today, the eve of the dreaded holiday, I'm not feeling very well. Indonesians call it 'masuk angin' (the literal translation being 'wind enter'). I don't even know how to explain it. My joints ache, my back hurts, my head's pounding, and I can't breathe. Ok. Maybe the breathing is more anxiety than 'masuk angin'. What I want to do right now, what I want more than anything, is to pick up the phone and call my mum. 

Well? Shit.

You can't escape grief. Grief sticks with you like a parasite. Eating you from the inside out. It fuses with your DNA and transforms you into a mutant of your former self. Even your friends see you and no longer recognize who you are. Because you've changed. They leave. I understand why they leave, though. They didn't sign up for this. Grief irrevocably changes you - not unlike Peter Parker being bit by a radioactive spider and turning into Spider-man. You look at your reflection in the mirro,r and you realize that you're not you. Not anymore.

You can't escape that. I can't escape that. No matter how far I run, and y'all know how much I hate running. I don't have an answer or a way to wrap this up with a pretty bow. I'm all out of pretty bows.

But for those of you struggling with grief, I'm sending you love and tears and peace. From this broken heart to yours. 💔