kita kehilangan dunia
setiap kali kehilangan satu orang
yang kita cinta.
apabila kita kehilangan
satu orang lagi, kita kehilangan dunia
yang sudah hilang.

— Kehilangan, M. Aan Mansyur

Pak Wid, setahun telah berlalu sejak panggilan telepon yang meruntuhkan dunia saya itu berdering. Saya masih mengingat persis suara istri Bapak yang terisak ketika mengatakan, “Bapak meninggal, Im.”. Saya terdiam. Tenggorokan tercekat. Di kepala, sebuah pertanyaan memukuli saya tanpa ampun: bukankah nasib yang begitu kejam kehilangan tiga orang terpenting dalam hidup di tahun yang sama? Siapa orang yang sanggup menanggung nestapa sedahsyat ini?

Beberapa bulan sebelumnya, Bapak datang melayat ke rumah saya. Kedua orang tua saya meninggal dalam kecelakaan pada satu malam di bulan Ramadan. Sejak hari itu itu, hidup saya terbelah menjadi dua: sebelum kehilangan dan sesudahnya. Kehilangan keduanya sekaligus membuat saya tidak lagi memiliki tempat berteduh dan pulang. Saya tidak lagi menemukan alasan melanjutkan hidup sebab kekuatan terbesar saya menghadapi segala badai adalah keinginan membahagiakan mereka. 

Lalu di tengah duka itu, Bapak berkata: “Kamu masih punya Bapak. Saya Bapak kamu juga, Im.”. Bapak pasti tidak menyadari betapa bermaknanya pelipur lara ini di tengah dunia yang luluh lantah. Bagi saya, ungkapan itu adalah pegangan yang ingin saya genggam erat di tengah takdir yang koyak dan lebur ini.

Beberapa bulan kemudian, saya mendengar kabar bahwa kondisi Bapak kritis. Sepanjang perjalanan kereta menuju Yogyakarta, kenangan tentang Pak Wid berkelebat: nasihat, teguran, percakapan sederhana, dan kebaikan-kebaikan yang secara konsisten Bapak curahkan. Saya jelas belum sanggup kehilangan lagi. Tentu tidak secepat ini ketika luka sebelumnya masih menganga begitu lebar, menenggelamkan seluruh batin dan raga saya.

Ketika tiba di rumah sakit, saya tidak bisa menemui Bapak karena ketentuan ruang NICU tidak mengizinkan saya masuk. Saya berdiri di luar, dipisahkan oleh jendela kaca, dengan begitu banyak hal yang ingin saya sampaikan. Jika hari itu saya bisa duduk sebentar di samping Bapak, inilah yang ingin saya katakan.

Terima kasih yang begitu banyak, Pak Wid. Terima kasih karena dahulu Bapak bertaruh dengan mengajak saya menjadi penggawa Bagian Sistem Informasi yang Bapak pimpin. Saya tidak memiliki latar belakang teknologi informasi tetapi Bapak memberi saya kesempatan untuk belajar dan membuktikan diri. Bapak percaya pada kemungkinan dalam diri saya, bahkan ketika saya sendiri belum bisa melihatnya. Sekarang saya sudah menjadi IT auditor yang lumayan, Pak. Itu karena Bapak mendorong saya untuk mendobrak ketakutan dan ketidakmungkinan.

Jika hari ini saya memiliki keberanian untuk mengambil kesempatan yang membuat saya gentar, kemauan untuk terus belajar, dan keinginan untuk membantu orang lain bertumbuh, sebagian dari itu berakar pada didikan Bapak. Pak Wid mengajari saya bukan hanya untuk menjadi seseorang yang mampu, tetapi juga seseorang yang bisa diandalkan dan tetap mengutamakan kebaikan hati, bahkan ketika orang lain tidak selalu memperlakukan kita dengan baik. Pada akhirnya, Bapak telah meninggalkan selaksa keping keteladanan sebagai pembelajaran bagi saya.

**

Dahulu, saya pernah mengatakan betapa beruntungnya kehidupan profesional saya diasuh oleh Pak Wid. Kini, saya merasa kalimat itu terlalu sederhana untuk menggambarkan arti kehadiran Bapak dalam hidup saya. Terdapat ungkapan Bahasa Jawa yang merepresentasikan kejadian pertemuan di lantai 10 Gedung Juanda II hari itu, ”lir handaru tumurun ing jagad”. Saya memaknainya sebagai keberuntungan besar yang diturunkan ke bumi, sebuah anugerah terlalu magis yang saya tidak yakin apakah saya pantas mendapatkannya.

Bagi saya, dibimbing Pak Wid adalah salah satu keberuntungan terbesar yang pernah Allah hadiahkan dalam hidup saya. Bapak memberi saya kesempatan untuk bertumbuh, menuntun saya melewati kesalahan dan kegagalan, dan menjadi perantara penyembuhan ketika hidup mencabik-cabik saya.

Setahun telah berlalu, Pak Wid. Dunia terus bergerak, meskipun ada bagian dari diri saya yang masih tertinggal pada hari tatkala kabar itu datang. Setahun ini, saya masih berjalan di bawah kabut gelap kehilangan. Ada hari-hari ketika langkah terasa teramat berat, dan ada cerita-cerita yang tidak tahu harus saya ceritakan kepada siapa. Namun, saya akan tetap melangkah meski terseok-seok, Pak.

Terima kasih telah menjadi mentor terbaik yang pernah hadir dalam hidup saya. Forever, I am your mentee. Your silly mentee. Apakah Bapak mau mendengar kabar saya hari ini? 

“You’re the pretty sunshine of my life.” is a line from My Sunshine, the OST of a Chinese drama adapted from Gu Man’s novel “Silent Separation”. The story revolves around Zhao Mo Sheng, a girl with a bright and cheerful way of looking at the world, and He Yi Chen, an aloof man who eventually finds himself surrendering to her persistent efforts to win his heart. To him, unknowingly, she becomes his sunshine. Even years after their silent separation due to a misunderstanding, he still keeps her in mind, dubbed her as “my sunshine”.

Seven years later, they meet again by chance in a crowded supermarket. The girl he remembers is no longer quite the same. The sunshine that once seemed to follow her everywhere has become covered by somber clouds. The woman in front of him looked like someone whose light had dimmed, carrying gigantic uncertainty and scars from things she had survived along the way.

Perhaps that is why I have always felt a strange connection to Zhao Mo Sheng. Somewhere along the way, I think I became a little less like the girl I used to be. Life happened, one thing after another. And then, one day, I noticed that the person looking back at me in the mirror was carrying a burden she was barely able to bear. There was a permanent sadness lingering in her eyes. I slowly became someone I barely recognized: duller, as if life had placed a grayscale filter over my life; quieter, as if the world no longer needed to hear from me; and less confident, like a soldier who had lost every battle she had ever fought.

Therefore, I lived as though I were waiting to be saved. I imagined that perhaps one day, someone would come into my life and make everything feel lighter. Someone who would understand the parts of me I could not explain. Someone who would bring warmth into the places that had become cold. Someone who would become my sunshine.

There is something comforting about that idea. It gives me permission to believe that my life is still incomplete for a reason. That my heart feels hollow because the hero of the story simply hasn’t arrived yet. That happiness is somewhere ahead of me, waiting in the shape of another person. That one day, when the right person finally comes along, everything that feels difficult now will somehow become easier.

But somewhere in all that waiting, I forgot something important. I was still here. I was the person who had been with me through every difficult season. The one who picked myself up every time life knocked me down was me. The one who kept going even when I did not know how things would turn out was me. I was the one who had carried all my dreams, disappointments, mistakes, grief, hopes, and little joys this far.

So perhaps I did not need someone to rescue me from the life I was living.  Of course, we all need love, companionship, friendship, family, and the beautiful feeling of being known, but no one else should have to be responsible for bringing the light back into my life. I am someone I am waiting for.

****

And so, these days, I am trying to be kinder to myself. This might be one of the hardest things I have ever had to learn. For years, I was very good at pushing myself, at questioning and criticizing myself, at wondering whether I was doing enough, achieving enough, becoming enough. I also treated myself as though love were something I had to earn.

I don't want to live like that anymore. I want to become a softer place for myself to land. I want to speak to myself the way I speak to the people I love. I want to stop making happiness something I have to deserve before I am allowed to feel it. I want to finally live.

***

Today, I want to say something to myself, to the girl who was once so effortlessly cheerful, to the current woman I am, and to the person I am still becoming: you have spent so much of your life trying to become worthy of the things you wanted. You tried to be good enough, strong enough, lovable enough. You have spent all of your life thinking about other people first while neglecting yourself. Perhaps you don't have to do that anymore.

On this birthday, I want to make you a promise: I will love you unconditionally. I will take care of you, be gentler with you, let you rest, let you grow. I will let you be happy without asking whether you have earned it first.

And also, please don’t wait for the sunshine anymore. You are the sunshine. And it may have taken me far too long to realize it, but I want you to know this now: You’re the pretty sunshine of my life. You always have been. And I hope, from today onward, you finally believe it, too.

I wish you all the best things in the world, my sunshine.

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Image source: Ruslan Sikunov via pexels

  

Olivia Rodrigo will release her upcoming album You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love next month, and that title has stayed in my head lately. If I had to rename it into something that feels closer to my own life, mine would probably be: “You seem pretty sad for a woman living pretty well.”

Because my life is pretty good, Alhamdulillah. My personal life is quite stable and grounded. I have a career and education I worked very hard for. I get invited into rooms I once only dreamed of entering. I teach, volunteer, mentor, create content, and get to meet brilliant people along the way. Sometimes I still pause and think, “How did I even get here?” because a part of me still feels like the young girl from a small village who used to doubt herself so much.

And yet, despite all of that, there are nights when I still go home feeling unbearably empty. That contradiction is difficult to explain.

People usually see the visible parts of my life: the achievements, the confidence, the public presence, and the responsibilities. Then, they kept setting high expectations for me, like I must always deliver the highest standards. When I deliver less than expected, people would think I didn't do my best, even when it is already enough. They do not always see how exhausting it can be to constantly become “the high achiever” when I am just a normal human. They ignored the fact that in those moments, I was in so much pain that even functioning was already an achievement for me. 

Recently, I realized why it was even more tiring for me: becoming useful is probably my survival mechanism since I was a kid. Useful people are appreciated, needed, and remembered. So I spent years trying to become competent enough, dependable enough, valuable enough. I became the person who handles things, who solves problems, who cleans the mess, who checks whether everyone else is okay first. And after doing that for so long, it gradually becomes my identity.

There is also a strange confusion in constantly being needed. Because when people know you mostly for what you can provide, a small part of you begins to wonder: “If one day I stop being useful, would people still stay?” And maybe that question hurts me more than I usually admit.

Not because the people around me are bad people. Most of them are genuinely kind. But I think when you spend years earning validation through competence, you slowly become afraid that your worth only exists in your ability to give. When you start noticing the disappointment in people’s eyes whenever you fail to meet their expectations, you slowly arrive at a conclusion: maybe people only truly see you when you are useful to them.

Sometimes, I think what I truly want is actually very simple: to be seen as a human, with her flaws and weaknesses. To be understood and accepted as deeply as I try to understand other people. I spend so much time paying attention to other people’s feelings, trying not to hurt them, trying to make them feel seen, trying to love them gently. And sometimes I wonder whether someone will ever love me with that same depth and care, too. Not because I want grand gestures. But because after spending so much of my life becoming emotionally attentive to others, a part of me longs to finally feel carefully held, too.

***

Life has humbled me enough to realize that achievements do not automatically heal my longing for genuine acceptance. Recognition does not automatically create understanding. And being surrounded by many people does not always remove the feeling of being emotionally unseen.

For a long time, I thought becoming more successful would finally make me feel emotionally secure. But healing, apparently, has very little to do with external validation.

Lately, I have been trying to understand myself more gently. Maybe I am not sad because my life is bad. Maybe I am simply emotionally tired from spending too much of my life trying to earn love through usefulness.

And maybe healing is learning that I deserve softness even when I am not performing. Learning that my worth is not tied to productivity. Learning that the people who truly love me will still stay, even when I have nothing to offer except my honest, human self.

I still do not fully know how to solve this feeling yet. But perhaps this is the first honest step: admitting that beneath all the accomplishments and expectations, I am still just a human being who wants to be loved not for what she can provide, but simply for who she is.

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Image source: White Noiise via Pexels