Not How Life Goes

Honestly, I don't know where to begin this writing. A few months ago I promised myself that I'd start writing a series on consumerism, and the backbone is already there, the draft, the points, and everything. And as usual, life got in the way.

I read news that we're officially already in the Late 2020s since Sept 1st, apparently. My algorithm's pushing the forest fires in Indonesia, the orangutans, occasionally some abayas and khimars, and mostly leftist book recommendations against the establishment, while I had only a tiny fraction of time to mark the first death anniversary of my mom. I didn't even get to sit with wondering where she is now. The feed doesn't slow down for that. I'm not sure I slowed down for that either, if I'm honest.

I keep constantly swinging from the day job, trying a little more effort holding the household (it's just a 24/7 job), worrying about the sustenance of our future here, which trickles down to the macro stuff too. Like, what happens if I suddenly get laid off, that's it, that's the whole disaster right there, no safety net beyond whatever I managed to save. And it's not even just about my own job security. It's the bigger picture that wears me out before I even get to thinking about solutions, inflation on basic necessities going up in ways that don't even make sense anymore, no matter how much more I make it feels like I'm still catching up. 

Corruption that pisses me off but has basically become background noise in this country. Population growing, deforestation, forest fires they say are for food estate, and the ones who end up benefiting are the same people who were already rich to begin with (those f oligarch!). There's too many things wrong at once and I genuinely don't know which one deserves to be my top concern anymore, and that's the part that scares me more than any single issue on its own, the not knowing where to even put my worry. Some days it actually feels like we're living in the end times, not in a dramatic sense, just in the sense that everything's breaking at once and nobody's fixing anything fast enough. Constantly worrying about the future as if my part is already written in stone for the next 10-20 years. I don't know, honestly.

Until I found one calming post about our journey in this dunya, how our life as humans actually still has 4-5 more journeys towards eternity. The ruh realm, the rahim, the dunya, the barzakh, yaumul masyar, yaumul hisab, and our eternity in akhirah. Here in the dunya is where all the trials, uncertainties, challenges, and everything will decide our place on that very long journey after. We're only here as if we're in a rest area, and yet we make permanence and try playing god here. We're so worried as if Allah were never inside our jugular vein. Man plans, god laughs, huh! Seeing things in the bigger scheme of things, it really just a tiny speck of dust, and really who are we? Millions of years the universe exist and the earth survive (only to be destroyed by these species called mankind)

A year after mom passed, honestly, it felt like I was wearing "grieving daughter" as my identity, like a bandage. And now I'm waking up, that's not how life goes, and it became annoying and irritating. Yes, I'll still miss my mom, and yet I'm trying to live my life. Started reading again, currently on book 4 since July, bought dozens along with it, sampe rak aku mau jebol, and my hubby gave me the idea to just build a library at home instead. Thanks, love. I might be reconsidering sharing my book teas as bookstagram, or joining people who yap and talk about books on threads, since apparently a lot of my friends are actually looking for my recommendations, and the community's changed a lot since I left back in 2022.