I’m not written to be liked nor understood.
The rain fell again today.
A quiet, persistent tapping against the window, like an unwelcome visitor refusing to leave. The sky, once open and endless, had folded itself into a blanket of grey, pressing down on the city with its damp weight.
The streets darkened, puddles forming in cracks where shoes would inevitably slip. Surabaya always felt a little heavier on days like these.
I sighed, watching the droplets race each other down the glass. Two weeks after the passing of a sibling.
“You should carry an umbrella,” someone had told me once. “It won’t stop the rain, but at least you won’t get wet.”
As if that were the point. As if avoiding discomfort was the same as learning to live with it.
1
There were many things I couldn’t control – rain was one of them. So were the expectations of my internal turmpil, the way time slipped through my fingers, the strange loneliness of feeling too much and not enough at the same time.
I never thought thesis would be the turning point in my life. It’s just one step away from graduating yet everything feels so hard.
And I love it. I love the way words come together, the way research unfolds, the way a thesis can stretch beyond itself and become something meaningful. I love the chase of understanding, the weight of an idea taking shape.
But love does not erase exhaustion.
There is a kind of burnout that does not announce itself in flames, but in embers – slow, persistent, wearing you down from the inside out. It does not stop me from working. It does not stop me from caring. But it does make everything feel heavier.
I still want to be great.
I still want to be seen.
I still want to create things that matter.
But sometimes, I am too tired to want anything at all.
I thought about this often, especially on days when everything felt like a test I was failing.
“Why is this teaching me?”
Cue the victim playing. Not the kind of it shouldn’t have happened to me, but the shock factor that comes after the fact misfortunes often happen these days. Stoicism aside, I’m just tired.
I had muttered under my breath last week, staring at a blank document. The deadline loomed over me like an unsaid accusation. The words weren’t coming. The ideas weren’t clicking. It was supposed to be easy, wasn’t it? I had spent years preparing for this moment. And yet, I sat there, watching the cursor blink. Waiting for something – anything – to prove that I was capable.
I had worked hard. I had struggled through experiences that drained me, navigated the weight of communications that felt too big for my hands.
And still, doubt lingered.
Still, the rain fell.
2
There’s a particular type of silence that comes after disappointment. The understanding that no matter how much effort you pour into something, sometimes it just doesn’t work out.
But I had also learned this: hardships do not define me. They are moments – chapters, not endings.
My heart is not the failures I have endured.
My mind is not the doubts that whisper in the dark.
There is more to me than the rain.
3
“I just don’t get it,” someone had said once, when I tried to explain why I did what I did.
And maybe they never would. Maybe I would always be a little misunderstood, a little offbeat from the rhythm of everyone else.
But I have learned that it is okay to live a life others don’t understand.
It is okay to chase the things that make my heart race, even if no one else sees the point. It is okay to build something for myself, to find joy in quiet victories, to move at a pace that makes sense to me.
It has taken me years to embrace this. To stop apologizing for who I am. To stop forcing myself into spaces that drain me. To stop explaining my choices to people who were never meant to understand them.
Now, when the rain falls, I no longer resent it.
I will carry my own umbrella.
Not to shield myself from the rain,
But to remind myself that I can stand in the storm and still be whole.
Sometimes, we aren’t even the rainbow that comes after. We’re the rain we despise. And all we can do is learn to accept and love its existence.
