(Reverse) Homesick and a guide to find home

This post is truly inspired by CultureShockPanda's post in here. 

This month marks almost one and a half year since I left Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for good. Do I miss KL? Absolutely. And it goes beyond what I have explained in here. I actually miss every bit of it, everything about KL, whether it be good and bad.

A young inspirational YouTuber, Gitasav, said in one of her videos (here), the dilemma of 'perantau' (people going overseas whether it for studying or working) is their confusion of home. Gita, as a perantau herself from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Germany, one time found that she couldn't define whether her home in Jakarta is her actual hometown, or Germany, the current country she resides.

As a perantau myself (which I don't really prefer to be called since Padang-Kuala Lumpur only an hour flight away--not that far in compared to Germany), I have been in that situation before. Like Gita, the first semesters I was still hating the facts that I got to go miles away from my friends and family. I hated that everything was so different, very new and I thought Malaysia was not home, really far from what I thought was home.

But now, after I left Malaysia for good and my student visa expired, I realized KL was the city of my first times where I spent my early-adulthood stage there. I was 17 years old the first time I stepped into the university there and I left the city when I was 23 years old. Can you see the transition there? From a young, foolish and innocent high school graduate to a young lady who got bachelor after her name and ready to embrace the adulthood life.

"Why Don't You Write Again?" and Internet Anxiety

"Why don't you write again?" was the questions I got times this year. It came first from Dad, the loyal reader of my blog, mom, and it came from friends too. I could blame the never-ending office work and my time management skills but to be frank, firstly, it's because I'm too depending on my writing mood. I could have a thousand words on my mind if I'm in the mood, but most of the time it's not on the situation where I could write it down and when I got the time to, suddenly I'm on a writer's block  I made a lot of excuses. On the other side, sometimes I got too overwhelmed and it makes so hard for me to write it all down.

Another reason is something that has been on my mind lately. Talking about the internet, it is a place where everyone can have access to. It could be anyone from the job recruiter, the boss of the company, long lost friend, distance family, friends who said that they're your friend but they're talking about you at the back, the friends of someone you have a problem with or anybody else in the world - which you don't know that they exist.

I was once writing my personal stories and I thought nobody would read cos I didn't tell everyone the link and I thought if some people knew that it's personal, they would understand and got over it- what I'd do to others' personal posts. Turned out people read, shared links and talked about it but never said it to my face and asked me. I once disappoint someone because of my post too. Hence that gave me a lesson to be more cautious about what I share on the internet.

because what stays on the internet stays forever.