Juat Another First Day of My Period

I used to think that strangers were the ones most likely to hurt us. But life keeps proving the opposite: the people closest to us often hold the sharpest edges.

Ada beberapa momen kecil yang membuatku berhenti sejenak dan berpikir tentang hubungan manusia —tentang kedekatan, ekspektasi, dan rasa sakit yang kadang datang dari arah yang tidak kita duga.

Belakangan ini aku lagi sangat antusias menulis paper. You know the kind of excitement when an idea keeps spinning in your head and you just want to keep working on it. Rewrite. Edit. Rewrite again. Read it again. Fix a paragraph. Delete another one. Repeat. It's a tiring process, really not because I am a mother of three but merely because it can be very stressful even for a chilled person like me.

Eventually, setelah beberapa kali revisi, aku memberanikan diri mengirimkan draft itu ke promotorku. Sekalian aku approach juga: would you mind reviewing it and maybe becoming my co-author? 

No immediate response.

But that part didn’t bother me much. Supervisors are busy. I don't expect anyone to respond to me asap. Academia works at its own strange pace. Sometimes silence simply means the email hasn’t reached the top of the inbox yet.

Yang justru membuatku berhenti adalah sesuatu yang lebih kecil—tapi terasa lebih tajam. Aku cerita ke seorang close friend. Someone I trust. Someone I thought would respond with something supportive. Or at least neutral. Instead, the response I received was something that sounds very judgmental and condescending.

Mungkin maksudnya baik.

Mungkin itu bentuk kritik rasional.

But in that moment, it landed differently.

Pertama, hari itu adalah day one of my period—which means hormon sedang tidak dalam kondisi paling stabil. Kedua, aku tidak sedang mencari penilaian. Aku hanya berharap sedikit dukungan. Atau minimal, ruang aman untuk bercerita.

Instead, what I heard felt like harsh comment.

Dan di situlah aku mulai berpikir: kenapa kata-kata tertentu bisa terasa begitu menyakitkan?

Jawabannya sederhana: karena datang dari orang yang dekat dengan kita. Dan kita tidak siap mendengar respon di luar ekspektasi kita.

Strangers rarely hurt us deeply. Mereka tidak punya akses ke ruang batin kita. Mereka tidak tahu apa yang kita perjuangkan, tidak tahu apa yang sedang kita bangun, dan tidak tahu seberapa besar energi yang sudah kita keluarkan.

Tapi orang dekat—friends, partners, family—mereka punya akses itu.They see our efforts. They know our insecurities. And sometimes, without realising it, they touch the exact spot where we are most vulnerable.

There is a paradox in closeness.

The closer someone is to us, the more we trust them to protect our feelings. But that same closeness also gives them the ability to hurt us more deeply than anyone else ever could.

ALSO....

Mungkin karena ekspektasi kita juga lebih tinggi.

We expect kindness.

We expect understanding.

We expect support.

Apakah aku terlalu sensitif?

Apakah aku overthinking?

Atau memang kata-kata itu unnecessarily became my concern?

Honestly, I still don’t know the answer.

What I do know, however, is this:

I don’t rely on privilege or intelligence.

I rely on hard work and confidence.

Aku bukan tipe orang yang merasa dirinya sangat cerdas. I’ve never walked into a room thinking I’m the smartest person there. What I have always had is something much simpler: persistence.

Kerja keras.

Keberanian untuk mencoba.

Dan kepercayaan diri untuk tetap bergerak, bahkan ketika tidak ada yang menjamin hasilnya.

In academia, that often means rewriting the same paper again and again. It means sending emails that may never be answered. It means taking initiative even when you’re not sure whether it will be appreciated.

Some people may call that aggressive. I call it effort.

Dan mungkin di titik inilah aku belajar sesuatu tentang hubungan manusia: sometimes people respond from their own lens. Their own experience. Their own definition of what is “appropriate” or “too much.”

That doesn’t automatically make them malicious. But it also doesn’t mean the words won’t hurt. Kedekatan memang menciptakan sebuah ironi yang aneh. Orang yang paling kita harapkan untuk menjaga perasaan kita, justru adalah orang yang paling memiliki akses untuk melukai perasaan itu.

Maybe that is the price of closeness.

Atau mungkin itu hanya bagian dari menjadi manusia—makhluk yang hidup dari ekspektasi, hubungan, dan kata-kata yang sering kali kita harapkan akan terdengar lebih lembut dari yang akhirnya kita dengar.

Either way, life keeps reminding me of one quiet truth:

The deepest wounds are rarely inflicted by strangers, nor by our closest ones; they often come from ourselves & expectations. Or assumptions.