Love Literacy; Chapter Two

We're three years apart. I'm the older one. And as much as I wish to have equality in anything, I think this age gap is something I can't really run away from. And also I honestly don't think it'll be much of a difference anyways because I believe age is just numbers. The youngest person can have the oldest mentality and the other way around. For my case, I'm old and I'm feeling old lmao. I mean that’s what I am physically and mentally I guess.

Unlike the first chapter when I'm uploading censored pics of hers. During chapter two i'm uploading uncensored versions but only on close friends insta stories option. I think this is by far the most win-win solution where I can capture and document her beauty and our memories without having to sacrifice the potential of her being publicly known. For this part, it's her own request and I respect that. My close friends list only includes 9 humans as exceptions because they don't know her at all. In other words, I’m not uploading anything on the public story because I don’t wanna bother anyone with me being lovey dovey anytime. 

Moving on from unofficial labels to official is one thing. But navigating the challenges throughout the time in order to maintain the relationship is another thing. Of course I'm making sure that I'm only sharing the good parts uploaded on my close friends insta stories. The not so good parts will be maintained privately for the two of us. It’s our journey, the two of us, that is why I don’t think it'll be appropriate if it’s publicly accessible for anyone.

We started hanging out with her car a couple of times during chapter two. And I'm the passenger princess. This is completely fine for me because I'm totally against patriarchy. And because I don't drive anyways hehe. I've never wanted to take driving lessons. at least not until recently. I've been meaning to learn how to drive after coming back from grad school because everyone i know, well almost everyone i know, can drive a car. However, today is literally the last day of march and I haven’t done any driving lessons at all. 

I've also noticed that some potential and evidence of miscommunications are still very much derived from online communication. And then I can't get mad anymore when we're meeting in person. I guess I love her that much. And I can’t really explain how it works though.

Should I mention that I met her mom twice? The first time when I picked her up from home a while back in January, and then the second one during March when I was invited to accompanying send her mom off to a harbor because her mom's traveling somewhere that night. I think that's pretty casual right? We didn't even talk about anything serious at that time. But at least I received the gestures that her mom approved of me one way or another. 

And another thing is we scheduled a meeting so that my mom and my sister and her and I can sit at one table together for dinner, however, something happened that day so we ended up canceling the plan. And we don’t know when we want to schedule another meeting.

In chapter two we continued to go on a couple of dates, and ate different types of foods in different places. We watched movies in the cinema, animated movie full of kids and then watched a horror movie full of couples. This reminds me of our first movie date watching an Indonesian horror movie that is not only super scary but also super funny somehow. Well, it's mostly funny with a little bit of tragedy because someone died in the beginning and another someone died almost at the end of the movie. But then again it was actually mostly funny.

I would say we barely survived chapter two. And I’m struggling to explain it in a way that it might not expose too much information. So basically I had one and only past dating experience and the same thing applied for her. Technically both of us only had one experience meaning we’re not really experienced but we’re also not really newbies as well. Even though I honestly cannot and do not really want to consider my past experience because it didn't last that long and nothing really ever happened during those short duration anyways. But then again I don’t wanna not consider that because it might sound rude. 

What I’m trying to say is she and I are giving our best in navigating this relationship. However we argued a lot over every little thing which is cute sometimes and not so cute the other times. But we always ended up sorting things out right after. And every single time the fight occurs deep down both of us know that we hurt each other. So, we’ll find a way. I’m trying to be positive that fights are necessary and fights are what keep us going. We tend to love each other more after those fights have ended. I personally wish we don’t need to fight that much though. Having a relationship means one day full of sunshine and rainbows followed by another day full of rainstorm and absolute gloomy weather, one at a time.

Oh and I think it is really important to mention that chapter two is happening in the middle of ramadan. The Ramadan started at the end of the second week of chapter two I guess. We’ve spent time together to break the fast a couple of times. This Ramadan feels different thanks to the fact that I’m not alone anymore. I’m happy about that. And whenever I’m not home, it’s always because I’m going out with her. And my mom kinda figured that out.

The saddest part is we have to once again deal with long distance for one week during chapter two because she’s going home with her mom on another island more than 99 miles away. She’s originally from Bacan island but born and raised in Obi island. And possibly we might have more weeks of long distance in chapter three, or even more multiple long distance in the upcoming chapters, or we’ll see because everything is full of uncertainty.

And I don’t wanna talk about this one other thing because I want to forget or at least tend to consider it never happened but I guess I’m just gonna talk about it. So, during chapter two, I got scammed and I’ve lost some amount of money, which is not a little, and the whole process sounds super silly for me to actually fall for the scammers but it happened anyways. For someone like me who cannot trust anyone easily, that day was my unlucky day. However, the point is, she’s the one I’m telling about this thing, and she helped me going through this unfortunate event. And I really wish I can erase this memory of mine so that I can never recall this memory ever again. I’m so thankful I have her helping me overcome my fear and anxiety and post trauma caused by this thing happening to me at that time.

For the next chapter, I want to be more private, it means I don’t wanna update any recent pictures to either public insta stories or close friends insta stories. And hopefully kinda disappear from the whole social media all at once during chapter three. I guess. I don’t know. Social media is always tricky. I don’t wanna be seen but I also want to keep the memories of each and every experience that occurs every single day. I guess we’ll see what will happen.

During the last day of chapter two I had a dream of going out with her somewhere and then I lost her because there were too many people. I cried until I lost my voice in that dream. That was the scariest dream I’ve ever had so far. The intense feelings I felt were just terrifying.