A Confession

Weeks ago, I looked at myself in the mirror and I realized something significantly different about my appearance. My hairline went backward and thinner. Well, it didn’t stop there. Apparently, dark spots also slowly start appearing without any warm invitation from me. I felt terrible and started to touch those signs of aging with my fingers and pondered about it in my heart;

Am I getting older now?

Why should this happen to me so fast?

In sad and blue emotions, deep down in my heart I will never be ready for experiencing this aging process; the process where you unconsciously feel nothing changed toward your appearance, but the truth is, it’s slowly changing unannounced.

Strands of hair start turning white, dark spots appearing here and there, not to mention the fine lines on the eyes area… These changes feel different compared to the one that I experienced when I was younger, the time when being an adult was a weird yet an exciting thing to expect.

Unlike those good old days, at this moment, I wish I were a Peter Pan that never gets old and couldn’t change at all. He’s stuck at the prime age where everything is full of the joys of spring. I envy and wish that the power to stop time really exists. So I could stay young without having to worry about the baldness and those dark spots that bother me this much. For some people, staying young like Sofia Latjuba is a dream, and those people’s dreams are also mine presently. The fact is, that wishful thinking sometimes leads me to become a denial figure.

There were moments when I intentionally avoid answering those “how old are you” questions. Accordingly, answering my actual age somehow becomes mentally exhausting. I held my breath for a while, preparing myself just to answer that simple question and I have been living that way for two years…

To be frank, in the near future I will leave my twenties. It is indeed my homework to make peace with myself for my own battle as I have to accept that everyone ages as well as the world rotates.

Thus, someday, when my relatives ask me about my age, I will proudly answer…

29.