You’ve Haunted Me All My Life

Ann Putri
Ann Putri
Aug 26, 2017 · 3 min read

It was 2AM, exhausted and wounded after a feud with a dear friend, when it finally sunk into my head. It was nothing extravagant nor superb, or something akin to the big ‘Oh’ — yes, with the capital ‘O’ — like the way people used to describe it when they discovered and unlocked the answer of the mystery of life that somehow always happened well into the night. Instead it felt like any other day, the same flat line I feel every time I stare at the chipped white wall of my tiny room, lost in everything and nothing.

But it is unfair to compare the flat line I was feeling to their elevated joy or devastating rundown, of experiencing new discoveries and novelties. I was not unearthing something new; I was merely forced to face and acknowledge the thing that sunk me into endless pit of shame and guilt.

It’s making a comeback.


I cannot trace where and when all of these started. The beginning and the end had become too tangled that I couldn’t made sense of it. Nowhere to be found — did they even exist, those beginnings and ends?

The comeback was not the first time, nor it would it be the last time it reared it’s ugly head back into the conscious. This was merely another set of warning, part of the vicious cycle that will repeat in unrecognizable set of time. Yet its’ only purpose and intent is still the same.

It’s always the same but funnily I couldn’t stop it.

Every morning I’d look into the mirror, promising the reflection of the mirror that I’m going to end this madness for once and all. The gloom reflection toss the words back at me, as if challenging me to really do it.

At the end of the day, while my back pressed down on the bed, staring at the chipped white walls and feeling that flat line went on and on. As I tossed to the right, the self and the mind whispered, that maybe getting help to stop this madness of sadness is not worth it.

I closed my eyes, praying my amen away.

(Go away).


Perhaps it was started by my quest for perfection. The pressure to surpass Ma and Pa, the pressure to be ‘dutiful’ and ‘good’; something to be proud of. All in the name of redeeming my sins for not becoming what they wanted me to be.

But no matter what I did, the result is always mediocre that I can’t help but wonder, is it truly my fault or the system?

It’s clear whose fault is it: me, who can never reach that constellation of goals. Me, who failed to adapt to the system.

So I took the baton and beat myself up with it; my own punishment for not being able to reach the idealized self.


The wall is beginning to crack and I started to see my ego crumble. It fell like thousands small crumbs of cookies, right in front of Ma who looked betrayed and out of her wits. It would subsequently followed by another breakdowns in the future, each with the same fire and dance it used to be when it happened the first time.

I am tired,

of the baton,

of the expectation,

of the impossible quest to reach the perfection.

They want perfection, but what is in the end of the road is actually my own execution.

)
Ann Putri

Written by

Ann Putri

Younger and female version of my dad during the 80s.

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