for her.

Today you’re officially 66. We’ve been together for 27 years. I was living off of you, your nurture, your nutrition, and your love.

I know you don’t really expect this is what you have at your age now. There are some things that hurt you deeply. I did hurt you and that is something that I have to bear for the rest of my life. After I moved back, I told you things that I wish you would never hear, not from me, and not from others. Things that I did, something that you taught me not to do, from an early age, I did it anyway. I don’t know if you gave up your expectation of me, or already have the hunch about it for a long time, you took it calmly. You said you’re just glad that I told you.

We talk a lot lately. About family. About my marriage. About your marriage. About life. About plants. About being a teacher. About food. About house decoration. About everything.

But mostly we talk about womanhood.

For me, womanhood is about sisterhood and solidarity. I introduced you to (my idea of) feminism, an idea I value so much, and feminism is something that makes me feel grateful, that I live at this time, with its messiness, with its destruction, feminism is one thing that keeps me grounded. We even discuss the work of Maria Ulfah Santoso, and attended a webinar from Komunitas Sejarawan Perempuan together.

For you, somehow, being a woman was this noble idea of being a mother. Taking care of other people, especially husband. I agree, taking care of the people that we love is noble. But at what cost? Do you always have to do as told, without any rights to be heard, to be understood, and your purpose in life is only serve, I think it worth a critic?

I used to hate your views, your conservative views. I believe you could’ve done/achieved so much better if you hadn’t been that passive. If you hadn’t been that submissive. On society’s norm. On religious verses. I thought you were narrow-minded. Now I understand.

Society for so long has been really discriminative towards women. If you look around it is something that is overlooked, and becomes the daily thing that most people don’t even care about. You will always have this woman that has experienced sexual harassment in their life. You will know a husband who strays and/or remarried without considering his wife and children's emotional scar, who emotionally and physically abuses their wives. You know a single mother who does everything to provide for her children while her husband is unknown or simply abandons his family.

You had me when you were almost 40. You endured so much. Your surrounding unconsciously peer-pressured you to follow standardized, hollow happiness of marriage and being a mother. You had me in a hopeless place of near menopausal pregnancy. I was this panacea for you.

And you don’t want me to have that pressure, and somehow just like many wounded people, you project it into other people. You turned into the person who peer-pressured you. All these overly protection that I found suffocating growing up, I finally understand. Just like any mother, you simply want your children to live their best life, and protect them from the harshness of the world. I reacted with extreme, was breaking any rules you made, considered moving abroad, and abandon you and your backward beliefs here.

We still have extreme differences. I have and love my queer friends. I can’t accept fully the idea of religion, only partially. We don’t agree any probably won’t. I understand, it is beyond our understanding. I don’t wish to change you, I can’t anyway. However, I am forever thankful for those who fought for equal rights, regardless of gender and fighting for women’s voices to be heard and we matter. How I feel we progressed so much, and I owe forever to the people before me because this is something that finally unites me and my mother again.

You probably won’t read this, it’s in English anyway. It’s more of a reminder for me, and I hope I let you know enough how much you mean to me.

Happy birthday. Today you’re officially 66. We’ve been together for 27 years. I was living off of you, your nurture, your nutrition, and your love. And I still, and forever will be living off of your love.