When I pulled the carpet under my feet, made by education, culture and tradition, I realized that it was filthy and the glass was cheap. Some people cleaned it as they were looking for a multiple mirror. To overcome the feeling of being foreigners, other ones decided to accept that more important than transparency, any glass is useful to unify and protect people from turbulence.
When I felt into the carpet of glass, my blood put away the dust, people and common dreams linked to it. It forced me to stand alone and relearn how to walk with my wounds. There was no skin or glass which could serve as buffer to hide the doubts meanwhile opened. Without tradition, “white” was no “white” anymore and the word "freedom" was no longer what it had never been.
Walk off the carpet makes me constantly question the direction of the wind, the asphalt which is running over wildlife or human's relationships. I'm forced to polish the ideas inside out and not in the opposite direction. There is no religion guiding me, when I can listen to God, sometimes through a discomfort, a 'push' or messages delivered by friends, books or situations.
It's a dry path for those who often get distracted. It's also a lonely walk. As lonely as it compels me to challenge other people in the same way I challenge myself. A person's work is much more than her career, a wise friend told me. I will always be the child who multiplies annoying "whys" or the last chosen player because all people know he always throws the balls out.
One day, I chatted online with a friend from the other side of the world, telling him that, a long time ago, I decided to just embark on a relationship if my gut tell me he's the right person. I found a singular freedom preparing my mind and my body for the possibility of never live a romantic relationship again, to avoid unfounded hopes. That freedom was enhanced on a close relationship with God, which I got in this side of the world. However, I risk being seen as radical or fanatical. I even risk commiseration.
A few hours later, I wore a shorts, but I could feel a skin of “whore” trying to stick to me, and I challenged a Javanese friend to the importance of talking openly about sex as a natural desire in love relationships. He kept for himself the taboos surrounding the topic in a generous effort to accept my difference.
¿Which identity I want to assume here?, asked me indirectly the same friend, in a courageous affection. My identity is increasingly blurred and I long to drink as much of the Indonesian culture as possible, but I never cease European attitudes that cannot be easily accepted in the place I live in.
I remember the French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf, who presents himself as a frontier person in his book "Killer Identities", stressing that all identities are complex and unique, but we behave like they weren't. We included the most diverse people in the same denomination and we attribute them crimes and collective opinions. He also points out that many people asked him repeatedly to answer what he really felt: deep inside, he was more French or more Lebanese.
Indonesia is one of the most tolerant countries in the world and each identity is intransmissible, but how is the extent to which I show that I want to be accepted and included? ¿If I got out with my chest uncovered in Lisbon, stating that I grew up in a tribe where women can show their chest, what would be the reaction?
¿Am I being fair when I insist on trying to challenge my friends to think differently, according to my idea of an ideal society, while, simultaneously, sometimes I get irritated by being challenged by this society that welcomed me? ¿What kind of arrogance exists in this attempt? ¿Worse, what kind of intolerance?
¿Moreover, when I constantly challenge this society, in the way I dress myself, for example, am I not also asking my friends to embark on a journey that they didn't request?
Because there is a difference between challenging with a question or a sentence and challenging all the time, which keeps me away and always makes me feel foreign when, in fact, as human, I'm looking for a sense of belonging.
In fact, more painful than pulling the carpet of glass and bleeding is healing wounds and trying to restart the same path with these scars. Questioning and searching for wisdom bother. But the acceptance of an unjust and indifferent world bothers even more.
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