Hi everyone. Good afternoon. Adel’s here.
As usual, before we dive in to our main topic, let me give you a brief update of my life. First, I am officially a general practitioner #partydance. Not meaning to flex my title but . . o well, let me humble brag for once. Meet dr. Genoveva Verena Adella aka dr. Adella. After the hurdles of online or offline oath ceremony, multiple miscommunications with either fellow committees or steering committees or our advisors, we managed to pull through a quite successful event. I have to admit, it did feel a bit strange and quite “awkward” -in a good way-to be taking oath with only your sister watching while you held a bible . . However, everything turned out well and I am now a doctor legally. The next step is internship and boy, complicated is not enough to describe the whole process. With the pandemic still going strong, the schedule is a complete mess. My university is confused, flabbergasted and all over the place. On one side, they wanted us to serve as quick as possible since most of the suburbs are in need of doctors to help them handle COVID cases, but on the other side, the regulations are not helping at all. Based on the last announcement we have officially run out of time but looking at the previous trend, there’s still a slight chance of making it through so … fingers crossed on that. And if everything works out, I need an even bigger luck to make my dream a reality: internship at Bali! Calm down guys. I am not going there to chase someone back. I think both you and I know I’m not that kind of person -I will give you more updates later on- I am going there because I feel like it’s a suitable place for me, to study and at the same time relax and really plan my next big step.
Obstetrician? ENT? Radiology? Geriatric? Who knows? #wink
Oh, and here are some of the living proofs from the big day last week!
Second, your girl just turned 24 three weeks ago. In such short span of time, I have experienced two important milestones in my life, turning a year older under such special circumstances -quarantine *cough*- and adding that two letters in front of my name. My birthday was really special that week. If you’re new, hi and welcome to the halfhearted gypsy family. To catch you up, I didn’t begin September like how I usually do. This year it started with me being hurt by an unexpected event. For the first week I was skeptical. I thought this year would be another disastrous birthday celebration like my “sweet seventeen” which I spent by watching movie with mom at home. However, I was definitely wrong. That was my negative spiral taking a toll on my sanity. After the first week, I felt stronger and better. Having my sisters and close friends to help me get through it actually helped a lot. It made me realize things; one of it was that being sad and hurt over things like this wasn’t stupid. I didn’t have to put up a wall every single damn time. I didn’t always have to smile and pretended everything was going great in my life when in fact, all I wanted to do was curled up in bed, watched some sappy rom-com movies, re-read texts and re-visited our conversation on Instagram. Together with them, I got through phase 2 and 3 way faster. Now I can confidently say, I am ready to open a new chapter in that one particular part of my life. And as if it was planned, I felt more of myself on the week of my birthday. Although I woke up to a very “disturbing” text in the morning, I successfully shifted my focus to giving thanks to all the blessings, love, care and attention I received from the lovely people around me. My sister even planned the “perfect” celebration. From buying cakes, flowers and pizza for dinner. She is not someone who plans surprises so it meant a lot to know she gave so much effort in ensuring I had the best birthday ever #sisterrocks #mysisisbetterthanyours #okay #iwillstopsassing Anyways, my first -and hopefully last- quarantine birthday didn’t suck at all. In contrary, I was very happy. My mom and dad were very supportive and attentive, my sister was absolutely fantastic, my squads made sure I felt the love even miles away from Tasik to Jakarta -you know who you are- and Dear even came by to the apartment to celebrate with me! Despite pandemic, we got to do our tradition of spending birthdays together. We did the happy birthday song, caught up on life and just talked. I could say that’s one of the best gifts I received that day, quality time with a very meaningful friend of mine. Five years and counting and (hopefully) going strong.
Last but not least, I want to share my progress on my emotional state and self-love. I came across a very relatable Instagram post the other day. It’s by @ronwritings. I felt like Ron knew me personally, almost. On a serious note, I do relate to each and every single point he wrote.
Three things I’ve learned in September;
1) Having people around that you can rely on for emotional support is one of the best things you can do for yourself
Like I mentioned before, this is the first time I went through a “heart-breaking” moment with people being available, both physically and emotionally around me. It was a new thing since I used to cope with these sorts of experience myself. Odd is not enough to describe how I felt. I always try to be present for the important people in my life so I get a bit disappointed and sad if they don’t come looking for me whenever they have something big going on. I felt that even if I can’t help directly, I can be there to accompany them and give emotional back up. And after doing that for so many years, only now I realize I never let anyone be that kind of rock for me; not even my mom, my sister or close friends. I always wanted to get through it alone, to face agony my way and not let anyone have a say in how to overcome it in a better or even faster way. The feeling of being trusted by others, especially by those who meant a lil’ bit more than your usual acquittances is actually heartwarming and humbling. If I can feel “rejected” and “pushed aside”, I could only imagine what they felt when I did that to them unconsciously. I truly never think about this until quite recently. Therefore, I want to say thank you to you who have already been so patient with my ups and downs and moody emotions. I am not the easiest person to be with and for you guys to keep on offering that helping hand despite me reacting bad to it is very sweet and I appreciate the kind gesture. In the future, I will try to be braver and more vulnerable. I can’t expect you guys to believe in someone who always puts up a wall whenever you guys attempt to get to know them better.
2) When shit happens, there are only 3 things you can do. Leave, change or embrace it
What is life without their evil twists right people? In my case, it comes in different forms and usually in the worst timing ever. For example, I have always wanted to study abroad, especially after looking at sis living her life at S’pore, I am pretty sold out in the idea of continuing my study outside of Indonesia. I never felt I could connect or fit to the society I grew up in. The mindset of the people there was quite different with mine. Plus, with countless rumors going around, I didn’t see a point in staying there. Jakarta at that time was not really an appealing option. I perceived it as a very “dark” place where people are mean, egoistic and individualistic. Little did I know, I ended up building a life there since mid 2014. Of course, I was devastated when my parents told me they couldn’t afford having both of their daughters studying abroad. I went to a very “emo” state, practically lost interest in the things that I usually found fun to do. In short, I hit rock bottom and was in no hurry to get up from it. I even made a “hut” down there and stayed for quite some time. But at the end of the day, it’s too suffocating that I needed a fresh air, a new start so I chose to leave to Jakarta. I couldn’t change the people; not that I ever have the intention too. I believe people are entitled to what they say, to how they act and to what they believe in. Diversity is beautiful and one should never be forced to have faith in something they don’t want to. But at the same time, I didn’t want to give myself in to the pressure of fitting in to what society expected me to be. So again, I chose to leave and so far, I didn’t regret my decision. Another example would be my latest heart break. Instead of clinging onto the hope of he realizing that he made a mistake, that he should have chosen me instead of her ‘cause we’ve been talking and getting to know each other for almost seven months, I took a different route. I let myself had a final talk, a chance to gain a proper closure that wasn’t made up from crumbs of stories and facts that I had to gather myself. Although it wasn’t from a direct communication between him and I, I still managed to deliver my side of the story and felt liberated afterwards. I refused to leave for seven years in my previous romantic encounters. I let myself became an option to a man who never even saw us being in a committed relationship. The longer I stayed there, the harder it was for me to leave. Since I’m not a donkey nor a fool, this time I acted differently. I can’t change his mind on this. I missed my mark to “plead” for my place. I missed my timing to tell him what I wanted from my side. And knowing him enough, it would almost be impossible to change his decision once he set his mind on it so . . . here I am. I embrace the pain, I welcome the sadness, the agony, the longing, the desperation of not knowing what I did wrong that we ended up this way. On top of everything, I let myself feel. Instead of pushing all of the negative emotions to fit into a small memoranda box in one corner of my being, I let myself have the time to settle down, which brings us to the last point.
3) Give yourself time to cope with emotional situations. You can understand something rationally but it will take time to cope emotionally.
When you’re looking into a matter from an outsider perspective, you are more likely to have the bigger picture. Somehow, you can empathize with both parties. You can even give a view that is out of the box that can shed some light to reaching a solution. But it’s way different when it’s us that got involved in it. Somehow, our natural ego got in the way and our survival mode was activated. Most people would claim that even if they did make mistake, the other side made a worse decision that somehow, it’s justifiable for them to claim innocence. I don’t think I belong to either group ‘cause when I’m faced with tricky circumstances, I usually already try to imagine situation from both sides. To be completely honest, it is way easier to do when it’s not about relationship. Being such a hopeless romantic -to a point that sometimes I think I’m just hopeless, no romantic #LOL- I got emotional quicker than majority of people. Once I grew fond of someone, my mind would almost always come up with a scenario that puts the other party in a “better” or “stronger” position. Like in my most recent one, when he claimed to be confused about his own decisions, I lowkey blamed myself a bit. Crazy for me to write about it now, but at that time, everything made sense in a very twisted way that I couldn’t comprehend. In a way, I think it’s safe to say that it’s impossible to get out from a kin be it friendship, relationship, seeing someone-ship, situationship or whatever ship it is without feeling something. It is very human for us to crave for the comfort we used to have. I had my fair share in experiencing that. It took me two weeks to completely grasp the situation I’m in, to finally put back some senses to my dysfunctional brain and only by then, I really started my journey of self-healing again. I am never lucky with love life. The guys that I’m interested in usually always showed a “jerky” side of them that I couldn’t accept. From not being able to address the elephant in the room, being stuck in a “comfort zone” aka greyish area for too long to being interested while still holding on to a different lady. In short, I have yet to find someone who puts me a priority nor able to stir up some giddy feeling in my stomach. I thought “hue” was the one but I was wrong. It was yet another lesson, not the person to treasure permanently in life at this point. But I am okay with it now. The right one will come when I’m ready, not when I’m needy
Anyways, those are the things I think I can let you guys know. As always, keep yourself safe. Travel only when needed and I’ll see you soon!
From your future favorite doctor and gypsy,
Genoveva Verena Adella 🥀
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