I live at a distance.

Not just from people. From places, plans, and the version of me that was scheduled to arrive. Long-distance isn’t only romance; it’s a survival setting. It teaches you how to watch your life from across the room and call it efficient.

I said it was fine. Manageable. Time zones, lagging calls, tenderness compressed into calendar blocks. Then the delay moved inside. Days turned into buffering screens. I couldn’t carry the distance and carry myself.

I failed. Publicly. Privately. Repeatedly.

In love, in friendship, at work—and worst of all, in the small room where I’m supposed to be myself. The math of pain is simple: if this continues, I won’t.

So I stepped out. Not bravely. Consistently.

I left a comfort that didn’t fit. Learned new work. Reframed the data: sometimes failure is an accurate measurement, not a verdict. If I can’t hold a thing, maybe the thing is heavy. I’m allowed to set it down.

Loving myself is the most technical problem I’ve met. My default is post-mortems and blaming the closest variable: me. Respect, it turns out, is a practice, not a mood. I’m practicing.

It’s been a year in Jakarta. Change didn’t parade in; it arrived like good weather—noticeable only when you stop bracing for rain.

I found a small circle that behaves like family. Someone cares for me—quietly, daily. My life is still mine, just no longer solitary.

When the pandemic came, the world sat still. Everyone heard how loud a head can get. We were distant together. It was hard. I felt less alone.

People invented new hope. I reopened old problems. I’m not ashamed of that. It’s just true.

I read. I dissect. I reset. I turned goals into coordinates and walked to them.

I made myself legible to myself—an open file with a few redactions. Then a very ordinary miracle: I felt alive. No thunderclap. Just breath that didn’t argue.

One day, when the world finishes its slow repair, we’ll call it living again. I won’t wait for the label. I’m returning to myself now.

Incrementally. Imperfectly. Accurately.

If I’m the hardest opponent I’ll face, I can still be the fairest referee. I’ll let myself fail where failure teaches and rest where rest repairs. I’ll practice closeness the way I mastered distance: with patience, structure, and a promise to remain.

Today I am near enough to hear my own voice. It’s quiet.

It’s mine.

I’m keeping it.