[PART I] Buried in Dept

What does it feel like to be buried in debt?

Constantly worrying about how to pay it back, worrying about when it will finally be paid off, worrying about finding another loan just to cover the previous one. Feeling like you have nothing to hold onto because every bit of money has to go toward paying debts first. And so many other kinds of worries.

Who would be crazy enough to deliberately put themselves into debt?

There is.

Me.

For the opening, click here

As the first child—someone who, for as long as I can remember, has carried responsibilities that were never truly mine—being in debt just to “provide” for the people around me has felt almost normal over the past six years.

But this year, I think I’ve finally had enough of carrying responsibilities that were never meant to rest on my shoulders.

And lately, I’ve begun to wonder:

what would it feel like to have debt that belongs only to me, and for myself?

Thirty-one years of living. Since I was seventeen, I have been carrying responsibilities that were never mine, stepping into the role of the adult among people who seemed to forget they were already adults themselves.

In all those years, I don’t think I have ever had real savings. Day after day has been spent in survival mode—living paycheck to paycheck. And yet, I have never once experienced what it feels like to spend my entire salary on myself.

When I was twenty, I went through a huge argument with my late father.

His wish was simple: he wanted me to move with him back to his hometown.

My wish, actually, was even simpler: I wanted to honor a promise my father had once made—perhaps a promise he had already forgotten—in order to protect my mother’s feelings.

Years earlier, my father had promised that he would not move back to his hometown until my mother’s parents had passed away.

But one day he came home with the idea of returning there. The idea wounded my mother deeply—leaving behind her parents while her husband broke the promise he had once made.

At the same time, my father had his own longing: after years of living far away, he wanted to be close to his parents again. Perhaps he simply forgot his promise, not realizing how deeply it would hurt his wife—and her parents.

The idea of “moving back to the hometown” sparked a huge conflict within our family.

And I couldn’t take anyone’s side.

I understood my father’s longing.

I understood the hurt and disappointment in my mother’s heart.

And I understood the sadness my grandparents must have felt.

In the end, I chose to stay in Medan.

There were two reasons.

First, to honor the promise my late father may have forgotten.

Second, to protect the feelings of my grandparents, who had helped raise me since I was born—because my parents had lived with them all those years.

My father was furious.

My decision led him to say something that hurt me deeply.

“If you refuse to move with us, then I won’t support you anymore.”

He thought his daughter would change her mind.

He didn’t realize I had inherited his stubbornness perfectly.

Without hesitation, I replied,

“Okay. That’s fine.”

My mother immediately condemned his words. To her, a daughter remained her father’s responsibility until she got married.

But at that moment, I didn’t care.

I was angry with my father. I hated what he had said. I hated that he didn’t even try to understand why I chose to stay in Medan. I hated that I had to carry the burden of a promise he had forgotten so easily.

I had just graduated from college. I took any job I could find.

Tutoring students here and there. Taking wedding organizer jobs. Working as a facilitator. Anything, as long as it allowed me to eat and keep the household running—a household that now included two elderly people.

Why didn’t my grandparents live with their other children?

First, my grandfather never felt comfortable living with them. When he heard that I would stay in Medan, he immediately said,

“I’ll just stay with my granddaughter. It’s okay, I can still pull my pedicab to make a living. I just want to live with my granddaughter.”

Second, my grandmother didn’t want to move somewhere new. She was already comfortable in our neighborhood. She had friends, regular customers who brought clothes for her to sew, and a life she didn’t want to leave behind.

So in the end, it was just the three of us living together: me, my grandmother, and my grandfather.

My grandfather still pulled his pedicab regularly, even though his hearing was getting worse and he tired easily. I told him many times to just rest at home, but he felt embarrassed living with his granddaughter who didn’t even have a stable job yet. Besides, he said he would get bored at home without seeing his friends.

So I let him continue.

My grandmother also kept accepting sewing jobs from neighbors.

I let her do that too.

At the time, I often worked on survey projects that required me to travel out of town. Before leaving for several days, I always made sure to arrange catering for my grandparents. I also asked a close friend to check on them while I was away.

Everything went smoothly at first.

Until one day my grandmother fell ill and became paralyzed after being discharged from the hospital.

I began looking for a stable job so I could stay closer to home. And God made things easier—I found a job near the house.

Even though I was working full-time with a minimum wage salary, I still gave private lessons in two different places. I left home at seven-thirty in the morning and sometimes didn’t return until ten at night.

When I got home, I cooked for the next day’s meals. Usually I finished around midnight, sometimes later. Then I slept, only to repeat the same routine again the next day.

But eventually I realized I wasn’t comfortable working at that company for various reasons. The stress became overwhelming, and in the end I resigned—without any backup job.

Even more recklessly, after resigning I went to visit my mother in Yogyakarta with barely any money.

After that, I returned to doing survey work in remote parts of North Sumatra before eventually deciding to become a kindergarten teacher so I could stay closer to home and look after my grandparents.

When I came home from my last survey trip—before applying for the teaching job—I discovered that my grandmother’s youngest child had already moved into our tiny rented house, which only had one bedroom, together with her husband and children.

My reaction?

I was furious.

I had no privacy anymore, and it felt like the burden I was carrying had suddenly grown heavier.

At that time, I hated my life.

My grandfather had a rather temperamental personality, and his relationship with his youngest child had never been good. Her moving into the house only increased the frequency of their arguments.

I became even more stressed at home and started spending more time outside. Back then, if possible, I only went home to sleep.

After some time teaching at an Islamic kindergarten, my aunt finally moved out of the house.

My salary as a kindergarten teacher was only around four hundred to five hundred thousand rupiah a month. To make ends meet, I continued giving private lessons and took on whatever odd jobs I could find.

Then one day, when I came home, my grandmother was crying.

“Your uncle is having a hard time,” she said. “He doesn’t have any money. Do you have something he could borrow?”

At that moment, I felt a deep resentment toward my grandmother’s other children.

This uncle was her favorite child. She would give everything she had for him. But asking a twenty-two-year-old girl—who was struggling just to survive, whose only stable income was five hundred thousand rupiah a month—to lend money to a grown man much older than her… it made me despise the adults around me even more.

I mean, if you can’t lighten my burden, at least don’t add to my wounds.

I was already taking care of his parents. If he couldn’t bring them joy, then perhaps he shouldn’t come at all until the day of their funeral. But instead, he came to his paralyzed mother and complained about how hard his life was.

I hated my uncle.

I hated my aunt.

I hated the first and fourth children of my grandparents.

That day, all I said to my grandmother was,
“I don’t have any money.”

I let her continue crying over her son.

Because the truth was, I really didn’t have any money. I had never had savings. At that time, simply not being buried in debt already felt like something to be grateful for.

My grandmother passed away a few years later.

My uncle came. My aunt came too.

I should have been more accepting of her death, because I knew she was no longer suffering. But at that time, all I could think about was how busy I had been working just to keep food on the table.

I had barely spoken to my grandparents in those last years.

I regret letting two elderly people feel lonely in a house where I lived with them.

I still remember how happy they were whenever I brought home Madura satay after work. Or how excited they were when I bought martabak late at night.

Back then, eating dimsum at Nelayan Jala-Jala in Medan was something far too luxurious for me. I only ate there because a coworker invited me. I had to admit, their dimsum was incredibly good.

At the time, I wished my grandparents could taste it too.

A few months later, I finally managed to bring that fancy dimsum home for them.

They were so happy.

Around the time of my grandmother’s death, I had a huge fight with my uncle. He found a small notebook filled with my grandmother’s writings.

“Even until the end of her life, Mother was still writing about me,” he said.

At that moment I felt sick with disgust.

“Well, of course she did,” I snapped. “Because you were always troubling her! Just giving her more things to worry about! Why did you even come here complaining about how hard your life is?”

That forty-six-year-old man then said something incredibly cruel to a twenty-two-year-old girl who had been taking care of his parents.

“Oh, just shut up! You can’t even take care of your own grandparents! You made my father wash the dishes, didn’t you? Making an old man wash dishes—what kind of brain do you have?!”

I went silent.

My grandfather did often wash the dishes, because I didn’t like doing them. But I had never asked him to.

Sometimes he even cooked his own vegetables or prepared his own meals, especially on nights when I came home past midnight and didn’t have time to cook.

At that moment, I blamed myself.

I felt like I had failed my grandparents.

All the voices around me seemed to fade away. The only thing I could hear was that phrase repeating in my head:

“You’re useless.”

People around us tried to separate me and my uncle as the argument escalated. He kept shouting at me.

And finally I shouted back,
“Leave! Don’t come here again!”

Then my grandfather came over and hugged me.

Again and again he said,
“My granddaughter did nothing wrong. My granddaughter has taken care of us. You did nothing wrong.”

My uncle quickly gathered his belongings. Before leaving the house, he invited my grandfather to live with him.

But my grandfather answered,

“I want to stay with my granddaughter. As long as she still wants me here, I’ll go wherever she goes. It’s okay if we only eat once a day. I want to stay here.”

That day, I felt like I had ruined the third-night prayer gathering for my grandmother.

The fight left a deep wound in me.

At that time, I hated myself.

But the truth was—

I hated my uncle.

I hated the adults around me.

I hated my grandparents’ children.

PS: Hello, my readers.

Since I just checked the insights on this blog, I initially thought no one was reading my posts. But then I realized that most of my readers are actually from outside Indonesia. So from now on, I’ll try to write my posts in two languages—even with my not-so-great grammar.

The “Merangkai Aku” label, means Piecing Myself Together, will contain my personal journals—written as a way to heal myself, to acknowledge the feelings I used to ignore, the ones that eventually became wounds and left behind trauma.

I hope that anyone out there who reads my journal, and who is also trying to heal themselves, will soon find their way back to recovery.

With love,

Your Rumi.