Prominent Queen est. 1995

— Lately, I realized my English readers base exceeded my Bahasa Indonesia ones. So, to whoever reads this, however you react to it (“positively,” “negatively,” or “neutral”), I sincerely thank you for reading out. I have been writing for as long as I can remember, and at much time, people don’t really enjoy my style. Thus, thank you for reading —

When I typed this, I hadn’t slept properly for long hours. Master study tasks’ deadlines were overwhelming, not to mention other ‘immigrant-ly’ issues within the arm length. Moreover, I was on a train towards a city 2.5 hours away. I’m trying to find a trade-in bike after some parts of my previous bike got stolen.

Along the way, a woman cared for three children on her own. Two toddlers and one baby. I believe they speak in one of the African languages. The baby did not stop screaming on the top of the lunge, craving constant attention. The other toddlers were bouncing from one seat to the others. Occasionally, they cried and smashed the mother’s phones in their hand. The woman looked so tired and lost. At least to my unfair eye’s takeaways.

If I were honest, the screaming and crying pierced through my head. Endless deadlines and acute overthinking syndromes that washed over my system increased my anger. Two blonde ladies who were once sitting nearby me had long gone. I believed they, too, gave up with the deafening circumstances. Too bad I couldn’t. I had to sit there because that was the only area where I could sit alongside my bike.

Anger, irritation, drowsiness, headache, overthinking everything engulfed me.

Nevertheless, I love to think beyond necessary and flew to some thought else, somewhere regarding how women who are not mothers are valued less than should. 

This woman who brought the children on her own was extraordinary, indeed. If this is Indonesia, probably everyone will start writing about “Strong mothers, strong women.” Perhaps, I will do similar acts in different circumstances. For example, if I had enough sleep, I would be writing for brands.

But here, I write about the possibility of this woman deep within hated this fate of hers. That she wished she wouldn’t have to deal with the motherhood issues. This woman belongs to one of the research I am reading now under “Regretting Motherhood.”

In this writing, I want to show how I could not be a woman like that, at least now. I could not be like the woman before my eyes. I did not want to be. This is because if I were her, I would have gone completely insane in my philosophy and logic. I would have ended up in a mental institution for trying to smash my crying child towards the nearest wall.

My writing wants to address the romanticization of motherhood as the “highest pleasure and value” of being a woman. It is to the point that if a woman can not or does not want to, like myself, she is considered “less.” Why? Are we only measured as far as our womb is? If a woman is only about preserving the population, is this behind Elon Musk’s recent artificial womb idea? Maybe. 

The train consistently pierced through the darkness. Drowsiness was still strongly engulfing me, not to mention how drained I felt. Perhaps, the woman that mother felt what I felt. Or worse.

Maybe, I indeed am not as noble as she is. Maybe, my struggles “are not as real” as hers. Maybe my frustration, pain, and exhaustion are “less” because it is not “related to your highest value:” the emotional backbone and caregiver of a family. It is nothing. Nothing.

NO, HELL NO.

Both of us are struggling women. I felt how discriminatory it is that mothers are remarkable, but those without children fail. Failing to fulfill our duties as women. Failing to mother. What if I see my career, education, creation, art, writing as my babies? I nurture and care for my designs so dearly because I wish for them that they will be beneficial to actual others, human beings one day.

We are both women. We go against the stream enforced by patriarchy, in the male enforced propriety, for as old as the society. Why are some actually “more” while others are “less” in the battle of no matches?

#byL – Coevorden Station, The Netherlands

January 23rd, 2022, 18.34 ETC