Amelie lives in a rural area on the hillside. Her father was in the military. He dislikes empty eyes, broken electronics, and messy gardens. He likes Chinese kung fu movies, singing, and picking fresh produce from his garden. He’s distant but he always makes her and her brother sit near the guest room so they can hear the advice he gives to people. His father rarely gives them his advice directly, but as Amelie grows up, he becomes more interested in her everyday life like her boyfriend and job. But only to leave her and his brother 2 years later because of kidney failure, just when they get into adulthood and become more interesting people.
Following the pathways of her father, her brother joins the military. He dislikes sad food, mismatched clothes, and village life. He likes R&B music, singing in the shower, and cooking his version of European food mixed with Korean ingredients. When their father died he was in the middle of jungle training for 30 days, someone picked him up and drove him home without any explanation, and found out that his father died. He then buried his father in the military uniform he had been wearing without washing for 2 weeks.
Amelie’s mother had a strange way of grieving. She dislikes crowds, cats, and things being stored without being used for too long. She would use an old mandolin she found in her kitchen cabinet out of guilt for forgetting it after 2 years. She likes movies, progressive religious storytelling, and orchids. Every time someone came to visit her she would give them a plant that she had prepped for in small pots.
After her father died, Amelie’s mother traveled more. Visiting family all around Java 5 times a year while she struggled with the financial aftermath of his father’s death. She took over her family's debts that would only be paid off in 60 months or if they successfully sold one of the family’s orchards. But nothing makes her happier than to see her mother send pictures in different tourist spots while Amelie sits at her desk and works 55 hours a week.
Amelie is all grown up and leaves her mother alone as an empty-nester. Her brother is on a faraway island across the country, so her mother took in a neighbor with a son who was kicked out by her landlord. Amelie now lives in the big city alone. She dislikes Reggae, books written by rich white men, and dinosaurs. When she was 10 she watched Jurassic Park for the first time and she got paranoid for 6 months, after she watched the film her family moved to a haunted house that seemed to rhythmically tremble as if a dinosaur was coming. At 27 she read the novel and slept with the lights on for a week.
She likes films, the idea of fruit as one of the highest (and simplest) notions of love, and talking about people — both in a good way or in a bad way, She likes observing people and trying to understand why they are the way they are. Although most of the time she failed. Growing up as the firstborn daughter makes her accustomed to living under the pressure of being good and helpful. This gives her the habit of dealing with struggles behind people’s backs unless she can truly trust that the person can understand and validate her feelings, no matter how fucked up she is because most of the time she knows that she’s wrong even before anyone says it to her face. Everytime anyone calls her Amelie (instead of her real name) her heart melts a bit.
When she was in high school he had a crush on a mischievous friend who later on dated her best friend. He said it’s because she’s “easy-going” and she tried her best to be easy-going ever since. This leads her to talk to more people, make more friends than she ever did in her high school years, and date boys who end up making her question herself even more. She recently turned 28 and is now cultivating her own world. The first thing she did was dye her hair with help from her mother. She then secretly gets a nose piercing. She became good friends with her high school crush, insisting that men and women can, in fact, be just friends. She ditched her old music taste and built a new one consisting of Jazz DnB, Japanese Pop bands, and girly songs about being pretty and having fun.
She lost 6 kilograms in a week and gained it back in the following months. She stops running to physical pain when she’s frustrated and alone, now she meditates after her boss called her to his office and taught her how to do it. She claims her space in literary events with strangers and alcohol, she spent New Year’s Eve in a bookstore talking to strangers and making new friends. She goes to a queer poetry night once a month. Agitated by the presidential election, she connects with people to hang out with like-minded people and see what they can do for the community.
Amelie is proud that her aloneness is no longer something she’s crying about or begging other people to make her feel understood, validated, and cared for. She realized that she’d been looking for it in the wrong place, a place where things like that don’t naturally grow for her. Now she finds it in friends who notice her smallest growths even amidst her countless setbacks — and are proud of her instead of judging her for it, she finds it in a bunch of strangers who just want to have fun, in new and old friends who always speaks highly of her, in women who can understand the degree of pain no man will ever experience. She also finds happiness in small things like the scent of her body lotion, once-in-a-month ramen dinner, and long conversations with girlfriends. She wishes to build more tradition with people who care enough about the small things in her life, like watching monster movies because she’s afraid of dinosaurs. But for now, she’s more than happy to take care of herself the way she needs to.
