To you, who is chasing your dreams

February, 28th 2018

Illustration title : Contemplating dream
Illustrator : Destiana (me)
Media : Watercolor on Storaenso Paper
Edit : Photoshop (for adding text & cleaning)
Drawing date : 28th February 2018

Here is a glimpse story behind this illustration.

Talking about dreams is kinda painful for me. Getting laughed at for every tiny effort I made to chase my dream is become my daily lunch. "Wow, you're so confident of yourself" "That's hard, you won't make it" "Why you just don't look for a normal job?" "A dreamer" "What's your actual job is?" "Being a civil servant is better" I always eat them up, till I can't take it anymore. People don't understand struggle I face everyday in order to avoid their scorn. I just don't understand people. Why they don't help me instead of talking non sense about what I really wanna do. Why they can't just mind their own business. Hate them? Yes I do, but there's no point of hating on people. Hating on people just adding more scars on myself anyway, so I choose not to. It just feels like so hard to find supportive people nowadays which makes me want to give up on everything I held for so long. 

Then I, by chance, listen to sekaowa's song tittled sasanqua today. This song's lyrics hit me hard right in the head. Do you know why? Because of these lines :

.....

You become insecure, as it seems like your efforts are never rewarded

Once in a while, you'd lay onto me, crying

Saying that if you were to give up right here

You'd find yourself pathetic for chasing your dreams all this while

To you, who is chasing your dreams

Remember, if you were to stumble along the way,

I think the main character of a story is the one who gets laughed at

Not the one who laughs at others

Falling down more than anyone else, crying more than everyone else

You rise up after you fall more than anyone else

I know

The moment where you shine the brightest, more than anyone else

...

As long as the main character stands back up

The story will continue

....

I'm sure you can do it, if it's you

(credits translation to yukinekorin) 

While listening to that song, I suddenly remembered all those hard times since my junior high school regarding people's sarcasm and verbal bullying. I lived in a small village, but I went to a most prestigious school in the city. Not all people, but some of them often insult me by saying "a village girl" "why you don't just going to school near your house?" "why you make an effort to go to this school?". They fed me up with those insulting question without think about my feeling. Then I just simply replied them "I don't really want to go to this school anyway, my mom does." They looked at me and my friend like we're despicable objects that they want to get rid of. Seriously? That's what I felt. They even called us The Dora Gang, (Dora here mean Dora from the Dora the Explorer). I even had no idea why on earth they named us the dora gang. They didn't understand that everyday I had to wake up at 4.30 am and went to school by bus at 5 am in order to arrive at school on time and back home at 5 pm. Studied till night and yet I couldn't make a superb score in final exam (I blamed my self for this because in class I couldn't get focus on studying caused by my anxiety of being in this school). Tired of everything? Yes I did.

In high school my burden got lighter and lighter, I decided to stand back. Decided to be a stronger person. So I study hard, won lots of competition and get a long with lots of friends and teachers. Until one day I accepted by best univ in my country. That was my revenge. God is surely fair. But life is not as easy as I imagined. I thought that after going to univ life become easier, but actually not, at all. Struggle then came one by one, living expense issue, pressure from senior, teasing from friends, peer competition, killer professor issue, lack of sleeping and so on but I managed to deal with them until graduate. I believe those struggle I faced were kind of test from God to make me stronger enough to deal with the future obstacles, and I really grateful of that.

Now I struggle with myself, my own will to keep on dreaming. I don't know what to do anymore since my family want me to be a "successful person" (they didn't said that but I knew their feelings). I want to be a successful person while living my dream. But HOW? It feels as hard as pick the moon for my self. It's been 3 years though since I started to make a tiny step to my dream and still struggling with it. Just motivated by the lyrics above, today I decided to put my dream on a treasure box. May be, no, SURELY I will open it one day after I get rid of all those obstacles. Kind of taking another way to go to the destination place and springs flowers inside me. Wait me until I strong enough to make you come to reality, my dream. See you.


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