I couldn’t remember when was the last time I feel comfortable just being myself. Is it some kind of rite of passage one must go through when he’s 20 or is it just me having a ridiculuous aging problem? It never happened before, I used to enjoy who I am and what I’m doing. And now, I don’t know what’s got into me, but I’m becoming this emotional insecure person with no true identity at all.

Something went wrong and I couldn’t find out what it is. But I figured, it’s not that bad that it requires me to look for professional help.

Or is it?

I began to realize there’s a problem when I saw myself doing things I never imagined myself doing it before. And it’s nothing against law, by the way. I started to care about what people say, what they think (I mentioned earlier that I didn’t care, then I corrected that actually I did, and now, I don’t. See the problem here?). I started to be more sensitive on issues I never put my attention on before, which later pushing me to develop potential amount of anger I had no control over if things just went differently. I started to misarrange my priority pyramid, letting myself to buy stuff I used to think as a stupid way to spend my money on when it’s too late to realize that I was running out of budget. I started to appear ‘different’, thinking how stupid I had been for the past years of my life. And what worst is when I started to be ashamed of myself.

There’s one thing that doesn’t change though. It’s how I can deceive people convincingly, at least that’s what I think, to believe everything was fine. After all, who am I to bore everyone else with my problems, right? They already had their own, and the last thing they need is someone whining about how bad his days were. But wait, isn’t what I’m doing now also called whining? Well, it depends on your perspective. To me, writing here is like writing on my diary, except that everything here is available online. In case you’re wondering, please take a look on my previous entry here. It’s not my intention to ruin your day reading this if you think I’m just talking crap.

So, these couple of days (and weeks actually), I’ve been thinking about the solution. Thanks to my full-loaded schedule in the office, I can spend at least three hours a day browsing the Internet with hope for the answer I’m looking for (What? Doesn’t the Internet have everything on it?). Among those endless links of pages I visited are my Friendster account.

I checked my friends’ account to see what updates have been made, read the bulletin board (which never fails to amaze me as they’re full with things like: what is the LAST meal/drink/place/movie/song/time SOMEONE ate/had/visited/watched/listened to/cried, laughed, or even farted; funny three-words-chain-story game; ten or twenty similar posts from one person only telling that she just changed her phone number, or asked for testimonials; stupid forwarded letters from Mr. Owner-of-Friendster, or the parents of a helpless cute little girl suffering from acute cancer), and, what I loved most, updated my account. And few days ago, while writing a testi (short for testimonial) for a friend, I thought why don’t I take a look on my own?

Not wanting to sound overly proud – thus humiliating myself – but I guess I have pretty much collections here: 116 testimonials! I started to read from the first I got and on this entry, I want to write something about the first five. First is from my old friend, Mia Ilmiawaty. I met her during a regional competition in my junior high years. She was from different school and currently taking major in Nursery, University of Indonesia. And the reminiscence of those old times started to dance in my mind. It was my first time going to Bandung to take part in a higher level competition I’d been dreaming to be since I was in primary school. The good news is that I took the first place, beating all the contestants from almost every kabupaten and kotamadya in West Java! (If you think, I was being too proud of myself, you’re right, but sorry, I need to be such way right now) It was monumental since I wanted it so bad I prepared myself from two months before. Thankfully, those times didn’t go wasted. We didn’t talk quite often during high school since she left for Bandung while I went to Serang. Last time I met her was on last year’s school vacation, and as what my eyes saw, she looked very happy, having just reached one major accomplishment in life. Wish her all the best.

The second testi is from my junior high friend, Rendi, who’s now studying Business in ITB. What I remembered from him was my second year of junior high. We were classmates, and since there was a subject called Electronics and he was quite an expert on that, I asked for consultation to him quite a few times. I was completely clueless on how to weld, which component is which, etc. Luckily, he’s very generous. I probably never thanked him properly, but if you’re reading this, Rendi, thank you so much!

The next testi also came from my junior high friend, Hary. He was a transfer student from other school, and we were classmates during our second and third year. He’s now taking Civil Engineer in ITB. One thing I could never forget about him, beside the fact that we were close friends, is that he’s the first person to introduce me to NTU, my current university, even though he was in Bandung, finishing his high school, while I was in Serang. He sent me bundles of the syllabi of NTU’s entrance test papers as well as the sample of the papers. I was pretty much clueless on which university I should go, never imagined that this could be my future. Thanks to him, I had time to see through the materials, started to look for textbook for reference, and prepared for the test. I was so glad when I heard that he was admitted to ITB, one of the top universities in Indonesia. I knew he could make it, he was very determined in scoring his target, especially if it’s something big like his future.

What comes after Hary’s is Jo’s. I know him here in my school. He took the same major as me. He was from Sibolga, North Sumatra. We spent quite much time sitting next to each other during our first year lecture, and that’s how exactly I had my first impression on him. In case you didn’t know me, I was pretty much stubborn in terms of standing on my opinion and we happened to share similar characteristics. Everytime there’s a debatable topic in our lecture, we always debate each other, even though we both know that we’re not that capable to understand the materials deeply. I had tendency to feel that I must defeat him and I figured he felt the same way too. So there we were, arguing each other without realizing that there were hundreds of students feeling annoyed with our inconsiderate ‘talk’. It’s two years ago and I felt like it was yesterday (not actually yesterday, but ‘yesterday’ yesterday, if you know what I mean).

Fifth one came from my high school friend, Taufan. I met him on my first year and we shared same desk on our second year. My first impression about him was that he must be some kind of spoiled mummy boy because he looked pretty well-maintained. During my first three months sitting next to him, he always talked about the latest tech gadgets and stuff he watched on MetroTV. Being a geek myself didn’t help me much. I just nodded or ‘hmm’ed to pretend that I understood him. Later that year, I managed to find the common thing to talk with him, and it’s nothing we ever thought of. Other thing I remember about him is that he used to always be a last-minute player, I don’t know whether he still is. I knew he got potential, but somehow he liked to play around until he saw everyone was almost fully ‘armed’ for the ‘battle’ and that’s exactly he started on something. I was not surprised to learn that he got admitted into School of International Relations, University of Padjajaran. He got potential as I said.

Those are the first five testimonials I got, but I didn’t stop reading them one by one, bringing back the good (and some bad) memories I had. I must’ve been enjoying myself so much, smiling in front of my laptop screen, that my colleague, Mr. James, started to wonder what I was reading. Well, how could I not smile? Those past years had been so amazing that it almost made me laugh and cry at the same time.

There I began to learn the answer of my question. I enjoyed my time because I made myself to do so. I didn’t care what people thought of my attitude, what I put on, or even me dancing around everytime I felt I needed to because I conditioned myself to be that person. I wasn’t afraid if anyone told me that I was weird or that I stood on the wrong side, being against public opinion or even too ignorant at all because there’s nothing wrong being so. I was comfortable when I didn’t buy stuff that people bought because it’s just natural for me. I enjoyed being selfish putting myself into my first priority because I was registered to understand that it’s the right thing to do.

I don’t know what put me to believe those reasons but clearly I couldn’t see that again right now. And while I’m searching for that ‘trigger’, I have to push myself to return to my old me. I hope I’m going to find it along the way.

Thanks friends. You reminded me of what I used to be.

Just now, I ran into dina’s blog and saw this personality test. I took it since I was curious about the test. And after I finished it and the result came out, it turns out that I do really have a problem. Below is the result:

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Personality Disorder:	High
Schizoid Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Schizotypal Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Antisocial Personality Disorder:	High
Borderline Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Histrionic Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Narcissistic Personality Disorder:	Very High
Avoidant Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Dependent Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	High

Does anyone know any professional in town, preferably the one with the moderate cost, or free?