Everybody has their own childhood trauma, and so am i, well at least I admit it. As i wrote in my first blog that when i was about 10 years old I was bullied by my schoolmates because i was dark skinned and chubby. It was nothing like harsh bullying but more like a 'soft' bullying when they treated me different and gave me that kind of degrading nicknames.
It started when i got a role in my school play as a kartini maid. Kartini was a woman hero of indonesian education. The name of the play was habis gelap terbitlah terang. I played the role only because they think I fit the role perfectly. I was indonesian darkskinned girl among others chinese. I went to a catholic school in jakarta where most of the students came from rich and typhoon chinese families. And I was there an adopted darskinned indonesian.
I played that role perfectly maybe too perfect until my schoolmates and even my 4th grade teacher calling me with 'mbok' which means a calling for an indonesian maid. Some of my friends even call me with mbok while they told me to throw their empty bottles or simply telling me to sweep the class room.
Their action toward me was make me sad and i even didn't want to go to school. I felt terrible and questioned myself am i really a maid's daughter or did my mother was a maid and she abandoned me because she was too poor? Was i even belong to this school? Too much questions in my head that I can't forget and always haunted me in every way even until now if i remember those times. I think i had this trauma that I couldn't forget and it effected my life and my confidence in some ways.
Well, just about an hour a go i watched a movie, the title was kartini and guess what it is the same story as the play i role where I was small. I simply watch it because i adore javanese old houses and furniture. I never think that this movie will open my eyes and be the remedy of my long lost childhood trauma.
The story is about young arristocrat indonesian woman in 1900's who had a dream to change the future of indonesian woman with education. Kartini is the very first indonesian woman who inspired many woman to educate themself back in the old days the time when woman was only family's property and don't have any right of education. Even indonesia has her own memorial day in April dedicated to her.
So in the story, there was a maid who raised her when she was small. That role was my role. I remember everything happened to me in a glimpsed and i cried. I cried because i remember all the bully happened to me because of that role but i watched it anyway.
From this movie I learn a new facts that the maid was literally kartini mother who was also mistress of her blue blood father. What a mindblown.
I was shocked and kinda have a different perspective now. The maid that i play the role was kartini's biological mother! So it means whoever wrote the play was not accurate and the play was poorly written. Well what do you expect from a primary school art teacher? And i have to carry all the weighs in the last 20 years of the bully made by the role i play when i was 10 years old? No way!
I was so inspired and finally get the closure i needed that my teachers and my schoolmates bullies were wrong ,they could't even think about my feelings when they degrading me as a maid even after the play finish.
I know the real story now and I'm proud that I can play as kartini's mother and i don't need to be ashamed of if people calling me maid.
If i can turn back the time and i will tell my younger me to scream back to them fuck off! You are all don't know anything about the story but the most important thing you don't know about me at all!
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