Solving a puzzle

For years, my mind was in chaos. A storm I tried to master, to discipline, to silence. I tried everything. I failed. What took its place was something else entirely: emotional shutdown. I became very good at surviving.

I knew how to perform, how to move through the day looking capable, present, normal. I could work, talk, and laugh at the right moments. From the outside, I functioned. But every evening, when the door closed behind me, I fell completely apart.

Only now can I name what was happening. I had been acting “fine” for decades without actually being fine. I met my responsibilities. I kept myself alive. Yet inside I felt numb, hollow, disconnected. For more than twenty-five years, there was a question mark living in the background of my mind, an unsolved riddle that never stopped grinding. Day and night, my brain searched for answers it could not find. It exhausted me.

After a full day of pretending, sleep was the only thing I could manage, twelve hours, sometimes sixteen. And I still woke up tired, as if rest could never reach the place where the real fatigue lived.

Then, last year, something began to move. When the first responses to my call for help appeared on Twitter, the shift was almost invisible. No fireworks. No miracle. Just tiny pieces that slowly started falling into different positions. It became a year of unexpected turns, fragile hope, disappointments, and small revelations.

I am not at the end of the road. But for the first time, the puzzle no longer feels impossible. I have strong suspicions about my past, and for months, I waited for the moment I could return to Indonesia and follow them.

Through a combination of work responsibilities and the pull of family reunification, that moment finally arrived. The week before departure was madness. Physiotherapy. Dentists. Hospital visits for my ankle. Vaccinations. PCR tests. At the same time, I had to learn a completely new financial system at work. My head was overflowing, my body empty. By the end, quarantine almost sounded like a retreat. Travelling in the middle of a pandemic is surreal. A year earlier, I had stood in the same airport, hoping to fly to South Korea to visit my friend Danielle. That journey never happened. I remember the heartbreak. This time, I passed every checkpoint. Papers were reviewed repeatedly, but everything was correct. On the first flight, there were barely twenty-five passengers. I had three seats to myself and slept deeply, the kind of sleep that arrives when control finally loosens. The connection from Doha to Jakarta was full, yet somehow the same luck followed me: three empty seats, again.

When I landed, recognition washed over me. I had been here in 2019, but now the airport felt different, with health apps, temperature scans, and extra forms. While waiting for passport control, I spoke with a young Dutchman hired by an Indonesian football club. He was anxious; his agency had told him very little. I tried to calm him, joked that I hoped he liked Indonesian food. “No,” he said, “I prefer Dutch food.” We both laughed. You can search for familiarity anywhere, I suppose.

A little further back, two elderly French women were worried about a bag standing alone. One of them joked there might be a bomb inside. My heart skipped. Thankfully, the officers didn’t catch it. I gently told them that airports are the one place where humour can suddenly become very unfunny. They shrugged. Different worlds

I had booked my quarantine hotel in advance. After customs, the military police asked where I was headed. “Best Western,” I said. Immediately, they began shouting it across the hall, “Best Western! Best Western!” until someone appeared to guide me. Around us, people moved in every direction, waving passports and receipts, everyone certain and uncertain at the same time.

In the middle of that organised chaos, I heard myself repeating that I didn’t speak Bahasa. And at the same time, I noticed how strangely familiar it all felt to admit that. For many adoptees, arriving in Indonesia feels like coming home. For me, it doesn’t.

It feels known, recognisable, sometimes even intimate, but definitely not home. During earlier visits, the city made me nervous. This time it didn’t. Something inside me had shifted. I am not here for nostalgia. I am here to trust my intuition. To test what I have carried within me for decades. To see whether the fragments of memory, suspicion, and feeling can finally align. I came to face a puzzle that has lived with me for forty-two years. For the first time, I truly believe it might be solvable.