Resilience is a word I could easily associate with the monsoon season. From October to early March of every year, the shifting wind brings the condensed, moist air into the land to fall. The rain often arrives abruptly and departs just as swiftly. I used to love it so much. There is no better feeling than dozing off to the sound of the rain hitting the roof and no better pairing than cold weather with warm food. This was before I had to brave the storm (quite literally) and get stuck in traffic, drenched, just to go to work. I learned the hard way that the rain does not stop your bills from coming or your landlord from asking for rent.
Despite all that, there is something about the monsoon rain that makes me feel alive. It is unpredictable, unstoppable, chaotic even, yes—but there’s something tender about the way it nurtures us. No life is possible to happen if there is no water. Sure, the same water that starts life can also end it. But this duality is probably the sum and substance of nature itself, a balance in a way. Maybe that’s why it always felt necessary. At the end of the day, you can’t grow rice without the rain.
The people of Gelaralam, one of the indigenous communities in West Java, have known this for generations. Nature has its own timing and purpose—a harmony they must respect and protect. This belief extends to the way they harvest rice: once a year, no more. Not because they can’t, but because they believe that this is the time Mother Earth has set aside for humans. The rest of the year belongs to the animals, the forests, and the rest of nature’s other children, including those invisible to the naked eye. To cross this boundary is to disrupt the balance, inviting crop failures, pest infestations, and a terror of chaos. They honor the balance, not as something aspirational, but as a truth of survival.
In nature, everything unfolds in its own rightful time. I believe the same applies to us. I often think about how the queer experience feels similar to the monsoon season. Embracing your queerness sometimes feels like you’re facing the heavy rainfall. It can be catastrophic. It surely demands a lot of courage. It is messy and yet…it is necessary.
We have been taught to see it as unnatural but we often forget that everything in nature exists with a purpose. We are the children of nature—we are natural. Monsoons never ask for permission or offer apologies. They just are. They simply just exist as they were always meant to. Remember that 60% of our body consists of water, the rest are made with exactly the same atoms that created everything in the universe. We are always meant to be here—an essential piece of the cosmic balance.
Just like the monsoon season, coming to terms with your queerness often challenges us to be resilient. It is a time to be drenched, caught in the whirlwind of the storm, uprooted from our foundations, and come out the other end, alive and transformed. It is hard—very hard even, for some of us. I often think about the people of Gelaralam and their deep understanding of nature's balance, its purpose and timing—knowing when to sow and when to let everything be. Its capacity to give and take reflects the many dualities of the queer experience: the joy and sorrow, the acceptance and rejection, the tenderness and the harshness. Oh, nothing else can show you so clearly that beauty and danger can coexist, intertwined.
So, whoever—wherever—you are, know this: let your queerness be your storm and sanctuary. Let it shake you off from the hard ground and land you somewhere soft. Let it take away what doesn’t serve you anymore and help you grow something more beautiful than ever before. Let it nourish you. Be loud, untamed, and alive. So, when the time comes for the sun to shine again, you know what a beautifully dangerous and sacred being you are.
My mother told me night and day
That love was a sequence of melancholy and ecstasy
“You can’t have one without the other,” she’d refresh my memory
In hopes of mending my perception of her wretched loyalty
Yet I took it with a grain of salt
Each time I watched my father tearing my mother’s heart
Seeing how her heart would be struck by a dart
Every time she saw him depart
Love was frosty, love was a challenge I dared not to pursue
I spent half of my life recalling the pain it brought, believing it was no use
Until I came across a soul like hers —
A meeting that Fate had knitted since the dawn of time
Marking the eradication of my fears
It wasn’t her beauty that captivated me, though she looked mesmerizing
But the ethereal qualities trailing behind her every footstep,
As if the celestial bodies loved her as much as I did
Yet their love paled in comparison to the boundless devotion I hid\
I loved her for the way her eyes glimmered in understanding
(The Stars would descend from her eyes, softening the harsh edges within me and lighting my mind)
The way her smile was a spitting image of the sunshine, offering me solace and serenity
(The Sun would caress her face and kiss every inch of her lips, carrying warmth into my soul when her lips lingered on mine)
The way her words reached the deepest part of my walls, answering my calls and catching my falls
(The Moonlight bore witness to her tenderness, composing an eternal poem to the love we dared to define)
Yet even the brightest stars were no exception to hostility
Just like my mother said, love was a sequence of melancholy and ecstasy
We would also have days filled of severe weathers and agony
We’d have brewing storms raging in the living room
Massive hurricanes trembling our walls and painting our skies with doom
A rain of hail scrapping our tender moments and threatening to bury them in the tomb
A devastating series of heartache that could consume
But unlike my mother and father,
Even after the catastrophe and the bother,
Her love always promised me rainbows
Her devotion always kissed away my sorrows
Her arms always provided me shelter stronger than all the lows
Because even amidst the wreckage,
Her love still spoke the language of my soul with grace
Because after the first time she held my face
A celestial promise had been made, freeing me from my cage.
