by Fendy S. Tulodo
They said it was just a power cut. But I swear—when the lights blinked off that night, the blinking cursor on my screen started typing back.
It happened during the rainy season, not that the weather mattered. I was alone in my tiny rented kos in Dinoyo, the kind of room where the walls are so thin you can hear your neighbor’s phone vibrating through the plaster. My desk was a fold-out table. The fan squeaked. The Wi-Fi worked when it felt generous. On that particular Thursday, I was supposed to finish a 1,200-word piece for a small online journal—something about “the writing life.” I’d been putting it off for days.
I typed: Writing is like breathing… then deleted it. Too cliché.
Typed again: Writers are mirrors… deleted that too.
Fingers frozen over the keys. That sigh came out—the useless kind that just proves you’re still breathing.
Cursor blinking. Taunting? Or just watching.
Then—click. Darkness.
I tipped my chair back. “Not again,” I mumbled. “PLN jancok!” (Damn power company!)
And then, in the pitch black, the screen turned back on. Only the screen. No lights, no fan. Just that faint glow.
And the cursor started moving.
It typed: Stop lying.
I’ve told this story only twice before. Once to Hera, and once to a friend who ghosted me a week later. I don’t blame him. Ghosts don’t like competition.
The thing is, the message wasn’t wrong. I was lying. Not on purpose. Not with evil intent. But the kind of lies writers tell when they’re trying to sound smarter, deeper, braver than they really are. I was trying to sound like someone who had figured it out. I hadn’t.
The truth?
I was tired.
Not sleepy-tired. Soul-tired.
Writing had become a performance.
Let me give you some context.
I’m Fendy. I live in Malang. By day I sell motorcycles—yes, really. I meet with buyers, explain the difference between models, bargain with people who think a “diskon” is a human right. I smile when my throat burns. I shake hands when I want to punch walls.
By night, I write.
Used to be just for fun. Short stories, weird poems, diary entries. Then I got published. One piece. Then two. Then eleven. And suddenly, the thing that made me feel alive turned into something I had to maintain. Like a relationship I was scared to leave but too anxious to fully commit to.
I started watching my own sentences like enemies. Is this too passive? Too boring? Too me?
And slowly, unknowingly, I started disappearing from my own work.
The power came back that night after about an hour. But the sentence stayed with me: Stop lying.
So I started writing differently. Not better, maybe. But more honestly. Not long after, I wrote an essay that mentioned my father—not the heroic version, but the real one. The one who once slapped the table so hard it cracked because I said I wanted to be an artist. “Mau jadi seniman? Mau makan batu?” (“You wanna be an artist? You gonna eat rocks?”)
That piece was hard to write. I cried once in the middle of it, paused for Indomie and a cigarette, then finished it at 2 AM. Sent it without rereading. They published it three weeks later.
Someone emailed me: “I’ve never felt this seen.”
Writing’s a crowded loneliness—shoulder-to-shoulder with ghosts while the living breathe down your neck. Maybe especially then. Because most people don’t see it as work. My own cousin once laughed and said, “Oh kamu nulis doang ya? Enak dong kerja dari rumah.” (“Oh, you just write? Must be nice, working from home.”)
She didn’t see me panic at 3 AM because a sentence refused to land.
Didn’t see me re-read feedback that said “too vague” and feel like my heart cracked a little.
Didn’t see me delete my best paragraph because it sounded too… exposed.
I’m not trying to sound noble. I’ve written trash. I’ve written for money, for attention, for revenge. Once, I even wrote a fake review of my own work under a pseudonym. I’m not proud of that. But it happened.
Writing doesn’t make you a better person. It just strips the pretense.
You either face what’s under the words, or you don’t.
My son, Chan, once handed me a crumpled paper and said, “Papa, ini puisi.” (“Dad, this is a poem.”)
It was just scribbles. Blue marker chaos. But I taped it to the wall.
Because maybe that’s all this is—us, scribbling in the dark, hoping someone will tape it up and call it poetry.
Sometimes, I think about quitting. Not because I hate writing. But because it terrifies me. The deeper I go, the more I realize how little I understand myself.
I wrote a story last year about a man who finds a tape recorder that only plays his thoughts from ten years ago. It freaked some readers out. One said, “This feels personal.”
It was. I just didn’t know it at the time.
Here’s something I’ve never written about before:
There was a time in 2019, after I lost a job, that I genuinely believed I had peaked. That the best part of my life was done. I remember sitting on the rooftop of my kost, smoking clove cigarettes, watching the laundry sway in the wind, thinking, this is it.
And then I wrote a story about a broken cassette that only plays jazz when it rains. It was stupid, sentimental, full of typos.
I sent it anyway.
It got published.
That changed everything.
Not because of the prestige. But because it proved that even my broken parts had a voice.
I still have days where I think I’m a fraud.
I still hesitate before hitting “send.”
But I also know now: the voice that tells me I’m not enough isn’t mine. It’s borrowed. Inherited. Learned.
And it’s not the truth.
The truth is—I’m still here.
Still writing.
Still scared.
But also, somehow, still hoping.
Last week, a buyer asked me what I do when I’m not selling bikes.
I said, “I write.”
He smiled. “Oh, you mean like, WhatsApp captions?”
I laughed. “Kadang lebih dari itu.” (“Sometimes more than that.”)
He didn’t get it. That’s okay.
You don’t write to be understood by everyone.
You write to understand yourself.
And so, if this essay reaches anyone out there—somewhere in a room with peeling paint and flickering lights, hunched over a laptop, doubting every word—
know this:
You are not alone.
Your voice matters.
Even the cracked, clumsy, typo-filled version.
Maybe especially that one.
Some stories don’t end with answers. Just someone finally telling the truth.
