Shift in Weight

Hearing the best news of my life!

The day will come
Walk this winter

The day will come
End this night

The day will come
Settle this storm

I wrote these verses a few months ago when the hope of ending this limbo ignited within me. My sponsorship to New Zealand was finally in progress. For nearly a decade, I had been living in various refugee prisons in Indonesia - deprived of my basic human rights and facing a bleak future. (Read more about my story here.)

Yet that spark of hope was deeply ingrained in doubt—reasonable doubt that my freedom might not come true and my sponsorship application would hit a rejection. After nearly a decade of sheer despair, every hope seemed a lie and every lie felt true. Writing that poem was a way of fighting the doubt within me.

Many months had passed, and I went through greater doubt to the point of despair as the sponsorship hit multiple delays. At the peak of that despair, I tried to face the idea of a possible rejection in my head, which is a reasonable confrontation for someone in my position. In every scenario, you need to have in your heart the possibility of facing the worst possible outcome. I tell you, it was a scary confrontation. I wrote somewhere: 

A dense canvas of darkness mirrored my imagination whenever I imagined myself in the presence of a rejection. No trace of a screaming face – no mark of footsteps – no scratch of my fingernail. Not a head swinging on a rope. Not even a laid corpse in a grave.

With the first spark of hope, my future took on the color of reality instead of descending into further despair. I received a confirmation letter, approving my sponsorship application and another letter granting me permanent residency in New Zealand. It came with a shift in weight, as if I had been carrying an invisible load all these years and now, with this news, it had lifted. I felt the shift when I read through the letter: “As from 04 October 2023 you became a Permanent Resident of New Zealand.”

These words immediately lifted me to the highest state of elation I could ever have imagined. My sense of statelessness and hope for an end to this long limbo was replaced with a sense of belonging and hope for a new life.

More than a month has passed and I am still in this state of elation. I think I will stay in this state for a long time into the future, or as long as I stay connected to my life here – to its struggles. I cannot contain the rapture on my face whenever I look in the mirror. In the same way, my despair before this news was always visible on my face.

The day has come
Walk this winter

The day has come
End this night

The day has come
Settle this storm now.

Your support will help me to settle in my new home in New Zealand. With enough paid Substack subscribers (paid subscriptions coming soon), I can spend more time writing and less time working on other jobs. I am also building a scholarship fund to pay for my future university education. You can make a direct donation here. Thank you!