I was asked this question a few weeks ago:

Where do you see yourself when you are in your 50s & 60s?

Aku ada masalah sikit dengan soalan-soalan macam ni. Pertamanya, it’s a very neurotypical-coded question. Jadinya, aku memang tak boleh survive untuk jawap soalan macam ni. But, to be fair, back then masa aku on the other side of the table, aku pun ada tanya soalan yang lebih kurang sama: what’s your dream? ⏤betul, soalan aku ni direct aku ambil dari Simon Squibb. Tapi aku bagi kontekslah bila aku tanya soalan ni. Jawapan yang aku nak tak semestinya directly related dengan kerjaya kau sekarang; tapi more in the far future. Apa yang kau memang betul-betul nak buat atau achieve. Kinda the answer yang aku nak dapat macam dalam content yang Simon Squibb buat bila dia directly random tanya orang on the street.

But, here’s also another thing though. Dulu aku tak faham sangat kenapa aku tak boleh nak plan or think further ahead. Boleh tu boleh, tapi selalunya dia macam unrealistic⏤well, at least now aku faham yang dia unrealistic to the neurotypical⏤tapi very realistic to the neurodivergent. Sebab this kind of question usually ends up with this in our (my) mind: “I have no idea. I know what I’m interested in now, I know what kind of work I want to do, but five years is an enormous number of variables away.”

Jadi, in a way, bukanlah aku tak ada bayangan masa depan, masalahnya ialah bayangan masa depan aku tu mungkin langsung tak related dengan kerja aku sekarang. Dan bila kau tanya aku soalan macam ni, dalam kepala ada some kind of answer and at the back of my head, there’s this voice that keep telling me to not say what I’m thinking sebab aku tahu, based on experience, a neurodivergent answer is very unrealistic to a neurotypical. End up, diam sajalah & kau pun tak dapat kerja tu. Kahkah.

And secondly, there’s something else yang buatkan aku tak boleh nak jawap soalan ni sebab there’s a feeling jauh dekat dalam sudut hati, aku rasa I was not given that much of a time. And that feeling came with something that happened in my life almost a decade ago.

Right now, I’m not sure if I’m ready to share.

A few hours back, masa terfikir nak tulis post ni, rasa macam dah ready. Tapi bila dah start tulis dan sampai at this point, rasa macam tak ready pula. Or maybe sebab there’s too much to tell, so tak tahu nak mula dekat mana.

Tapi sebenarnya simple je.

It’s related to a male reproduction health thing.

Basically I don’t have that privielege.

This is basically all the doctors that I’ve met said:

“Takda apa dah boleh buat ni, maybe ambil anak angkat je.”

“You can still pray to God. Ask for a miracle.”

I have this thing called Azoospermia. Kau boleh Google sendiri dan baca kalau nak faham lebih. But what it is, is that, it’s a condition related to the sperms. Azoo ada banyak jenis. The most common ones are⏤low counts & deformed. Normally, counts of sperm in a speck of semen are in the millions. Kalau less that millions, meaning kau low countlah. Then, there’s the deformed ones. Bentuk tak normal macam sperm biasa. Boleh jadi macam-macam bentuk. So azoospermia is basically a mix match of these two. So what happens to people yang nak ada anak but have this conditions ialah they can’t conceive naturally so doctor akan suggest untuk buat IVF. Walaupun low count atau deformed, they can still find at least one yang OK and keep it and later senyawakan dengan ovum.

Bukan aku.

I have a more rare condition.

Azoospermia aku ialah zero count.

Zero? Maksudnya? ⏤yeap, you guess it right, kalau itu yang kau tengah fikirkan. Zero. Kosong. Not a single sperm. Imagine an empty warehouse yang sepatutnya penuh dengan “barang”. So what happen is that in 2017, doktor aku suggest untuk buat two minor procedure. Aku dah tak ingat sangat dah apa nama dua procedure ni tapi aku ingat sikit-sikit the reasoning behind these two procedures. Both procedures is to do the same thing: collect sperms but at a different place. The first one is assumed there’s a blockage, hence why no sperm visible in the semen. So it’s collected at a place where the sperm are kept: epididymis. Ni kira warehouselah kot. Barang dah siap tunggu nak keluar. Kalau takda result, then baru go to the second one, direct terus ambil tisu/sperm dekat “kilang” sperm tu dihasilkan: testikel. This is basically the assembly line sebelum ⏤yeah.

Here’s what I remember a week after the procedure, jumpa balik doktor for him to explain what had happened: dia pun tak tahu.

Doktor aku tu berbangsa India dan agama Hindu. But he was religious. Dia cakap dekat aku, modern medicine can’t fix you. But, God can. If you believe in miracle, God’s willing, maybe one day you can still have you own children. I pray for you that God gives you the strength.

Aku broke down, mat.

Doktor terdiam. Wife aku terdiam.

Nurse yang berdiri dekat tepi dinding pun macam terkaku tak tahu nak buat apa. Doktor pass aku tisu, bagi aku masa. Once aku dah cool down sikit, aku cakap dekat doktor: thanks doc.

OKlah cukup sampai sini cerita tu. Panjang tak habis nanti.

Yes, this is the second reason kenapa soalan dekat atas tu tadi, tak relevan untuk aku. Sebab at some time of the story above, aku ada terfikir yang there’s no more to life. Aku fikir, kalau umur aku panjang sampai 80s pun, dengan siapa aku boleh habiskan masa tu? Sure dengan wife aku, kalau sama-sama panjang umur. But after that? I mean, this is the typical life journey-lah kan. But also at the same time, yang aku terfikirkan juga ialah nama aku is the end of the journey. There’s no one else after Nur Hidayat.

But, that’s life. As of now, aku dah terima kenyataan tu.

Mungkin Allah nak bagi aku yang terbaik dekat sana nanti.

Peace.