Everything I Had

I think most of the people in the world are narcissists, but I'm too busy to think about those people...

I bought the wrong ticket to Busan today. It's my own fault that my country uses the 12 hour clock and I don't know the difference between noon and midnight. Even on my best days, though, I rarely know what time it is and where I'm supposed to be at that time. The attendant tells me that I have to buy another ticket. She smiles a lot. I think I'd rather blame her, but really I know that this is my fault.

Korea and I are not on good terms today. It's my fault, but I'd rather blame her. Who could know that life is so full of dissatisfaction? Right now, I have money, a vacation, the means to do things with said money, and what do I want to do?

Really, I'd like to know.

I wish I could blame someone else, but the problem is inescapable. It's more than a bad day, a circumstance, or an extra ticket. It's me, and the man I somehow became without my permission. It's the will of God, that I should be something other than my own dreams, and sometimes I wish for everything that I had what I wanted, but every day I know I wish I wanted everything I had. What good is success without satisfaction? Is it knowing that everything you want is wrong? How do I give it up? I just want to do well with my life before it's gone.

That's a lie.

I want to feel like something besides myself matters.

Same Old

One of my 4th grade girls uses her knowledge of English for evil.

Teacher is woman! You are like girl, teacher!

Can't get her to stop, but she gives herself away. Every time I go over to scold her, she gets a big smile on her face and puts her hand on the arm I rest on her desk.

Teacher is very handsome.

She says it, though the instant I focus my attention away from her, she'll act pretty much in the same way. Are we all so obvious in our quest for significance? Attention? Love?

I think we are, though sometimes the things we are after are being offered to us, despite what we believe about how they should look.

I'm really starting to believe that my biggest downfall is that I take myself waaay to seriously. Every flaw I have is tragic/Shakesperian, and every creative thought I have is (or should be) brilliant, all the things that great literature is made of. That's probably why I don't finish the things I start, and tend to thinkn that I am so incredibly unlovable, when most of Humanity has my same condition.

Calm down.

You're nothing new. Neither Mother Theresa nor Adolph Hitler, you're just like billions of in-betweens who have lived and died, and shall continue 'till death parts up or our Lord return.

I finally feel comfort in knowing that I'm not really anyone.

Little Things From Where I Am

Went to my very first Korean wedding today. First Catholic wedding as well. I was confused and amused (comused?). Not like it's my first time feeling that. This place usually confuses me, and I've learned to enjoy confusion the same way I have learned to enjoy kimchi: by taking it in often, in small doses and with a smile on my face, regardless of what my face really thinks.

There's an announcement before and applause after every part of the ceremony. At one point, the groom yelled 김소영(bride)사랑해! 김소영사랑해!김소영사랑해! at the top of his lungs. I felt like it was okay to laugh (everyone else did). The audience shouted something back, but I didn't know what, or I would have joined them. Translation (when I can get it) loses a few things as well.

Snippet of the only conversation I had on the subject of what the $&*# was going on:

Me: What's going on?
김미영: The grooms brother maybe will play the piano.
Me: Brother? But that's a little girl up there.
김미영: I can't see. Are you sure?
Me: Yeah, pretty sure.
김미영: Oh. Really? Then I don't know. Just watch.

After the ceremony, there was a buffet (which I'm now convinced is an international wedding standard). It was pretty much the same as an American buffet, except it had more raw fish and whole octopus. I'm starting to get used to things I used to not be. I sat at the same table as my Principal. She asked me how my Korean lessons were going. I needed a translation.

I guess not as well as I thought...

Cultures change, but people are the same everywhere. They are not any more or less dignified or any more plain about what they want. People fall in love, get married, and have goofy friends that put bows on their hair while singing songs. People have little sisters that play the piano. This isn't a hipster rant about how everyone is the same, and nothing is original anymore. Not today. If anything, you can call this one a confession. I don't value these tiny things as much as I now want to. I want to start over again. This time I think I will not care so much about where I think I am going. This time, I want to pay attention to where I am now.

I Can Still Feel Everything

I'm happier when I'm distracted. I know that. I wan't at all depressed today when I was at work, nor did I think about how many years it has been since I believed that I was really heading in some specific direction according to a purpose.

Strange that I'm not more easily distracted. You would think that I would whole-heartedly embrace it, as an agent to numb the pain of this consistent failure I see in me.

I've never been much for numbing pain. I've always wanted to know the whole truth, and that means no medicine. Medicine is a distraction. Medicine lies to you about how much trouble you're really in.

I was 12 years old, and I had a cavity. Eight of them, actually. I had only been to the dentist once before, when I was six. I remember specifically that he had told me then that I should change my brushing habits or I would have cavities. Six years later, I had cavities. Maybe I am unable to change. More than likely, I just didn't.

They put a needle into my gums and squeezed it out three times. They were trying to find a way to excuse the pain that was coming. It was not working.

Can you feel this?

Yes, I can feel it.

I want us to be friends, she said over a premature cup of coffee. She was scared, I now realize, because she used friendship as a way to define what we were not going to be. I swear, I barely touched her the whole time we were going out. Scared of making her scared.

Is it possible? Will you call me?

She collected relationships like I collected rejections. Heaven forbid that either of us be denied the prize we had rightfully earned.

Yes.

I said it because I grew tired of telling the truth. Eventually I crawled back to truth like a smoldering cigarette on a lonely weekday. I want the pain. It reminds me. Yes, I will call you. Yes, we will meet again. No, we won't be friends.

I lied to them.

I told them that I couldn't feel anything so that it would go on. I needed them to cut out all the bad things so that I could use my teeth again. I lied when I said I didn't care because I felt everything. I wouldn't dare ask for anyone's pity, or wish away any of my memories, because now I know. I know the whole of pain. I know every drop of blood that experience has drawn from me, and I have felt that blood leaving me. Now I can use my mouth in a way that was impossible before the drill. I can speak. I can still feel everything.

Ask me if you want to know.

Swallow

Someone asked me last week if I loved myself. She asked it making the assertion that no one can love another person more than they love themselves. I agree with that statement, though it troubles me. I like to think that it is possible to truly love someone as a person in my condition. I don't know if I've ever been asked that question before.

I came into the world helpless and distracted. I wouldn't say that I loved myself, but I certainly paid a lot more attention to me. Everything was injustice, and no one could possibly understand how bad I felt. How strange it seems to me now that I could "know" everyone else's experience in a glance and compare, declaring myself Miss Universe in the pity pageant of all time.

I was fat, and socially awkward. I also didn't like the sound of my own voice. These were my qualifications.

Sometimes I really wish that time wasn't a continuum. That the past didn't progress into the present, and then on into the future. Perhaps if there were some other way, some new method of organization for the universe, I might one day wake up and be completely changed. If I could only be just someone, anyone else. 다시, as my students say when they make a mistake. I made a lot of mistakes, and not any of the cool mistakes. I've made loser mistakes, the kind that reveal true character and fault to the world in an astoundingly unspectacular way.

Know thyself.

I heard these words in college, and felt like it was some grand calling in life. If I knew who I was, then somehow I would be happy. I suppose this could have been the opening page to some part of my life, but it became more of a bookmark. It was a stopping point for blame. I couldn't be truly happy until I knew myself, and I didn't want to know myself yet. I wanted to know the me that I had plans to become.

I am post-college, in a singularly literal sense. I am not who I was, though I can't be too sure, because I didn't take the time to know that person, and I am still not quite willing to introduce myself to me yet. I've come to accept the fact that I can only put into the world what I find put into myself. My heart is filled to the brim with the pictures, word, and songs of other people. I think I love them, but how could I, when I use their creations to explain why my words, stories and pictures aren't good enough?

Love thyself.

All of my prayers seem the same these days. They're like diagnostics. A question of-

How am I doing?

Am I better?

Look at all that I have accomplished. Is it enough?

Will I be better in time for you to be proud of me?

I lost 70 pounds, I can play the guitar a little. I had two poems published in a magazine that Mike made. I've held hands with a girl (more than once, actually). I speak a little Korean, and I only pick my nose when I'm absolutely sure no one is looking. I'm better, aren't I?

Would someone love me if I was just a little bit better?

"This is my commandment, that you love one another, that your joy may be made complete."

Love thyself.

Truth be told, I'm afraid to love myself, because if I love myself, then maybe I won't ever change. What if I'm always this way? I don't know how to love myself and still admit that I have a long way to go. I've come so far, and I am someone else to the best of my knowledge, and I have accomplished everything by hating myself. I had hoped that now that I am a more respectable person, I could start to love again, but everything is built on the foundation of that phrase that I've programmed into my head.

You aren't good enough.

There's no such thing as good enough, I know that. Love is hard work, but it's not a job, because you can't earn your pay. I feel like I've put myself on time out, and now I'm crawling back to God, holding the sorely patched pieces of my identity in front of me, begging.

Has it been enough time? Did I learn my lesson?

When God looks at me, I think I find only a puzzled expression on his face, and his only response:

What were you doing?

Did you think that I put you there?

Swallow.

I think that God wants me to love myself. The myself that I am, and not the myself that I'll be. When I say love, I don't mean that I believe in hippie Jesus who is referenced by philosophy students and is compared to Ghandi and John Lennon. Sometimes I forget which of them said "all you need is love," and which said "if you love me, you will do as I command." I don't believe in hippie Jesus with catchphrases.

Can't we all just get along?

The world as it stands simply does not make sense if that's what God is. I believe in a world where people are starving and dying, scattered and frightened, without hope, and still God is love. I believe in the difficult love, the frustrating, hard to swallow kind of love. Hippie Jesus only loves as a concept. He cannot love you while seeing your flaws, because they would make him wrong. You can agree with hippie Jesus all you want; his love can not change anything about you, because it would have to occupy a considerable distance.

I want to believe again in a love that has dirty hands, because it touches everything. I want to take a bite of something and chew on it, never knowing if I'll be big enough to swallow.

The foundation of my life up to this point has been loathing and self-hatred. I who claim to be a child of God. How can I love, when I am only motivated by hatred, screamed at a mirror daily? I swear, I thought it wouldn't hurt anyone else.

I don't want anyone to tell me that I am good enough. I won't exchange one lie for another. The house must be rebuilt if it is to have a new foundation.

Eat me alive.

Every doorway I left unlocked, every window open far too wide. Every fixture, appliance, book I never read. I will be loved as something that is not good enough.

다시. Time to start again.

When I Was God.

When I first discovered I was an introvert, I was shocked.

Being one of seven children in (at the time) a three bedroom house, I'm not sure if being alone had ever crossed my mind. Every day, from my morning alarm to brushing my teeth before bed, there was someone. Someone was my friend, someone was my partner, someone was my video game opponent. I loved it, and introvert seemed like such a dirty word.

I had no idea how tired I was.

In college, there was also someone, and my life was such a mess. Dirty dishes, cluttered appointment books, and clothes on the floor. We were all going somewhere, and we would figure ourselves out when we got there. Never alone, always asleep or wanting to be. The world could not make itself worthy of open eyes for me, and I was alone.

It's really the worst feeling I've ever had; to be alone when surrounded by so many other people. What is the cure for what you're feeling is all around you, but you just don't know how to access it?

I was terminal.

I left my home, the one that I had set up for my self in the state I was born in. My home country, to trade for another one full of people that I have no access to. Their lives seem good enough. No more or less dignified than the people I left them for. I could live here forever. I could live there forever. I've got to live somewhere forever.

It's really daunting to think of the immortality of the human soul. Our inception was an act for which motive has no answer, and is completely eternal, or, in a less spiritual wording, irreversible. Once life has been made, no matter what its reason, it cannot be unmade. Is such a high placement and judgement of finality worthy of this shell that I occupy?

I really do wonder sometimes if there are things in this world that should come to an end. I'm not God, so I'll not make that decision. There was once a time when I thought I was, but now I know far too much about the both of us to make that mistake.

And so, as God has decided that I am to be an introvert, I am now learning to be alone. I sit in coffee shops for hours by myself, and I ride the subways in silence. I eat alone, and at home I am given the keys to unlock the worlds that He has laid out for me inside my head. The lonesome babbler's compensation, where I can have community with God and with myself.

I am learning to be alone and not lonely. To speak when there is someone to speak to. As for these beautiful, shimmering worlds that have been given to me for my benefit? I have learned to be at peace with knowing that there are some things about me that no one on this earth will understand, though I, by virtue of what has been made for me, am understood.

Sin

I'm feeling a lot better today.

I've been sick.

Sick enough to miss Korean class. I never miss Korean class. Sick enough to take medicine. I never take medicine. Sick enough to mention it.

I usually don't mention it when I'm sick, because my co-workers (even though some of them are younger than me) tend to be motherly towards me. I haven't lived with my mother for quite some time. When I'm sick, I prefer to be left alone. Now, I share an office with three mothers. They're also a little bit paranoid when it comes to illness (for which they use the word "disease").

"Are you sick? You must come to the nursery (school nurse's office) with me."

"After, we will go hospital. After work, let's together go."

"Do you have the allergy? Yellow dust, I think. It comes from China."

"Yesterday we were playing yut nori. The mats were dusty. Maybe that?"

If anything, I'll bet it's the fact that I have to high-five each of the 6th graders as they leave class (right before lunch, too). Call it a cultural exchange. Hand washing and general hygene is a bit of a rough concept for that age group. Sometimes this country makes me laugh. Sometimes it makes me sick. Always, it makes me think.

Last night, I barely made it to the "hospital" (it was actually just a clinic. Koreans tend to abuse the word "hospital"). It was all I could do to stay awake, when just a few hours prior I was on my fee entertaining my 4th graders. It would seem that in life, we are only able to muster what strength is required of us. Oh, impardonable sin, that we should want just a little bit more. That's where both confidence and laziness come from.

I used to be lazy, but not because I was confident. Now, I'm neither. I'm sick, and I took medicine, though I rarely look for help with whatever is wrong with me. I prefer to be alone, but I mentioned it, and I took medicine.

I'm feeling a lot better today.