Where are you?

Growing up, I had a dysfunctional family. Who doesn't, right? Still, I feel I was deprived of the sense of "family" during my childhood more than my friends were. My parents divorced when I was just entering the first grade. My older half-brother, who was 20+ years my senior, moved out of my house after an altercation with our dad when I was just four or five years old, and I wouldn't see him for at least another decade. I only met my mom's side of the family once, as they all live in Korea; to this day, I don't know who all of my uncles, aunts, and cousins are in Korea. My dad forbade me from ever seeing his side of the family, and I never dared question why he hated them so much. I just obeyed.

Still, mama knew me better than I knew myself, and knew that I would one day crave for a sense of family, if I wasn't already. She went behind my dad's back to get me to start seeing his side of the family. The matriarch of the family, aunt Jannie, who I rarely ever saw. The eldest male in the family, uncle June, who potty-trained me and sympathized with me about my dad and "his ways." The youngest male in the family, my "little dad," who owned a popular restaurant in one of the biggest Asian marts in northern Virginia. The youngest female in the family, Kathy, who sadly gets dubbed as "the crazy one" and the drama queen of the family.

Aunt Jannie passed away from brain tumors in 2004. It was at her funeral that I was re-united with my own brother, and the first time I hung out with all of my cousins as a "grown-up" and not just as a child. We played poker, they let me have some beers, and my brother won me some seed money for college in poker. I would start seeing the family more regularly--and not just during the 4th of July and New Years--for the next few years. Then, I went off to college and spoke to nobody but my mom. I never heard from my brother, I heard from my dad maybe once or twice a year, and I was once again only reunited with my cousins during the 4th of July and New Years.

I graduated college after four years of learning just how selfish/selfless I am, how much I want to belong somewhere, how much I crave love & affection from friends and family, and how I can drive myself into madness with thoughts of loneliness and remorse. Shit happened during those four years. I lost quite a few friends, I gained many more, I learned secrets about still others that had been my friends this entire time that I was oblivious to. I was ostracized, I was celebrated, I was hated, my character was questioned (by both others and myself), and I was still loyal (to others, but not to myself). I lost myself, but found myself in the way I care for the people in my life. I lost myself again when I realized I care too much for the other people in my life and not enough for myself. I pushed myself. I took things for granted, and appreciated them when I lost them and promised myself I would learn more about gratitude as I entered the real world.

Graduation day, mom told me about you. And I realized just how mortal we all are.

Certain things stopped being important. I don't care if that boy loves me or not anymore. I don't care what that girl is saying about me to her sorority. I don't care if plans are cancelled, because I have somewhere more important to be anyway. I don't care if I have to spend a ton of money on gas to drive 90 miles to Maryland and back just to catch a feeble dozen crabs. I don't care if I got three useless degrees from university, because your degree was useless, too, and you still did very well in life. I don't care if much of our time together was spent in silence, watching television and drinking beer. I don't care that you never asked for anything in return, because I still wish I could have done more.

Where are you? Why are you gone? How did this happen to you? You were the best one out of all of us. Can you come back, somehow?

You were the protective, funny, street smart, cool-but-dumb, don't-fuck-with-my-family older brother that I had always wanted. Of all of us, why did you have to go? Why wasn't it me? It could have been any of us. The illness clearly runs in our family. Why was it you? Where are you? Can you hear me?

After you left us, I started working in food service. I know you would have given me so much shit for that: "Why is your life going ass backwards? You're going from working in government to serving food? Can you at least hook me up? What's good there?" And then upon learning that we had no seafood or barbecue dishes, you would have scoffed and walked out. Your dad passed away two months later, following you to the afterlife, a father going after his son. Is there an afterlife? Where are you? Can you hear me?

I then picked up a job in retail. You would have still given me shit for delving further into the service industry, but then begrudgingly would have told me you respect my work ethic and that "you gotta do what you gotta do to get by." I was working 60-70 hours a week dealing with other people so I wouldn't have to deal with myself and my grief. My dad didn't show up to either your nor your dad's funerals, by the way.

I got a job with the government around a month ago. Sub-contractor, actually. You would have given me shit for that, too. "You suck so much that you can't even work for a contractor for the government, but you work for a contractor for a contractor for the government? What's wrong with you?" You were such an asshole. You had a way of making fun of me for absolutely everything, and I loved you for it. Any time I fucked up in life in the past few years, I would tell you, and you would just laugh. You would help me realize that mistakes are just funny stories you can tell to people in the future (and to your cousin with cancer that will make you sheepishly realize that things could be worse). You helped me see the humor in life. You would sometimes tell me about your own similar fuck-ups--which actually ended up being worse than mine--which made me feel better. There was one fuck-up of mine where you didn't even want to know details, because you knew I was so ashamed, and it was no poking-fun matter. But you helped me out anyway, shoving a wad of cash in my hand and telling me not to worry about it. And I knew you knew what it was. But neither of us spoke about it out loud, and that's when I really started to get who you were as a person.

You were the one that really helped me feel like I finally had a family. You brought us together. You always talked shit at poker nights while smoking your cigars, wearing those stupid sunglasses, bragging about how you've got a huge dong. I knocked you down a peg, when you referred to your manhood as a "Jimmy Dean bratwurst," by replying: "I think you mean Vienna Sausage." Weirdly enough, I think this is when you started to respect me--when 15-year old me made an unexpected dick diss.

I have more time to myself now. I've quit my retail job. I only work about 60 hours a week now, but 40 of those hours are a desk job where I honestly have nothing to do, and so I am left alone with my thoughts--the thoughts I refused to acknowledge about your absence, about uncle's absence, about dad's self-alienation from the family, about the evanescence of life. And I've been fucking up a lot lately with friends and my mom and finances and job stuff and friends and ambition.

I need you to laugh at me again. Where the fuck are you?

Day 30: 5 Things I want to be remembered for.

• My curiosity in life. I'm that friend that will ask, "What does this do?" and then proceed to either injure herself or otherwise fuck something up because I'm curious and I want to learn things firsthand. I wish I had all the time in the world so I can learn everything there is to know about everything. Sciences, cultures, history, humanities, arts, everything.
• My artistic talents. Maybe it's a little shallow, but I hope people remember me for my voice, my piano talents, and my drawing. I am by no means professional in any of these three, nor have I had any formal training (apart from piano lessons. And an art class from my local community college, I guess). But of all the descriptors people ever use to introduce me, I hear "She's crazy artistic" or "She's a good singer" the most. Although the next descriptor that comes close is...
• My ability to eat. I am such a big glutton, and I know my body's gonna pay for it someday. But I eat like somebody four times my weight/size, and I never exercise. I'm too busy eating, after all. It is not unusual for me to have 2-3 dinners and 2-3 lunches (usually only one breakfast though). In high school, I challenged the tallest basketball player on our high school's basketball team to a chipotle burrito eating contest. He was 6'7", I'm 5'3". I ended up winning. The secret is pooping a lot. Gotta make room.
• Being a good friend. I'm not gonna be the friend that always agrees with you, and I personally am almost never biased (read: just because I'm friends with you doesn't mean I'm going to agree with you); I try to remain as objective as possible. However, no matter how much I disagree with you or how angry I am with you at the moment or how disappointed I am in you or how crazy I think you are, I will still stand by you and support you. When shit hits the fan, I will clean it up for you, because you are my friend and I care about and love you. It has nothing to do with "loyalty," which I've always thought was arbitrary; I am friends with people from absolute opposite sides of the social/political/whatever spectrum, and I am friends with people that actually hate each other. To me, it's about who I've shared my own life experiences with, and who has shared their own with me as well. I don't take sides (which some might end up saying makes me a bad friend, but I really don't like being biased/skewed in my judgments). No matter how many times you've complained to me about something, I will listen. Even if something you're doing doesn't sit well with me, why should that matter anyway? It's your life, and I respect your will to do whatever it is you want with it.
• My friendliness/affability. Yeah, sometimes when people meet me, I seem very cold and standoff-ish. I don't mean to be. I think it's just in my natural Korean bitchface, maybe, or the fact that I act casual and comfortable with everyone whether I've been friends with you for 5 years or 5 minutes (aka I don't bother with niceties and manners sometimes). But I hope people remember me for bringing them together, for being so open, for making them laugh, for asking them about how they're doing, and for being thoughtful.

Wow, done with this 30 day challenge... what next?!

Day 20: 3 significant memories from my childhood

• Birds. Something I really appreciate my dad for is how he noticed how much I liked birds--particularly blue jays. Every time he saw one, he would call me over. My dad used to keep a few bowls of water in the backyard for the birds to come and bathe in. He also would look for small twigs with me that we could scatter in a small area of the backyard so that birds would come by and pick them up to use to build their nests. This is the same man who chased away the squirrels in our yard by hurling rocks at them and attacked a beehive with fire. Not your best idea, dad. Also, I remember this one time our backyard randomly had a giant flock of blackbirds just chillin'. That was kinda weird.
• My brother. Being 20+ years older than me, he moved out of our house when I was very young. I remember bawling like mad when my brother left. He spoiled me--he bought me my N64 and the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (which he himself ended up playing and never let me have a turn, in true older brother fashion). I remember a few days before he left, he took me to the mall and bought me a lot of things to keep me distracted from the fact that he was leaving, but no tamagotchi could keep me from my brother's indefinite departure from our home.
• Elizabeth. Better known to my friends nowadays as Liz or JinHyung, she was my first friend, and we are still best friends to this day. We met at church. I was one talkative little shit. I remember the first day I met her, I literally wouldn't leave her alone until she agreed to be my friend. I'm glad I was so persistent. :)