Day 03: Greatest amount of physical pain I've endured

• When Min shot me with a BB gun. What the hell, Min.
• Duodenal ulcer. I can't believe I forgot this when I first published this entry. It just feels like a ton of acidic gas is stuck in your stomach and it just keeps building with no escape. You bloat, and you can practically feel your stomach acid just dripping and corroding your stomach lining. It's just a constant burn.
• Getting bubbling peroxide in my eye. Didn't see the warning label (because there wasn't one. Thanks, Clear Care) and so I didn't know it was one of those solutions that you keep your contacts in for six hours. I thought it was 'regular' contact lens solution fit for direct contact on the eyes. Nope. As soon as I put the lens in, my eyes welded shut and it took two hands to pry my eyeball open to take the contact lens out, and my eye was crying for three hours and I flushed it with water for about half an hour. There's irony for you... the natural defense reflex was actually what was hurting me here. I hope I don't have corneal ulcers/burns...
• It was August 25, 2005, and a red Dodge Ram 3500 rocketed into my side of the modest Honda Odyssey we were in. I recall having the wind knocked out of me and not being able to breathe. I ended up blacking out, but I could still hear everything going on around me--my best friend Elizabeth reacting in horror to the blood and her own pain, screaming my name trying to wake me up. I eventually could open my eyes again and immediately went hysterical and started bawling. I could feel the glass lodged in my forehead, the tingling in my left arm, and I feel like I had just gotten thrown around. I miraculously didn't break anything, though I did get a lot of contusions/concussions and bruises.
• It was third grade, and we were playing some catch-up game where opposing teams started out in opposite corners of the gym, and we had to run to try to catch up with the other player. I tripped and got rugburn. I don't know why, but I just remember that being one of the most startling pains ever. I still have the scar, too (inb4 some of you make perverted jokes about how I should be used to rugburns by now. I hate you all).
• I was 16 and I went to the swimming pool with my mom. I have no idea what happened, but I suddenly got the bends. I wasn't even in deep water... but I got charlie horses literally all over my body--my hands, arms, legs, abdomen, neck, feet, toes, fingers, chest. My muscles didn't stop spasming, and even my facial muscles were contracted to the point where I couldn't speak or breathe. Parademics said that the muscle spasming could have reached my heart if I didn't get helped in time. I don't know if that's quite true but it's odd to think about.
• PERIOD CRAMPS I SWEAR THEY ARE GETTING WORSE WITH EACH MONTH
• I was a stupid four-year old and I wanted to see if staplers worked on skin as well as they did on paper. 
• I got a UTI when I was in fourth grade because I wanted to see how long I could hold my pee in. 24 hours, by the way. I ended up having to go to the ER (neither my mom nor I knew of UTI's so we didn't know what was wrong with me), and got a catheter put in me. That shit hurt.
• Root canal. It wasn't as bad as I expected, but certainly one of the worse pains I've experienced just because it was so uncomfortable.
• Using "Kanka" on a canker sore. Worst pain ever for a ten-year old.

Day 02: 3 legitimate fears I have

"Describe 3 legitimate fears you have and describe how they became fears."

Butterflies.

No, this isn't some bashfully unsubtle confession about being afraid of falling in love. I am legitimately afraid of the insect itself. Alright, they're pretty from far away. I used to love butterflies. In fact, one of my favorite pastimes as a kid was to chase them around with a butterfly net, or even catch them with my bare hands. But there was a time when I was about 8 or 9 years old that I had caught a bunch of them and kept them in a jar. My teacher told me to let them go at the end of the day, so I opened the jar. They all flew out, and one flew right into my fucking mouth. As soon as I inhaled for a scream, it went down my throat and I nearly choked to death. It was painfully ticklish, and I couldn't stop coughing for a good hour. And then I cried the rest of the day about how I killed a butterfly by eating it. Nonetheless, I was traumatized, and since then I've been really scared of butterflies. They're frighteningly spastic too. And why are their wingspans so giant in proportion to their tiny-ass bodies?? Unnecessary.

Being a mother.

There was a time when I very much looked forward to being a mother. Starting in high school, I started writing in my diary in the hopes that my children would one day read it and learn from it. As of today, I have 3 full journals for them. I know what to do during pregnancy (what vitamins to take, what to expect, what foods and shit to avoid, etc), and I actually looked forward to it--even the labor. I plan on doing a natural birth, so I put up with cramps every month without taking any Midol or birth control to ease the pain because I want to prep myself for it. I'm realizing in the past few years, however, just how difficult motherhood is. Maybe I've got a stunted perspective on it because I myself was an only child raised by a single mother who struggled to get by in a foreign country. I can't begin to understand how difficult it was for my mother, nor how she managed to raise me by herself. I also know what a horrible little demon-child I myself was, and I don't know how the hell I would handle a child like myself. Nonetheless, I never did drugs, I am responsible with sex, and I turned out pretty decent in general. What if I fail as a mother and I raise a menace to society? What if my child doesn't respect me? What if I don't respect my child (i.e. as an individual)? What if I become the overprotective, micromanaging, suffocating mother I told myself I never wanted to be? What if I can't provide for my child the way I would want to? What if my child ever goes missing, or gets a terminal disease at a young age, or starts hanging out with a bad crowd? What if my child has some sort of disability that I'm too impatient or ignorant to understand and accommodate? What if my child ends up resenting me and pushing me out of his/her life--the life that I helped come into fruition--the way I've observed my half-brother resent our dad? With these worries, I start to think more and more each day that I am undeserving of and unfit for motherhood.

Losing my singing voice.

I'm not worried enough about it to the point where I would stop drinking alcohol and smoking hookah altogether (after all, I'm starting to get the sultry smoky sound), but it does frighten me that my most prized livelihood could be taken away from me. I fear for it every time I am recovering from illness and my voice isn't back to normal. I had swine flu in sophomore year of college, and that was probably the longest time I'd ever gone without singing. You know how muscles work--use it or lose it. When I started singing again after recovering from good ol' H1N1, my voice felt unfamiliar and wobbly. I've also got some unfounded belief that if I can't sing anymore, people won't like me anymore. It's almost like I believe that that is my only redeeming quality (I'm fairly sure a lot of people would agree. They could say they're joking, but I'm not so sure...). I've met so many people from singing (e.g. from performances, audiences/listeners that become friends, etc) that I believe my friends will be gone once the reason for our initial friendship is gone. I think ultimately, then, this could probably translate to a fear of being alone more than a fear of losing my voice itself, if it were not for the fact that singing in itself intrinsically gives me much happiness. Hearing my voice harmonize with songs, being able to sing along with the radio, it all makes me feel... fulfilled. I've been singing my whole life. I can't imagine my life without it. I would rather be blind than not be able to sing.

Day 01: List 10 random facts about yourself.

1. My middle name, contrary to what it used to say on Facebook, is not JWoww; it's Joon. My family decided that Joon should not be a part of my Korean name because it was to be assigned only to the males of the family (e.g. my brother is Hee-Joon, cousin Tom is Sung-Joon, cousin James is Il-Joon, etc). But go figure, it became a part of my name anyway, and I am the only female in the Park family for this generation. Perhaps that explains my masculinity?


2. I can make a tendon in my right ankle move in isolation. Ask me about it next time. It's my party trick. I'll do it for ya.


3. I zone out rather frequently, and my tongue usually pushes out of my mouth when I do. If you're talking to me and I'm looking at you but my tongue is sticking out of my mouth, there's a very good chance I'm not even listening to you. I'm sorry, friends.


4. Almost all of my dreams are lucid. There was like a 3-week period of time recently where they weren't lucid, and it was just so... dull and frustrating. Like your face.


5. If I didn't major in Economics or Psychology or Philosophy, I would have liked to major in Marine Biology, Astronomy, or Music.


6. I'm allergic to alcohol and usually can't have more than 2-3 "drinks" before swelling up and getting hives everywhere. Basically, I'm DD by genetic default.


7. My childhood dream was to become an astronaut. My interest in astronomy was first sparked by a big book of our solar system given to me by my mom.


8. I was born in Arlington, Virginia, but my first (and only) language was Korean for the first 4-5 years of my life. It took me a long time to get assimilated into the American school system.


9. One of the earliest memories I have is sneezing into my hand on the playground, seeing the snot/mucus spread out all over my palm, wiping it on my pink fleece pants and continuing to climb some pole to chase after some kid while playing tag.


10. I was thought to be autistic when I was younger because I had high intelligence but very, very poor social skills (and yes, you can argue that I still need to work on my social skills. Shut up). I regularly recited scripts from movies to myself (my favorites were The Lion King and The Little Mermaid and Hercules--and yes, I memorized the movies in their entirety), stayed away from and never joined my classmates during play time, and felt incredibly detached and ostracized.