🌦 « lee ji-eun. cis woman. she/her. 30. » was that JULIANNA CHOI walking through the doors of amorelux ? i heard they just moved in to apartment 1405 from PORTLAND, OREGON and work as a junior lawyer. they seem mysterious & loyal but don’t get on their bad side ! they can be brazen & complicated which makes sense since they’re a LIBRA. you know they’re home when you see a flash of gold gilded wallpaper, vintage dark brown furniture, a huge king sized bed, and a cat room.
@amoreluxintro !
you are, if anything else, born to love. born to love, raised with love, and love is the foundation of your youth. thank god that you got it then, because time would grow to tell you that such things would simply never last. your mother was born into money; left it for your father, left it for you. and it was a good life. you’re third generation, and generational trauma has a way of making it’s way down; at least it waits until you’re an adult. your mother loves your father and he her, until her dying day.
you remind your father of her.
from the way you stand, the way you talk, the way you eat, the way you breathe. she dies when you’re 7. cancer, they say. your father dies when you’re 8. you think it’s because of a broken heart and you don’t even know what a broken heart is. you learn fast. the good news is that your father has a brother, who loves you like he’d love his own child, if ever given his chance (but his dating life has always been kinda trash). it’s a good home. it’s not your parents, he’s a little more dry, but you can tell that he cares; it makes all the difference.
children can be awful. in elementary school the rumors say that your parents died because they didn’t really love you. your uncle packs korean lunches, and of course everyone covers their noses and acts it’s the worst thing in the universe. you don’t get good grades. they’re average at best, but also? turns out you’re really good at english. sad, because you’ve lost all your korean by time you’re in middle school. but at least middle school means a chance for a fresh start, right?
middle school is spent with your nose in a book. any book you can get your hands on, really. as any therapist will tell you, books are a way of escapism; so you spend your time in lands where the main characters still have their parents; where their parents hate them; where they lose both their parents but still come out stronger. you hope that’s how your story goes. you struggle in math and end up in regulars when they start to offer honors classes (but hey, at least you’re in the gifted program, right?). always feeling like a step behind, always a bit awkward, a bit quiet, never having much to say unless it was important. that’s the type of person.
so it turns out, it wasn’t just your father that loved your mother. in fact, it was your uncle who loved your mom first. but she chose your dad; which was odd, because your uncle was (and very much is) on the track of getting rich. but what she had with your dad was undeniable. you don’t remember much about your mother, but you remember her in a hospital telling you that you are LOVE. (before your mom dies, she used to call you love as a nickname. the nickname dies with her)
you do make a friend in middle school; a group of friends, even. you guys call each other the scooby gang; and none of you are white, all of you love some form of fiction and storytelling, and you guys are as thick as thieves. get into trouble, even; always coming in messy after recess, mud tracking in, and giggles that would get endless glares. it wasn’t much, didn’t even last through high school; but for once in your life, you didn’t think about how alone you were. you could just be a kid. your mom would be proud.
in high school, you discover independence. you get a job slinging ice cream, reading books in your free time. make up comes into play, and you figure out how to get a perfectly winged eyeliner as your uncle drives you to school, even with his shaky driving. you nap for the rest of the ten minutes it takes you to get to school, and throw yourself into the sharks.
this time around, you know yourself a little better; you might be scared to be in a new place, but your posture only straightens as the years pass. you meet your best friend, who’s recently came out, and you click easily. it’s perhaps co-dependent; when she gets a girlfriend, it’s more like the girlfriend is third wheeling you and your best friend. your junior year? you forget to pack lunches; but it’s fine, because she shared the lunch period with you and always shared. she was co-president of vietnamese club, you always came along for the ride and everyone in the club saw you as one of them. when you took orchestra, you loved it so much, she took it too. you watched tv shows and movies every friday night with chinese take out. you went through the same kpop based eras. you guys were always together, enough that she carried around your epipen (peanuts) in her backpack for you. your best friend became your new home. you think she might be your soulmate.
when you turn 17, a message from tiffany chung. pops up on your facebook messenger. you have a half sister who’s in college, she’s done a dna test (you did too, your best friend bought you a kit for your 15th birthday), and ancestry.com confirms your relation: you’re half sisters.
meeting tiffany is sort of like having your parents back, in an odd way. she lives in new york city, a fling from when your mom was young and had given tiffany up for adoption. you talk and talk and get to know each other like the back of each other’s hands. you tell her all you remember of your mom, she teaches you how to come into yourself and simply live. your parents wouldn’t have wanted you to stop living because they aren’t there anymore.
he says you’ve got to move out on your eighteenth. your break down is shutting down.
college changes you. in undergrad, you major in english (ucla). it’s fun, you party, learn how to go out and socialize. doesn’t stop you from shutting down and drowning yourself in school work and jobs to keep the disappointed chatter in your head to the bare minimum. (you’re not sure why your uncle kicked you out. he met someone? got tired of you? maybe he thought it’d be a good life lesson? you’re not sure, but you’ve gotten harder since then. quieter. full of rage on some nights, even.) books have always been your happy place. books, autumn, and dark colors. your best friend goes to school in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and you fall apart, but always come back together.
you and your sister find out that your mom fought to keep tiffany, actually; but tiffany’s father was richer, greedier, wanted her for herself - and your mother lost custody of tiffany because she married your father. it’s messy and sad and you and tiffany don’t speak for weeks. needed some time, y’know?
when you do, it’s like no time has passed. like you guys really, truly were sisters. like yeah, life is full of tragedy and everything sucks but at least you have tiffany, right? and maybe you coulda had tiffany earlier, if it weren’t for tiffany’s father.
tiffany was in law school. she tells you that english was actually a good way to prep for law school. you don’t want anyone to end up like you. so to law school you go.
you move to seattle because tiffany lives in town. and it’s close enough to your uncle without giving a leg and arm to visit your uncle. law school is hard. you’ve never been a natural at anything, so this takes work too, and between dressing properly and graduating - you never really had time to date. at all. tiffany and your best friend say you’re a bit of a loser, but you’re their loser. besides, it wasn’t like anyone could tell.
tiffany dies 6 months before you move in amorelux. they say it’s a homicide. jesus. you can’t get out of your lease and have a job lined up, so you move there anyways. a big city. alone. no family, no friends. nothing.
what do you do with the love you have for a person? for your family? where does it go? or does it just rot inside you until you die, too?
PERSONALITY & INC.
in the world of law, there’s a certain way you have to be. you have to be cutthroat, always have your mind in the game, always have your eyes on the prize. and since your time at work is pretty much the only surrounded by people who’d throw you under the bus, and your best friend has officially fled the country (she lives in italy now - you visit her every summer for a month), and tiffany is your sister and not your friend and there’s a difference, you see. you’re a bit lonely. but you don’t let yourself look like it. you go out with co-workers, smile through that actual agony that it feels like to be out, and you’re in bed by 9:30pm. you say no to plans if they’re past that time. you complain about the smell of weed in the building. the girl playing her cello every night pisses you off. you think your parents would be disappointed in who you’ve become; bitter, tired, snappy, and a lifelessness hidden between sharp words and an even sharper gaze. your walls are endless; you don’t even let people humor trying to let you in. words drip with sarcasm and you’re simply a tragedy walking; the thing is, you try to come off as the opposite. so you’re harsh, hot (c’mon, there’s no denying how attractive you are), dripping with sarcasm as you spend your weekend evenings sleeping around in order to feel something, so that you’re not left in your pity of thoughts. life is shit, but at least you’re good at hiding. you know how to talk to people since you perfected customer service in your teenaged years, so there’s always people flitting in and out of your life, but you never let them last, always let relationships fade. you’re entirely work driven. and you have to work hard to get where you want to be anyways, so why try exploring anything else?
