20TH OF JULY. / an unmarked envelope tucked inside a notebook, one of its corners roughened, as if something had been stripped off. inside, a folded paper, filled with characters cleanly and carefully written:
dear abeoji,
i hope you’re well. i’m sorry that it’s taken me this long to write again.
eomoni mentioned that you were planning to renovate part of the house soon. have you decided which part yet? will you do the work yourself? you’ve been working for so long that i’d like to tell you to hire one of those crews instead. i know that you like knowing what you’ve built, but it’s okay to trust other people, too. i don’t mean this to be disrespectful, of course. it’s just that yujin’s apartment doesn’t have seven locks, doesn’t even have two, yet we’ve been all right, and it doesn’t even cross my mind that often anymore. i think that you can find as much safety in people as in any wall you could possibly build.
...there’s always so much i would like to write about, but somehow i always have trouble filling the rest of the page. and i'm always nervous, for some reason. i was so nervous to send the very first letter, did you know? i’m always afraid of saying something wrong around you. although to be honest, i’m not sure if you even received it, or any of the ones i sent after that. eomoni never mentions them when she calls, either, so i always think...
i don’t know which would be better to hear, that they’ve all been lost in the post, or that you receive them only to throw them away, or that you receive them and you do read them, you just don’t answer, and then i go on to send another. i don’t know which i’d prefer. i think they would all hurt me as much, abeoji, and i wish i could tell you this.
i wish i could write you better letters, easier letters where i tell you how my week has been, and how well my classes are going, and how well i’ve been doing too. sometimes i even wish you would call, even if it only goes as well as eomoni’s calls, so that i could at least hear how you are feeling. if you are angry with me, if you resent me, if you are disappointed in me.
i know i would deserve it. i wish i could ask you to forgive me for leaving how i did. whenever i think of that day i always feel so sick that i think i’ll choke with it and even sicker when i know i haven’t seen you since. please, please forgive me for leaving, abeoji, and please forgive me for never regretting that i did.
i am not always happy these days but i am better, much better than i used to be, and to me that’s enough, to be able to feel happy without feeling like i’ll have to pay for it later.
like today. i can’t remember the last time i felt as happy as i did today, so full of it that i feel like i’ll cry just thinking about it now. but i’ll stop there before i’ll have to ask you to forgive me for that weakness, too.
i’ve never understood why you called it that. it hurt every time you called me weak, and i can’t cry now without feeling so disgusted with myself afterwards, so desperate to crawl out of my own skin. i think i should resent you for this, but then i also think of the only time i have seen you cry: that week after what happened with jageunabeoji, when we came home late and i was supposed to head straight upstairs and sleep. you stayed in the study with eomoni, hunched by the desk, and she was holding you to her chest while you shook so hard i thought you’d crumble to pieces. you looked so sad, so afraid, and you couldn’t have seen her face then but above you, eomoni looked the same too.
i will never tell you this, because i’m afraid that it will make you feel as awful as i do when i’m the one shaking. but, abeoji, i wish i could take that fear away from you both. i imagine what i could have done if i had come into the study that night and sat with you. maybe i wouldn’t have been brave enough to say anything at all but maybe you would have felt what i meant to, that it’s okay to feel these things, to cry out of happiness and grief both.
but i didn’t. i think of this more often than i’d like to admit and how much i regret not doing it, but i’d like to believe that it isn’t too late to make up for it.
maybe that’s the reason i keep writing to you and answering eomoni’s calls even though it would be easier to say that i hate you. that i have always hated you. but that would never be completely true, and it’s important that i tell you this.
i did hate the house. it’s important that i tell you this too, even though i feel sorry to. i always felt like it had claws, and they were wrapped around my throat always squeezing and squeezing and that was the only way i would ever know how to breathe. yet always, every year on this day, i catch myself wishing, “i want to go home.” not the house, but home. i’ve never known how to make sense of that feeling.
this year, finally, i think it has come to mean something else.
abeoji, it feels like home where i am now. i spend these days with someone who is important to me, someone whom i care for more than anything else in the world, someone who makes me feel and believe that i am something bigger than all of the things i’m afraid of. i’ve started to wonder if this is how you and eomoni make each other feel, or if i’ve just been lucky to have found somebody who gives me so much hope and happiness. i’m ashamed that i left you, but i'm not ashamed of being happier. i would ask you to forgive me for that too if i didn’t wish the same for you and eomoni someday, to be happy enough to make it through days when you’re not, to be happy enough to have faith in the world despite how much you fear it.
there is so much more i want to say to you, but i’m running out of room for once, and soon it’ll be too cold and dark to sit outside comfortably and yujin might start to think that i’m going to let him cook dinner.
i will tell you these last things.
one day, i’ll be able to say all of this to your face. i will speak with my voice and i’ll tell you about everything, the big things and the little things, everything i’ve been doing that makes me feel like maybe i am finally doing enough. and maybe i’m really not, but maybe you wouldn’t tell me that. you would just tell me instead how your week has gone and how you’ve been and the whole time, you’ll be using your voice too.
one day i will tell you that i love you and eomoni very much, that i think of you every day and hope with everything in me that you are both always well and safe. i will always work hard for a future where you’ll never feel you have to lock the doors again and i will always try to be someone you can be proud of, and one day i’ll be brave enough to send you this letter.
