I don’t know why I’m writing this. Perhaps it is easier to write my feelings down rather than speak them aloud. Perhaps I hope this never reaches you in any shape or form.
This is my confession.
The concept of confession is never one that has sat right with me. For a singular person to claim not to judge me as I bare my heart, only to know that their opinion of me will change with every word left my mouth… There is a part of me that knows deep down that nothing will ever change that. That I rely so heavily, so deeply, on knowing how people see me, that I will never bare my face to see the world as myself. All will remain filtered through that which is Kang Yohan.
I’ve had this dream since well before my brother and sister-in-law passed away of floating out at sea. It is warm, not unwelcome, and comfortable, but I grew more and more tired with each passing moment until keeping my head above water is all I am able to do. No amount of screaming or praying or trying to wake up will free me from the sea. It is only I and self-hatred and guilt eating away at me as I am desperate for something, anything, to rescue me from this space of alone and lonely and empty. Empty, is what it is. It is a world in which there is nothing but me.
I still feel it these days. That alone, lonely feeling — for they are different. To be alone is what I am, what I always am. With Elijah in New York now, knowing you are in Seoul, and here I am in Zurich, I am alone. But that loneliness, that horrific suffocating, never-ending silence. That deep-set feeling in your bones of knowing that there is not a thing you could do to free yourself from this pain.
The last time I felt like this, I sought ways to free myself from this loneliness. I found K and my team. But I found respite in a way you likely will not expect.
There is much you don’t know about me, Kim Gaon.
Warming Cha Kyunghee’s bed was far from the worst decision I made in those initial years after Isaac died.
I worry in this moment you’ll think less of me for the decisions I made in the past. But you must understand, I was not even thirty, the only parent of a child when I had never intended on having children, the only survivor of a family that wanted nothing more than for me not to exist.
I sought comfort in the only places I could find it. And Cha Kyunghee welcomed me without a second thought. My fondest memory of my thirties, is of Cha Kyunghee just sitting in silence with me.
How pathetic I must sound.
But my life became nothing but static. Nightmares of fire and endless sea and the regret of waking up every morning, to spend my day at work where I followed laws that only hurt the people I so wished to help, back to a house that haunted me, to a child who told me to my face that she wished that I had died and that her parents had survived, only to return to those nightmares again.
It was only spite that didn’t drive me to an end.
Spite and fear.
Did an afterlife exist? Would I see Isaac again? Would Isaac be angry with me? Would he support all of my feelings of regret, hatred, and guilt? Would he echo that which Elijah said? That he wished I had died, that he had survived?
I am a coward, Gaon-ah.
I have lived only in the hopes of never confronting my brother. I have lived only in the hopes of never seeing that disappointment.
I sought comfort in the arms of a married woman that I hated deeply. I felt nothing more passionately than my hatred for her, even as I spent long nights with her. As she ran her fingers through my hair, as she traced my scars with her fingernails until I shivered. I would never have allowed her to know that I often returned to the house and cried. I wrapped my arms around myself and pretended they were her, that they were Isaac, that they were anybody who might care about me.
I don’t remember K’s name.
It’s such a little thing, minute, a detail barely anyone might think about.
But he worked for me for eight years. He was my driver, as close to a friend as I could have. He threw away the world for me.
And I don’t remember his name.
He is just a passing thought sometimes. I forget he existed at other times. He spent so long as my shadow that I forget he was a real human being. His pain was only important to me in that it allowed me to use him to my own end. All it took was a reminder of his pain and I could ask him to do anything with the promise of eventual revenge.
And I could not deliver on even that.
I don’t believe I’m worthy of love. I don’t believe I’m capable of love. I’ve long since passed cynical and pessimistic; I think I’m well past nihilism as well.
You’re better off without me.
But, again, I am a coward. And so, cowardly, I will continue to live.
Sorry but if Kang Yohan is daddy, Cha Kyunghee is mommy- I don't make up the rules, they make the rules. I just follow them and oh why yes, mommy, please step on me holy fu-
