Dear Daddy
01/17/02
Dear Daddy,
I know you think you were sneaky today.
Calling my cel phone and hanging up without leaving me a message. Third time in the last eight days.
You worry about me. I know. I know. And I do love you for it. And when I do answer, you listen for joy or hope in my voice. Some word that I might have a clue or at least more confidence about what my career is going to look like this year. If I’m eating well. If I’m in love. If I’m happy. Sorry that I couldn’t muster too much of that the other morning when you called. But then again, it was 6:30 my time. And being the unemployed sloth that I’ve become, I go to be at 3 and creep out around 11 when the day’s light is tugging at my shoulders and the morning is mostly gone.
Daddy, I know how much you love me when I hear that anxiety in your voice. When you tell me it’s ok for me to come home. That if it’s too hard, I should just pack it up and go home. That it’s ok. That you’re sorry for poking at me before and saying that I should look harder for a job. Or that I should have worked harder to keep the miserable one that I had before. Or that the only job I couldn’t get fired from would be as “wife”. I know you say these things when you ask if I’m eating. If I’m ok.
And when you say “Come Home” you mean more than packing up and going back to the bedroom that
I spent over 13 years of my life sleeping in. That you mean letting me be your little girl again. To relieve some of the burden of responsibility for my own life and direction and to defer it back to you, to when you ordered my morning, afternoon, and evening activities, and I didn’t have to worry, nor think. Nor in many ways, grow up.
In Korea, the korean language has few words to describe an independent woman if not by her own name. She is referred to as her father’s daughter. Her husband’s wife. Her child’s mother. But rarely as herself.
And that coming home, coming home means giving up myself again.
And you wonder why I’ve been such a stubborn asshole about it lately.
Daddy, I love you but I’m not coming home. Not like that.
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And no, my dad does not actually read this site. Nor does he go on the internet at all. Nor does he know how to operate a computer. He only got his cel phone in November and demanded that I program the urgent numbers of my brother and myself into it since his eyesite and English & Technical proficiency couldn’t be bothered. So if I get phone calls at 6:30 in the morning, I suppose I can’t be mad because I am partially responsible.
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Life is hard enough.
I think to myself that I’m in a very static place right now, but I’m confident that there is much to grow from it.
Times of stillness are important for a number of vital reasons. #1, it allows you to digest the events/circumstances and influences of the most immediate past. #2, it allows you to survey the roads before you without haste. #3, it allows you to prepare correctly for the appropriate path, once you have selected it.
I understand that and so I’m not in a state of emotional or spiritual anxiety. I trust in God whole heartedly.
If he could take care of me last year amidst all the chaos and drama, then how could I doubt that God will take care of me this year now that I rely on him even more. Yes sweeties, I’m bad about going to church on a regular basis and I talk way much trash, but my faith is still there and I need moments of stillness to remind myself of that.
So yesterday I had an appointment with my pal N. to have a little injection of fablousity tossed into me.
I lost a pound in the course of an hour. Yeah. A pound. A pound of hair.
Long hair, that whole long straight-down-to-your-bra-strap- thing for me was so 2001. So yeah, I dropped a pound of hair. Razor snipping it in the back, for the first time in my life, my short hair is lying flat. Normally, I have so much bulk there that it puffs out and I have triangle head. It’s rather sleek now, looks good messy, can be squinched, has some cranberry highlights and is overall washed in concord grape. Yeah, my hair is now fruit punch. Weee.
Anyways, N & I, old friends, share all that is distressful and earnest, scandelous, and true. This conversation leaned towards a bit more sober than I’m used to from him. His boyfriend of over a year would receive test results today.
Not GMAT or LSAT or GRE’s but HIV. Yeah. Something a little more stressful to think about. N. who has been HIV positive and living happily, healthfully, without drug cocktailing for the last 9 years, expressed more concern, love, and tenderness for the emotional state of his partner than anyone I’ve encountered. He’s also been vigilant regarding safe sex with him. His partner, who expresses that if he were so concerned about HIV, he wouldn’t even be with N, wasn’t so vigilant during the weeks before their courtship began. Regardless, the circumstances be damned, the love and spirit of life that they have hasn’t had nary a shadow cast on them. Life is hard enough as it is, isn’t it?
And here I go bitching about my weenie little concerns.
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How is it that I have four writing assignments due this week and I feel like organizing my mp3s instead of writing?
Oh yeah, that’s me being a dumbass again.
Nevermind.
You may as well tell me it looks fabulous because telling me otherwise does damn little good as it’s pretty impossible to *uncut* it ya know.
Anyone want a pound of hair? I got it in a plastic bag.
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Min Jung
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