jaehee writes

tl;dr - 2019 fucked me up, but here’s to hoping that 2020 will finally be my year. heavy stuff -- proceed with caution

Four days into 2020, and I have only now been able to put my thoughts together to reflect upon 2019.

2019 was the year that brought me much deeper down than it brought me up. It was the year that I longed for the end before it was even halfway over. But it was also the year that I grew the most, learned the most, and loved the most.

(skip to bottom if you don’t want to read the detailed description of how 2019 fucked with me)

This year started off with my last semester at Berkeley. I knew from the semester before that I had clinical depression, but I had it under control. Shortly after the semester started, my mom was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, and I quickly realized that I did not have anything under control. When I found out, I cried for a week. A month, really. At first, it wasn’t because I thought I would lose her. It was because it was the first time I heard so much fear and uncertainty in her voice. It was because my mother had worked so fucking hard her entire life, and for her to be punished like this was unthinkable. I held onto my faith because it was the only thing I could do, but I also hated God for having let this happen. My mom was and is my world, and my world was shaking.

But what could I do? All I could think of from February onward was that I needed to do enough to graduate from college and go back home. I hated myself for having gone to school so far from home, so far from my mom, whose vulnerabilities only became clearer when I left for my freshman year of college.

Who knew that just doing enough to graduate would be so fucking hard? School was busy, and life was busy, but I spent 4 years with some amazing friends, and I spent April having some unforgettable lasts with the same friends who I had my unforgettable firsts. And lo and behold, I graduated from UC Berkeley!

I came back home in May and accompanied my mom to weekly chemotherapy sessions. I watched her in fatigue, pain, and overall constant discomfort. I cried when I was alone, and put on a smile when I was with her. I went on tinder date after hinge date to take my mind off things. It was fun, but nothing was promising. I already wanted the year to end.

In August, I joined my church young adult group and met some great people (some I liked more than others). My mom had her total mastectomy and lumpectomy, and the surgery went well. I spent the rest of August putting in job applications and taking care of my mom. At the end of August, I agreed to temporarily work for my parents full-time for the busy season. I took control of the college counseling program, which was always a headache for my mom. 

September was a month filled with 눈치밥, dressing more professionally and speaking more professionally so no one could say that I was taking advantage of my parents’ position. I worked overtime and at home to make sure that everything got done when it had to get done so no one would have reason to reprimand me, because we all knew how uncomfortable that situation would be.

In October, work only got busier. I was Jaehee the college counseling coordinator, photographer, in-house tech consultant, in-house graphic designer, handbook-writer, and many more. Church got busier as I inadvertently took on more roles. Life got busier as I started dating someone I had no feelings for and taking my mom to radiation treatments every day for 5 weeks. From the outside, it seemed like I had my life together. I was working out almost every day, dieting and losing weight, dating, working hard, and had a church life. But on the inside, I knew I was just going through the motions.

I quickly put an end to dating. I also found out that he was 재활용 불가능한 쓰레기 and a borderline sociopath. Anger took over most of my days, and I became more unstable. I was angry at him, at myself, and at the church group I was in. Nothing could quell my anger but time and work. Work was busier than ever in November, with early action/decision deadlines and BCA prep, and more stressful than ever, with parents breathing down my neck and looking to take advantage of me at any chance they got. It’s safe to say that my anger quickly became insignificant compared to what I had immediately in front of me.

December was an insanely busy month. I had church events left and right, and I again had too many roles. I was working overtime every day, juggling my mom’s hospital appointments, and submitting job applications. In the week before Christmas, I got into two car accidents (I was at fault for the latter one), and I went into mental breakdown. I spent the last week of the year submitting college applications with students and preparing students for their BCA exams.

(end of detailed description)

2019 was not my year. But that doesn’t change the fact that it made me who I am as I start the new year.

Some lessons I learned:

True fear is not something you can get over by jumping out of a plane with a parachute or jumping off a ledge with a bungee cord. True fear is feeling the ground that was so solid and firm under your feet suddenly shake violently. It is being uncertain about things that you have been certain about all of your life. It is not being able to trust yourself with any decision, any opinion, or any emotion. Sometimes, true fear is not having nightmares that wake you up, but having nightmares that don’t let you sleep in the first place.

The only way to get over fear is to confront it and to take control of it (at least for me), and then deal with the consequences. I need to take (educated) risks, and be comfortable with where that may take me.

운전 조심, 남자 조심. It’s so easy to read someone incorrectly, and it is just as easy to read your own emotions incorrectly. When times are rough, the place to look isn’t new romantic love, but tried-and-true love.

I need to stop overloading my plate, and I need to say no.

I need to stop cutting the people in my life slack. If they disappoint me time and time again, I need to reevaluate that relationship.

Even at the most physically, emotionally, and mentally vulnerable point in her life, my mom is the strongest person I know. She will always be my world.

Don’t get me wrong; 2019 wasn’t all bad. I met some amazing people at work and at church who I really hope stay in my life for a very very long time. I made some lasting friendships with unlikely people, and I strengthened the friendships I have with the ones I know have my back. Although I won’t be working there for much longer, I made some instrumental and highly necessary changes in the way things are done at work, and I fulfilled my goal of making my mom’s life easier in all ways that I can (although I probably made it harder in some areas too). I have relationships that I want to deepen in 2020, and goals to fulfill.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

“You once told me that the human eye is god’s loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn’t even know there’s another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty. ... [A] monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root monstrum, a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once. ... You’re a mother, Ma. You’re also a monster. But so am I—which is why I can’t turn away from you. Which is why I have taken god’s loneliest creation and put you inside it.

how do we preach to the world about self-love while willingly and openly deprecating ourselves?

예쁜말만 하며 살아가기도 모자른 인생, 왜 근거 없는 비관적인 말로 채울까?

Increasingly on Facebook meme pages, people post themselves next to trash cans or pointing at trash cans, captioning that that is where they belong. Then, the same person who posted the trash can meme will go on Instagram and post about self-love and self-respect. Just thinking about it gives me vertigo.

I’m sure that self-deprecation has been around just as long as humans have been around. However, the trend of open and loud self-deprecation seems to have grown in the last 5 years. What used to stop at wry humor now looks like photos of young people posing next to trash cans and memes about being failures. Now, self-deprecation is considered everyday humor, and most comedy that is considered “relatable” is dark.

In the meantime, we try to spread self-love with motivational quotes that are written in beautiful brush script. We promote self-care and self-respect. We tell our friends that they are worth more than they think, when we ourselves don’t believe the same things about ourselves.

What is it that suddenly made self-deprecation “cool”? How did negativity and low self-esteem become the only ways we can relate to one another?

I’m not saying that I am not negative. I can get stuck in the rabbit hole of self-deprecation and negativity. However, I realize that these negative thoughts are very rarely based on fact. And putting these negative thoughts that aren’t even reflective of myself at all in the public realm makes me into a whole different person on the Internet.

changing the world through “non-essentials”

Art, architecture, writing, and other artistic pursuits are often dismissed as things that are not essential. A very common critique of modern art is that it is self-fulfilling, and that any deep meaning that the art is said to have can easily have been decided after the fact. A common example is the red dot on a white canvas.

It is true: the arts don’t change the world in any macro sense. They don’t work to cure cancer or to make a direct mark in politics. Most artwork will go unnoticed by the general public if they disappear one day. Yes, art can’t change the world; but it often can change one person’s world.

Changing one person’s world means transforming how they think and how they live. It means providing a stimulus for change and doing one of the most difficult things in the world: changing someone’s mind.

Some that have changed my world:

books

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

The Physics of Time by Richard A Muller

currently reading: Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

currently reading: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

세상에 없던 생각 by 양유창

architecture

The Dancing Building, Prague, Czech Republic (Frank Gehry)

Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein (various architects)

Parliament Building, Budapest, Hungary

Colosseum, Rome, Italy

art

International Klein Blue 191 by Yves Klein

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

쫄다구 being a female member of a painfully traditional Korean household being the youngest in a painfully traditional Korean household

(excuse the length and the poor writing quality)

A few weeks ago, a Venezuelan woman on my church’s choir told me that she loves the Korean tradition. She said that she loves how much Koreans love their country and keep their customs alive. She loves that Korean ideals are passed down to the next generation and maintained by that generation. In an attempt to end the conversation as soon as possible so I could go home (sorry Anke), I blindly agreed and said goodbye. 

When I went home that night, I sat at the table for dinner and winced at the problematically “Korean” things being said by the older men in my family. They talked about how girls shouldn’t wear makeup before they turn 30, pestered me about not having a boyfriend, passed judgments on my physical appearance, and informed me of the type of guy I need to date (namely, someone who can hold his alcohol and can hold a conversation with my family in Korean). Then my dad told me to go catch the fly that got into the house because I was the 쫄다구--the gofer--of the family.

If Anke and I did not have that very short conversation earlier that day, none of this would have bothered me because it happens all the time. For the 22 years that I have been alive, I have constantly been told about how I should or should not get plastic surgery, lose weight, get a boyfriend, and get married to have children. While I don’t necessarily disagree with these things, I sometimes wonder if that’s because I’ve heard them for so long or if I actually believe them.

At least in my painfully traditional Korean household and in many of the Asian households that I know of, Asian feminism is an oxymoron. There is a way that girls are supposed to act and many things girls are not supposed to do. When I got a tattoo, my dad told me that I was not allowed to (not that I was asking for permission and definitely not that I listened). When I asked why, he told me that my body belonged to him because he is my dad and he is my birthgiver. According to him, the dad is the birthgiver (낳아준 사람) and the mom is the caregiver (키워준 사람)?? I stopped trying to understand my dad many many years ago, so I decided to do whatever the fuck I wanted. I was talking about this with my older brother (who has many many tattoos), and the way he justified my dad’s reaction was by saying that it is because I am the baby girl of the family. Again, I stopped trying to understand.

This has been my life as the 막내딸 (youngest daughter). There are always things that I am not “allowed” to do (that many times I do anyway and keep to myself), and things I have to do. I wasn’t allowed to go out with my friends at night until after senior year of high school. I had to set the table, do the dishes, take out the trash, etc. (not that these were horrible punishments), while my brother or dad were never quite expected to do the same. Maybe if I lived in Korea, these things would not seem so unfair or problematic, but being a Korean-American, I am exposed to a world that is so different from the world I live at home on a daily basis.

Having a hyphenated identity often feels like I do not have a full part in either of the two communities. However, more and more often now, I feel that it is also a completely different experience being a Korean-American female. The Korean female has so many stereotypes and societal/filial obligations that just don’t match up to those of the American female. Living in between these two identities means either giving in to the Korean family’s expectations and living with an itch that you just can’t scratch or stepping out of your comfort zone and actively going against the family’s views.

confidence | ego | self-esteem putting down the pride (a lot of konglish coming through)

Throughout the past two and a half years, I have been on and off dating apps.

My experience with dating has been more about finding myself than about finding someone special. It has been about finding not only what I want in that someone special, but realizing what values and principles are most important to me. The past two and a half years were the years that transformed me the most, as an architecture major who doubted her worth as an architect with every deliverable, a college student 3000 miles from home, and a casual dater.

This cocktail of identities made me countlessly ponder the topic of pride and the different types of pride. Because internal dialogue is primarily in Konglish (a mishmash of Korean and English), I have brooded over this topic in both languages, and I realized how different the connotations were to me. In English, I contemplated about confidence, ego, and self-esteem. In Korean, I mulled over 자신감, 자존심, and 자존감. Respectively, the words essentially mean the same things. But at the same time, they encompass so much more than just confidence, ego, and self-esteem. For me, they always captured more emotion and carried more weight.

According to Google Translate, 자신감 is literally translated to confidence. It is self-assuredness and identity. It is trust in oneself and one’s ability. It is what I always find myself to lack. Out of the three types of pride, I find 자신감 to be the most difficult to keep in check.

자존심 is translated to pride and ego. It is the pride that one generally wants to keep up in front of others, to save face or to make sure that one does not “lose” to others. 자존심은 남에게 굽히지 않고 자신의 가치나 품위를 지키려는 마음이다. It is oftentimes what puts walls between two people and also what causes conflicts. To me, it has always been something that I know is important but in doses. I have experienced instances in which this type of pride and the unwillingness to put it down on both my part and my counterpart’s part has led to broken friendships and disappointment.

Finally, 자존감 is best translated to self-esteem. I always thought of it as the best shield against hurt from other people. What I think about myself is more powerful than what anyone else thinks of me, oftentimes because what I have thought about myself has been lesser than what others thought of me. This is also something I’m working on.

Going back to dating -- through dating, I learned a lot not only about pride, but also putting down pride for myself and others. I find that throwing away ones 자존심 takes a lot of 자신감, because putting ones ego away is often associated with making oneself vulnerable, and being willing to be vulnerable takes self-assuredness. It is a risk that not many are willing to take, especially for the sake of another person. 

I find that putting down that 자존심 is usually how a strong relationship is established, whether it is a romantic relationship or a friendship. But it is hard to have a strong relationship with someone if you do not love yourself first. Which is where 자존감, self-esteem, comes in. If you love yourself enough, then you will be able to love who you are after you put down your pride.

What not putting down one’s pride looks like (most recently for me) is demanding the vulnerability of one’s counterpart without reciprocating the act. It looks like mansplaining and arguing that one is right, even when proven wrong. It looks like assuming what my life as an aspiring architect is like based upon hearsay and pop culture (thanks a lot, Ted Mosby). It looks like verbal aggression, and I go through every day asking myself if I, God forbid, inflict this aggression on anyone around me.

Pride is like wealth, in that if you are rich in all three types of pride (with a good balance of all of them), it isn’t so hard to put it down. If you don’t have any pride, then there is no pride to put down. But if you don’t quite have that abundance, it is more difficult to put it down. We weigh our options and the potential damages that we may face so much more. In doing so, we put high walls around us to cut our costs.

평범함의 아름다움 the beauty of the ordinary

My baptismal name is Solina.

Saint Solina of Gascony, also known as Saint Soline of Chartres, is considered a minor and unremarkable saint: one who is so unknown that she is not on Wikipedia or Catholic Online. The only way that people found out about her is by the one stained glass window dedicated to her in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres. She is honored by a small village near Gascony named Sainte-Soline, which houses a total of 359 residents (as of 2015). 

Solina became a saint when she ran away from her home and family in Gascony to pursue her faith and to avoid a forced marriage with a pagan man. When she reached Chartres, she was beheaded and became a martyr.

No one knows who Saint Solina is. When I googled “saint solina of gascony,” I received a total of eight entries, and only four entries were actually about her. I only discovered her because her memorial coincides with my birthday, and in the church where I was baptized, that is how many of us chose our patron saints. I was probably eight years old when I was baptized, and I chose Solina for two reasons: no one else chose her and I thought she might feel sad for being left out (eight-year-old Jaehee was a people-pleaser), and I thought her name was really pretty.

When it was time for me to receive confirmation, I had the opportunity to change my patron saint, and so I decided to actually figure out who had been my intercessor for years. All I could find about her was what I wrote above, and I loved it. Yes--Maria, Helena, Agnes, and Gabriella are all beautiful names and virtuous and exemplary saints. But the simplicity of Solina’s story was so powerful. Solina walked the 300 kilometers from Gascony to Chartres because all she wanted to do was pursue her faith freely and without her family’s interference. To leave everything that you know and hold dearly for one purpose involves an immense degree of resolve and faith. In the year 290, when women probably had fewer rights than the modern day doggo, Solina left her family because they told her that what she was believing was wrong and because she did not want to marry the heathen who they wanted her to marry. She is the original feminist of 290 AD.

Her story is simple and somewhat ordinary, but it is so beautiful. Yes, Mary had Jesus through immaculate conception, and Helena was a Roman empress who discovered Jesus’ cross. But Solina went against the very people who were supposed to be on her side to follow a God who she had never seen before with her own eyes.

Solina’s story is the first place I found my fascination in the “poetry of the unremarkable.” It is where I first found that the ordinary things often carried more meaning for me because it was through the silence that I heard the music. It is like writing in capital letters: when everything is written in capital letters, it loses its impact. But when everything else is written in lowercase letters, the one word that is written in all caps suddenly looks very important.

In high school, one of my favorite books was “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett. It is a two act play in which Vladimir and Estragon, or Didi and Gogo, wait for someone named Godot, who never ends up coming. The two men have a variety of discussions and meet three other characters. Very few of my classmates shared my love for this book. It was repetitive and seemingly meaningless and nothing happened. The book literally starts with Didi and Gogo meeting at a tree to meet Godot and ends with the two of them leaving because (spoiler alert!) Godot never comes. But this book speaks volumes in its simplicity. Because it is so stripped down, it is interpreted in a social, political, and religious way. It has freudian, existential, ethical, Christian, and autobiographical messages that maybe I will write another post about at a later date.

because one of the best ways to start anything is to examine why you’re starting it

For years, I have thought about writing a blog about the everyday thoughts I would have--not for the purpose of showing anyone, but for the purpose of legitimizing them and for the purpose of cataloging them for future use. I can’t say that I have the best ideas and thoughts, but sometimes I wish I record the things that pop into my head in the shower or while doing makeup or driving.

The things I write can be extremely simple or extremely gloomy at times, but I will write anyway because I need to get out of my head.