serendipity

a bitter reflection

I was always alone. Undeniably and utterly alone. I didn't understand how people could trust others and let them in so easily. It was always kind of an enigma to me. Maybe I'd seen too much as a 16 year old, maybe I'd lived through things fellow teenagers could never even imagined. Maybe I was too mature for the others in my grade, maybe I was too real. Then again, maybe I won't ever know.

I was a love child, which is actually quite humorous because I wasn't a particularly "loved" child growing up. My biological "parents" were not the most compatible, as they were both addicts to one substance or the other. My mother didn't bother going to the hospital to have me, but rather enlisted the help of a fellow alcoholic which shall remain unnamed for copious reasons. I'm here now, so I guess she did quite a splendid job for being way past the point of "wasted." My parents never failed to make it clear that I was a simple and meaningless mistake, which they never had the courage to correct. They never did learn from their mistakes and five years later, committed another blunder and had their second and (thankfully) last child. My little brother, also known as Mistake number two.

For my enjoyable thirteen years of life, I spent glorious days at my grandmother's house where I would help out at her farm, went to school, and took care of my younger brother. For my miserable thirteen years of life, I would spend the nights at my "parents" house and would be reminded of the constant horrors of my life. My grandmother lived in Busan, so it was a good hour of commute from my school and home in Daegu. She was lonely, disappointed, and poor but never once showed her anguish and treated my brother and I as her own children.

School was school. I loved the education portion because through reading and maths and sciences, I would forget about my life and feel free. The social part of it? Not so much. Interestingly enough, people praised me for my starving figure and intelligence, but disregarded me once they realized I was dull and showed little to no emotion. I was labeled as the "왕따"(outcast)," which truthfully never once bothered me. I was thirteen and never once had a friend in school. I didn't believe in friendship, much less love. I still don't.

My life was quite the memorable one - for all the wrong reasons, that is. Even my parents death was disturbingly memorable. Contrary to the beautiful weather, the Mistakes residence was ever so dull, enough to suck the life out of anyone who dares to step foot in it. My parents never agreed on anything and were quite noticeably toxic towards one another. However as sinister as it may seem, death brought them together. Without a word, my parents fled to Seoul and committed suicide by jumping into the beautiful Han River. I didn't bother waiting. This was the one chance my brother and I had for freedom. We packed the few things we had and left as soon as the clock hit 10PM. Gripping my brother's hand tightly, we boarded the bus to Busan and departed from Daegu without looking back once. I was thirteen. My brother was eight. My parents were dead. 

As we ventured into the unknown, I reminisced upon a few of the good memories that Daegu stored for me. The pond my brother and I walked to when my parents argued, the rusty swings I would swing on after my parents hit me, and the bench where I cried every night for my brother, for my grandmother, never once wanting to show my weak self to anyone. As the bus halted to a stop in the middle of Suseong-gu, I came to the bitter realization that all my good memories were stained with my parents influence. A tear fell down my cheek as I recalled the one person I would miss from Daegu, the boy from the bench. After our bench scandal, I saw the boy a total of three times. He was the perfect combination of cold and kind, he was oddly spontaneous when it came to emotions however. The bus started once again and reminded me that the boy that provided me with a few seconds of relief, would simply become a memory that would fade with time. I held my brother close to me as he dozed off as I thought to myself that he and I were all we had left. To others, it may seem like my brother was a burden to me, but to me, he was the reason I stayed alive, the reason I would smile on my darkest days, he was my blessing. 

The bus chugged along and my eyelids suddenly became heavy, I let my head rest against the window and slowly drifted off into a soft and serene sleep.