Cultural Malady

A Malady of Revelation

Anxious, that wasn't a specific enough emotion to describe how I was feeling. It couldn't be. It seemed like too simple of an emotion, one that wasn't complex enough to cover the span of what I was feeling. We had made it to Busan, South Korea by cab after flying there. The same city in which I grew up. It was the city in which I shared fond memories with my mother and my father. It was the place where I learned, the place where I was submerged in a rich culture that impacted my existence and the dynamic of my family.

My father and I were close growing up. He worked constantly just as my mother had, but when he was home he was buried amongst the stacks of paperwork on his desk. We were well off given my father was one of the major bosses at a records company, and my mother also worked there part-time, dedicating more of her time to me. I knew my father loved me, he always had, but affection and showing such a display wasn't common for us, it wasn't common where I was from. It was a way of life, and not being vivaciously active with exposing emotions was a sign of respect.

My mother had cherished me because I was her only child, so she had perfected me in the way she saw fit. I came from a respectful culture, one where it was important to address your elders by bowing and not speaking out of line. I didn't mind such a culture because I had found it to be beautiful, and so did Freya, my girlfriend, but that's exactly where it became complicated.

I had made my way to New York on account of an internship I had earned while studying at Seoul National University. I was merely eighteen (Western age) wise, and it was there at Larson's Publishing Firm where my world had completely shifted, where everything I knew had been completely unraveled. My whole world was jarred when I met her, Freya Anderson. It was normal for anyone to identify outward beauty, it was subjective, but I found internal and external beauty in her. Her skin had a milk based tone to it while mine had a natural honey based hew. She had brown hair, more so on the lighter side, while mine was purely black. She had blue eyes, large and doe like while mine were more almond shaped and monolids. Mine were a deep shade of brown. Her features were particularly defined, especially her lips and curve of her cheeks, but it was my nose and my cheekbones that were the most defined above all else. I assumed her looks would merely become a distant memory in my mind, but they stayed there, and that was when I knew something was different, and the more time we spent together meant the more time there was for me to realize that I wasn't like others, that I wasn't like my parents. I had ended up finding a friend in the workplace because interns weren't well regarded there. We were merely there for the others to jab at and use for miniscule tasks, and Freya had found me one day, down in the break room, wiping tears away from the swell of my swollen cheeks.

She hadn't been one who had ever been harsh to me. She never made remarks about my heritage nor my native language. She was one of the staff who respected me above all else, and she saw I had a passion for editing, writing, and publishing. After participating in the internship, my boss had been impressed and had offered me a position full time upon the arrival of my graduation. By that time my parents had warranted that I had to get married, after all, it was currently two years after the fact of graduation that had worried them. I should have been in South Korea and married off by the traditional standard.

Freya didn't have family. Her parent's had passed way when she was young, and she never didn't have siblings, so she didn't have to have that sort of initial conflict with the acceptance of her sexuality like I would have. Over the course of staying in America, my mother was constantly making smart remarks regarding my lack of marital status even though my family already had a retrospective idea of who I would marry. I was now 25. I was far too 'old' to be without a husband at this point or so that's what my parents said. It was important I would get married soon, but I held off, reassuring my mom that the positon at the publishing firm was going well, and that I would be marrying soon. She accepted this, but it was also a time buffer that gave me a reprieve for the inevitable.