Millennial's Monologue: Secret Dramas in Our Hearts & Souls

Introduction

“Count your age by friends, not years” —John Lennon

By Lennon’s criterion, I’m five years old.  When I first met a girl who eventually became my best friend, it seemed like we came from polar opposite worlds.  April was a sweet girl who worked at a high-end brothel in Seoul; I was a stereotypical high achiever in an Ivy League school who got suspended for plagiarizing a final term paper in a government seminar.   My visa got terminated two days after I got suspended, so I had no choice but to leave America and return to my home country, Korea.  My parents would have helped had they known what happened but I did not tell them.  More than their help, what I desperately needed was freedom itself.  Freedom to be alone and seek clarity with myself.  Freedom to be sad and angry.  Freedom to leave behind the world as I knew it and wander around.  Above all, freedom to vent to an equally tormented but idealistic soul.  I found what I was looking for in April.     

“A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart” —Francis Bacon 

We were both in our early twenties when we became friends.  A perfect timing, because my heart was full and swollen, so was hers.   We shopped together, ate together, worked out together, but mostly we talked.   With the help of vodka and soju, we began spilling our secrets one by one.  Our hidden wounds, our dirty laundry, our youthful ambitions—everything.  When we got tired, we slept in a tiny capsule hotel for 9 bucks a day—a pretty good deal I thought. 

“Friends hold a mirror up to each other; through that mirror they can see each other in ways that would not otherwise be accessible to them” —Massimo Pigliucci

Millennial’s Monologue is a memoir of the years we spent trying to understand the nature of our youthful struggles, what exactly it is that we wanted in life and what was stopping us from achieving it.  Will our stories, and the raw honesty with which we shared them, repel or enchant our readers?  I don’t know.  But this is the kind of book I can’t write if I think about how you might respond.  Every time I sit in front of my computer to write, I try to remember what Stephen King said: “I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing.” 

------------------------------

Questions explored in Millennial's Monologue: 

This story is interwoven with standalone one-page essays entitled: “What is the meaning of friendship?”  “What makes someone sexy?”  “What's wrong with narcissism?”   “What is the purpose of life?” “Why do I feel jealous?”  “What I know about love”  “What's confusing about love” “Why (some) girls are crazy”  “Why (most) guys are dumb”  “What is philanthropy?”  “What we owe to homeless people.”  “What to do about loneliness.”  “What to do about injustice.”  “What to do about depression.”   “What if I really, badly want to be beautiful?”  “Is it wrong to be selfish?”  “Who is God?”  “Why do we pray?” and “Why love again?”

Copyright © 2015 Kristen Kwak.  Illustration © 2015 Immar Palomera. All Rights Reserved.