Dedicated to a special reader: CupcakeeBhadd! I wish I could dedicate my chapters to all my loyal readers but for now I'll take it one at a time like I hope you all do! Don't think I don't notice you because I really, really do.
MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY FAMILY WAS ON THE COMPLICATED SIDE.
For the first few months after I moved to New York it felt like we were in a stand-off.
I had gone almost a full year without talking to anyone from my family saved for the occasional odd-text from my sister. I didn't blame Kathy for not reaching out to me around that time, my mother was more than just a little upset with my choice to move away for school.
It wasn't easy for me to move to a new state knowing no one or nothing about New York City. There was no support from my family. I was basically on my own, constantly half-tempted to call it quits to head back home, but I was also half too prideful to admit I had possibly made a mistake.
There were countless nights I spent quietly crying in the bathroom stall, too sad to sleep but unable to muffle my tears from my sleeping roommates. Legally, I was an adult, but for the past 18 years, I had been under my mother's roof. Suddenly, I had been thrusted into a new life completely independent for the first time and incredibly homesick.
On the particularly hard nights, I would hover my finger over the "Call Mom" button. I knew what she would say. I could already hear her voice, boastful and full-of-it because she was right: I couldn't make it on my own. I also knew afterward she would console me, instruct me on my next steps on booking the next flight home, and I would be back in my bed in my town with my family again. I wasn't sure if that was exactly what I wanted either, but the thought of it beat the loneliness sometimes.
"Julie, haven't you had enough?" Kathy whispered over our first phone call in what seemed like a century. "Mama is worried about you. She won't say it, but she hasn't been eating and she barely sleeps since you've left. Just come home already."
I was sitting on the steps of the New York Public Library thinking about how my mother would have a heart attack if she saw me sitting on those dirty steps, sipping my coffee from a vendor cart that sold stale pastries and feeding the occasional sooty pigeon. The sky was a cloudy kind of gray with hints of sunlight peeking through. The streets, littered with pedestrians rushing by and parents tugging along rambunctious toddlers, were unlike the quaint and quiet ones I spent strolling around in Northwick.
"I can't come back," I told her.
"Is this about your pride? Mama's not going to break and call you first if that's what you're thinking." Kathy stated as if that wasn't common sense to anyone who knew our bull-headed mother. She was never one to first make amends. "Julie, don't be like this. You should be home."
I bit into my cream cheese bagel. "This is my new home."
I could hear Kathy's frustration through the phone. "You've lived there, what? Eight months? What's that to eighteen years?"
"I like it here." That was true.
"You told me it's dirty, crowded, and over-priced." That was also true.
"It feels right though–being here–it makes sense to me. It's not just about getting away from mom's never-ending checklist for my life. It feels like a part of dad is here with me." I had mourned for so long. I was only twelve when he passed away. Kathy had barely turned ten. I don't think our mother ever stopped mourning him. "I can't believe he was a professor at NYU. I actually can't even imagine him doing anything else but living in Alabama."
Kathy went quiet for a moment.
"Are you still there?" I asked.
"I'm still here." I wondered if she was misty-eyed too.
"I think dad would have wanted me here," I said truthfully.
Kathy huffed. "Dad would have wanted you to reconcile with mama."
She wasn't wrong.
"We got into such a nasty fight before I left. You saw." I could almost remember the way our mother looked at me with such anger and ferocity. I hated how upset I had made her. No daughter wants to disappoint their parent. "She ripped up my acceptance letter. If I hadn't found it in the trash, who knows if I would have ever found out?"
"Mama is just doing what she thinks is best," Kathy defended. "It's out of her love for you."
I was used to Kathy taking her side at this point. "I know, but it just made me realize how badly I needed to leave. I'll admit I didn't leave things the right way..."
I had been livid. Ugly words had been said on both sides. "If she loved me like you say she does, then she doesn't have to basically disown me for moving."
"Do you, of all people, want to actually talk about love?" Kathy shouted so loudly I had to move my ear from the phone. "Do you know what? You're just selfish, Julie. Do you know how hard it is to raise two girls alone? Mama did it for us. She could have shacked up with Mr. Fairbanks, and his gross beer belly and stupid teenage son, who got arrested for streaking nude. She didn't because even if it made her life easier, ours would have been worse. She chose the harder life for us. That's love."
It was my turn to be mad. "I appreciate that! Did I ever say mom didn't do a lot for us?"
Kathy wasn't the one who lived under our mother's constant disappointment. She scorned me for not making cotillion because of my two left feet. When I felt more inclined to reading and writing than joining the local girls' choir, she had locked away my books in her closet until I joined. She wasn't the one our mother called "unsophisticated" or "a waste of great potential" or "a mockery of our family name". What did Kathy know when I was always at the end of her wrath?
"Do you think I don't know what mom has done for us? I hate that what I want in my life doesn't make her happy, but she didn't give me the choice to stay." I remembered the first emotion I felt when I found the torn letter: it wasn't anger, it was sadness. "Is that love? When the only choice you give someone is to stay?"
Kathy and I had reached an impasse.
"Do you know what, Julie? You can stay in New York all your life and never see us again if you really feel that way. No one is forcing you to come home," Kathy spat before ending the call abruptly. I could tell she was crying before the call closed.
Hurt, I brushed back some tears.
"Hey." It was the iconic 'hey' I didn't know I would soon grow accustomed to for the next ten years or so.
A girl with pretty dark eyes and even darker hair offered me a wad of napkins. She looked familiar. I was sure I saw her around campus a few times. "Sorry, I didn't mean to overhear your conversation. My name's Yoona Kim. I think I'm in your Asian American Literature class at NYU. You're Julie, right?"
I accepted her napkins. "I think I've seen you a couple times. Thank you for the tissues, Yoona."
I expected her to leave after she handed me the napkins.
She didn't. "Family drama?" she asked as she took a seat next to me.
"You don't have to console me," I told her. I was embarrassed to be crying in front of a stranger. She had already seen a side of me that I wasn't quite open on sharing. "I'm okay."
She still didn't leave. "My parents..." she said instead of getting up and walking away. "They don't believe in my dreams. I was supposed to be a doctor or a lawyer. Maybe even a teacher which was pretty lowbrow for them to even consider, but the last thing they wanted was for me to be a Creative Writing major."
"I can relate," I laughed, a little shrilly from crying.
She smiled. "When I told them, they were shocked. I think my halmeoni...my grandmother...almost had her second heart attack. I really hated myself for so long for not listening to them. I almost wanted to take it back as a joke instead of seeing how disappointed they looked."
"Why didn't you?" I croaked.
I had almost soaked through all the tissues.
Yoona dug into her purse and fished out a few more which I gratefully accepted.
I continued to listen to her story. "It's what I love, you know? Writing. Reading. When I read other people's stories it makes me happy. I feel like I'm a part of their world, their feelings, and their lives. It means something more to me than studying chemistry or law or anything else."
"So, it was the right choice?" I asked.
"I feel like you want me to say it was: so that you think you're making the right choice too. The truth is, I don't know if this is the right choice. My parents think I'm too Americanized: following your own heart and pursuing your own happiness is the greatest value here." Yoona looked out into the bustling traffic thoughtfully.
"In Korean culture, we have to think about others. We have to think about what they will think of you, what your parents will think of you, and what society will think of you. Their happiness is your happiness." Yoona looked at me now.
"There's pros and cons to both. Neither comes without sacrifice. Do I choose to live in a way that pleases others? Then, I give up what I want. Do I instead chose to do what I believe will make me happy?" She paused. "Will it really make me happy if it causes everyone else unhappiness too?"
You could tell this was something she had thought about for a while.
"You have to take the risk," I sniffled. "I think if you make a choice, regardless of which one, you shouldn't hover between the two. You should stick to it. I..."
Was I really going to open myself up to a stranger?
I looked at Yoona who had opened herself to me, a stranger. "I want to stay here. I don't want to leave without knowing that I tried my best...not just survive here but to really thrive. Even if I'm unhappy now. It's not about where I'm happiest because I'll be honest if it was, I'd be back home."
"I don't think it's wrong for me to want this," I said confidently. For once, that was something I was sure of when it came to my life. "This is where I want to be. I will not apologize for that."
I thought of my mother. "I will..." I gazed into my contacts list. "I will, however, apologize to my mom for leaving things the wrong way. between us"
She wasn't completely in the wrong, and I wasn't completely in the right either. Yoona had helped me see that. The world wasn't a black-and-white place for me to decide that my happiness was above all else. There would be consequences for my actions. My family's distance and discontent were a few of them.
Yoona stood up. "Then make your amends. You're here, Julie. You are in New York City. Own it for all it's worth. If you change your mind, no one will fault you for that, but if you change your own mind because you're too scared to experience it, then you'll fault yourself forever."
I suddenly knew something else. I wanted to surround myself with people like Yoona who saw the world as not all for the taking selfishly. The world had opportunities, and I was supposed to take them or refuse them fully knowing my own abilities. I could even challenge that notion of my own extent if I wanted to. I wanted a friend like her. I wanted a whole community of people who could challenge me like she did.
I stood up alongside her. "I don't want to live my life between two worlds anymore."
Yoona still didn't walk away. "Agreed. You'll never be happy having a little bit of both anyway."
I nodded. "If I regret it, that's just part of the experience."
That day I did two life-changing things: I made a new friend named Yoona Kim and I called my mother to begin our reconciliation.
When I think back to that cloud-casted day, I wondered: where had that girl gone?
Yoona had given me the spark to march straight into my newfound life with greater appreciation. I was a nauseating mixture of excitement and trepidation rolled into one person. I was starting to be brave.
"What's your name?" I asked bed-head with brown eyes one day.
Creative Writing 101 was a sizable class for a 7 AM lecture. Quizzes were usually given at the start of each lecture, so missing one was a sure-fire way to fail. At first, I was a little dismayed at having the person sitting next to me come in late. We were supposed to choose our partners for a paired project. Other people had already started grouping up, and I decided what Yoona had told me was right.
I had to take my chance and make something great of it.
I wasn't going to bury my head in a book to avoid the world anymore.
"Evan Morgan." I liked the way his smile dimpled. "Sorry about this morning. I hope you don't think I'm a slacker for coming in late. I usually save my crazy, late-night ragers for Tuesday evenings, not Wednesday's."
I must have given him a weird look because he laughed it off immediately. "I'm kidding! I just didn't stay in my dorm last night because I went home for a family emergency. The train traffic from Brooklyn to Manhattan is always killer even if I leave an hour early."
"Oh jeez," I wheezed. "I'm sorry. I must seem stuck-up. I don't know how I seem actually. I'm not so great at this whole interacting thing yet."
Evan smiled, completely unfazed. "Are you not from here? You have a slight accent."
I blushed. "Really? I never thought I had an accent."
"Don't be embarrassed! I like it," he said as if he read my mind. "Everyone has their own accent if you think about it. I had a lisp until I was 11. I really think everyone else had a lisp, and it's all a grand conspiracy like how the earth is round when it's obviously flat."
I had long forgotten about being embarrassed. Evan talked like we had been long-time friends simply just conversing about our random thoughts. "Sorry, I don't think I can be partners with someone who thinks you can fall off the earth when you walk far enough. I bet you think we actually landed on the moon in 1969 too. Classic government brainwashing."
Evan's smile got even wider. "No, that would be too going too far."
"Luckily, there's a 150-foot ice wall to stop me," I said, referencing the theory that flat-earth theorists claimed was the real reason people didn't suddenly fall into space.
"I like you," he said so confidently I was a little taken aback. He had meant it in a platonic way, but it was so genuine I found myself biting my cheek to stop a smile from forming.
"I didn't catch your name," he said as he punched in his number into my phone.
"Julie Carson."
"Do you mind if I call you Jules? It just suits you," he said so unabashedly as if he had known me all my life to know that such a nickname fit me. Evan didn't say it in a whistle-at-me-on-the-street and call-me-sweetheart-gross kind of way. His eyes were wide, glimmering with a look of what I could have only described as someone who knew they were about to make a good friend.
I wondered if that was the look Yoona saw after she approached me that day.
"I've never been called that before, it's always been Julie, but there's a first time for everything, am I right?" I asked as I watched him enter my name into his phone as "Jules".
"Jules," he repeated to himself like it was the most natural thing in the world.
As I watched him, I felt another thing for certain: whoever this Evan Morgan was, I hoped he would always say my name like that.
I didn't know that this would just be the start of it all.
Author's Note: I'm pretty pleased with how this chapter came out. I wanted to show more of the long-standing struggle between Julie and her family and the amazing, supportive, and strong friendship Julie and Yoona have with one another. I'm not a fan of stories that revolve around a guy and a girl falling in love with women who only talk about romance/finding a man (ie Bechdel's test was born). There is great love in friendship and family that is just as complicated, messy, and still interesting. That's the great thing about a story you write, you can have both.
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