Til Death Do Us Part

28

I drove for thirty minutes to get here, to this tranquil place after leaving that woman’s apartment, somewhere I don’t come all too often, yet today I felt like I needed to. I stare at the graves of my parents, laid side by side, and yet no tears come like I expected they would while driving here. I have a million conflicting emotions and thoughts that brought me here, and now I am; I’m too ashamed to stand before them. I'm aching for them after the day I’ve had, feeling lost and like everything is spiraling out of control, and I don’t have a grip on anything anymore.

I lay the bouquets I stopped to buy on the way here in front of them and bend to dust off the dark grey marble stones. Stopping to touch the faces in the pictures indented into the shiny surfaces hurts as much as it always did. I’ve never faced the grief and allowed myself to mourn them fully, but I don’t know how to start.

Contrary to how I behaved in front of Claire White, I know things are disintegrating, and my war with Jyeon is about to get worse. This is only the beginning. The Park family is falling apart, and whatever choice is made tomorrow will change everything from here on in. How I feel about mother, Jyeon… this mess, I can’t undo any of it. I talked big in front of that girl, but I had no real confidence in the outcome. She seems like the type to put him first, but Jyeon will never back down if I went to him with this.

“If you saw who I’ve become….. would you still be proud of me?” I lower my head and stare at my own feet, self-hatred flushing my face and warming my cheeks. My insides contract as pain in my heart winces.

“I’ve tried so hard. I did everything they asked of me. So why do I still feel so empty inside? Why does it feel like the uphill battle never ends, and it’s getting steeper? I don’t know how much longer I can climb.”

I carefully lean down and change from standing to kneeling in front of them, hands beginning to tremble with a combination of the cold air and my lack of appropriate clothing, and my inner distress.

“If you were still here, would it be like this? Would I be like this? Mom…. would I have turned out this way if you were the gentle force in my life when I needed someone so badly? I feel like I’ve let you both down. I look in the mirror, and I don’t remember me back then. I don’t remember how it was to be truly loved as a daughter, as a child.” A tear finally wells up in my eye and brazenly rolls down my cheek, opening the beginning of a floodgate.

“Jyeon just wants to be happy in his own way, and yet……. I can’t let him do that. I can’t let him leave me. Everything I hold onto is connected to him. Mother will make my life worthless; I’ll have to live with the shame of divorce and failure…….OLO, how can we both work there after this? Tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do.” The shivers turn to violent shakes as my body temperature cools quickly and a cold breeze moves in that seems to cut through the cloth of my suit. My nose starts running, and yet my focus is entirely on them and how much I wish they were here right now.

“I threatened a girl today with destroying her life. I threatened Jyeon with the same thing. And if they fight me on it, I’ll have no choice but to follow through. Because that’s who I am, who they made me be.” I slip from knees to my ass ungracefully as more tears start to fall in silent sadness, and the hopeless despair of earlier starts to show face, deep within. Curling my fingers into damp cold grass and ripping strands out with carelessness.

“I’m so tired, momma….. There’s only a little tiny bit of me left inside, and I’m scared that if I do this, then I’ll be snuffed out completely. I can’t not fight back. Everything hinges on it. Even if he hates me, if he never forgives me, I can live with that. I just can’t live without him being there. What am I supposed to do if Jyeon goes? It’s all you ever prepared me for. It’s all she prepared me for. What am I supposed to do if it all goes away?”

The sad realization that from an early age, despite my intelligence, my gifts, and bright rosy future, all I ever was to all of them was the womb to carry on the legacy of our families' heritage and the support for their chosen son to be king of our empire. I can logically see it all mapped out and hate it, but it doesn’t change how it feels inside. I’m an object, a tool, and my inability to let Jyeon go is connected entirely to the sense of worth they instilled in me from a young age. Without him, I have no purpose and can’t function alone.

“I’m scared. Of what choice he makes. Maybe because deep down, I know I’ve already lost, and he was never going to see me in the way I see him. How do I face the world after that? How do I hold my chin up and carry on? It’s like a giant black mark of not being good enough that I’ll have to bear while he swans off into the horizon with the possibility of a new life and real happiness and love. Don’t I deserve that too?”

I drop my chin against my chest and shake my head, more droplets of water rolling down my nose and then chin, before letting go and splashing in my lap to create a soggy dark patch.

“Is this even love for me? Or is this some conditioned response brought on by a lifetime of being told that everything was for Jyeon? That I was made for him, fated to be with him, and should value myself against his care for me. I don’t even know anymore. I don’t know what love is because you never gave me a chance to find out. You set me on a path when I had no choice, and I get why he pulled away. Like siblings, he was thirteen, and I was eleven, and you told us we would have to marry and have children one day. Even I was sickened by the thought of it at first. I was too young to understand.”

I bite on my lip to curb the sudden sob, the building of pressure inside of me that’s bringing on a migraine, and yet I’m sat here immobile with no desire to get up. I want to blame the world for my predicament. I want to resent everyone for how I got here, even if I’m as much to blame. Because not once did either Jyeon or I realize we had the power to say no.

“He rebelled. He tried to change your minds by destroying the relationship between us and freezing me out because he would never have dared to disobey any of you. It didn’t matter. You could see it, the way he closed off and refused to love me, yet you all still persevered and saw only the future of OLO…… I drank the cool-aid, I believed the lies, I played along and lived with hope in my heart that it would be the fantasy you all said it would be. None of you prepared for me for this….. I was just a little girl with dreams and aspirations, and not once did you warn me that Jyeon might never share them with me.”

I sniff back the pain and realize this is getting me nowhere. My parents left me when I was at my most vulnerable and I can’t blame them now for the path I took after they were gone. I could have walked another way; I could have chosen another life when they left. Instead, I followed what I knew they wanted for me with some deluded idea I was doing it for them. I made my bed, and now I have to learn to sleep in it.

“If I could make it all go away, find a way out without losing my sanity, I would take it. I’m so done with all of it. I wish I could just disappear, and no one would know my name or who I was, and I could start over again. Find out who I am because I know this can’t be all there is. If it is, why would I feel so empty and alone every day of my life? I’m miserable.”

It’s a nice fantasy. An unachievable wave of a magic wand where I can ‘poof’ be gone and not have to deal with the fallout of everything in my life. Not OLO, not Jyeon, not Mother, or the media, the board of directors, that b***h Claire. Yoonha wouldn’t lean on me anymore and make me mother him even though he should be standing on his own two feet by now. I wouldn’t have to carry everything alone while battling to be perfect and constantly aware of my responsibilities to everything and everyone around me.