Today I feel absolutely awful. My god mother has died and I cried all over my new co-teacher and all of a sudden I felt very alone. Then I remembered you guys and how I have neglected you. I have a few scattered pieces of writing that I never sent out and I will send it out soon. Mostly I'm just reaching out for familiar faces and names I can pronounce well. Let me tell you about the strange disconnected people I have found here in Korea and my strange feelings towards them.
So I have met a lot of new people in Korea and some of them (most of them) are surprised by my long distance romantic relationship, my closeness to my friends in SA and my plans for South Africa. They are a lot less invested in the idea of home. Most of these people are from the US, I don't know if that is significant. They don't really speak to their parents much, maybe twice a year. Their parents, in fact, don't know exactly where they are. Like where in Korea they have been placed, the province or county. They were surprised that my mom came to visit me, they don't really get visitors. They are either fed up with some negative aspect of their home country or they are just not particularly invested in it's people, so they don't have an idea of when or if they'd ever go back. None of them say 'home' and mean a specific house or person in their country of origin. Some of them feel they have nothing to go back to.
At first I was shocked, really surprised by this idea of leaving and not planning on returning. I felt like they were neglecting something back home for surely one cannot grow up with people and not want to grow onward with them. You cant but help make strong bonds and invest in your relationship when you stay in the same place for the first half of your life, right? Wrong! Wrong on many counts. The assumption that they stayed in one place, like my family did, proved incorrect more times than once. Their parents moved around, or they moved from one parents house to the other, or they stayed with other family members and what was common was that they spent the years before I arriving in Korea alone. Many of them lived in dorms or apartments since they came straight out of university. Many of them spent their university years in a drunken haze and didn't really have space in their stomachs for friendships that stick. A large amount of them are just not family/friend/community orientated and are running about looking after number 1 (sometimes number two if they have a personal God (sometimes number three if they have a kid)).
Anyway, I soon came to envy them. I think the idea was so new, and fresh and strange that after my initial concerns for their futures I realised just how open their futures were... they could do anything! Absolutely anything! They didn't really have to think of anyone when they made their decisions, zero restrictions, zero collateral if they screwed up. No-one counting on them to come back nothing tugging at their heart strings when they think of doing a quick six month internship in Australia when they finish their second contract...the world truly is an oyster that belongs to them. I think of how entangled in peoples lives I got when I was back home. Why? I loved sleeping out and soon I had adopted and second nuclear family and a third nuclear family and I have more faux brothers and sister than anyone else I know. Sinclair's entire family likes me more than they like him and I cannot think of a friend at whose home I would be denied a bed. I made one of my fake families a set of coasters with our names on it. Why? Why do we wrap ourselves up in people so tight and snug? Why do we not belong to the world, jumping from one place to another meeting who we need to meet when we need them and them moving on to meet new things? Why are we not forever expanding and spreading out to new people and places?
Rhetorical questions are the best way to ignore the truth. There are reasons why and they are different for everyone. With the death of my god mother and how suddenly very alone I felt yesterday I was glad to not be truly alone. There are people who's lives I decided I would be part of who I wouldn't give up for the world and who right now, on hearing this awful news will worry about me and hope I'm well and light a candle for my soul and I know you're all there and I like it this way. I don't care that Australia will have to wait. I don't care that you're all gonna suffer if I lose all my money on a gambling addiction and become a financial burden and sleep on a different persons couch every night cause you know what, you guys signed up for that and I would keep a couch open for you! I don't take it well when people die, and I made a very clear 'no-one is allowed to die while I'm away' rule which Aunty Rinnie has clearly violated, but at least she chose a decent time. Spring is here and my heart is strong and the knowledge that I am loved will soon soothe the painful lump in my throat.
I'm sorry that my first email in months is this crap news, but you did sign up for it.
Love you all the same (not really)
Bashti Teacher
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