Sleepless in Seoul ✓

7.

We all have scars.

Some are able to hide them from others yet very few brave ones wear them proudly like battle armours.

I'm one of those former ones who prefer to cover up those scars to pretend that all is indeed well.

Except that it isn't; hasn't been since eight years ago.

I am an escapist. I like the cowardly option of running away from everything.

After all, I ran away eight years ago. Ran away from the city which once used to be my home, because I couldn't deal with living in the same house I grew up in- which held countless of memories of my mom. 

The void she left me with couldn't be filled, not even to this date.

But more than that, I couldn't deal with breathing the same air as my pathetic father. He was never once a good father or a husband but even after her dying so painfully, with cancer eating away her remaining healthy body cells, he was out attending galas.

He didn't even have time to spare during her funeral, it was all organised by his assistant.

To this very date, nightmares of my mom breathing her last in a white hospital room with her limp and cold hand in mine plagues me. It makes the task of falling asleep appear not only tedious, but also terrifying.

 Growing up, my mom was not simply my mother but also a trusty confidant, a friend, a soulmate.

She always said that she considered her loved ones as stars. It was something which always made me grin, for her fascination with the celestial bodies which she passed down to me was the reason why I was named as Byeol.

I didn't always hate the name. Sure, I didn't like that it was too common but I cherished it.

But then the name Im Byeol felt like an invisible shackle around my body.

 When my mom left this world, I felt suffocated when I saw the telescope in my old room, the one which we used to stargaze together. I felt as if someone had cut off the oxygen supply in my lungs whenever I saw a photograph of us as a family.

Because now I had no family. 

They say that people become stars after their deaths, that their souls live on and power the stars. I hate this saying so much.

Because what if those stars in the sky burn out? 

Escaping to Paris was so tempting, especially when I heard I got into the Art School I wanted to go to. I didn't even need to ask my father, he was elated that his only daughter got into a prestigious college, something which he could now gloat about.

All his life, he treated his wife and me as some sort of trophies he could flaunt.

 He didn't realise at that time that it would mean me cutting off ties with him. 

Still, I felt as if I hadn't truly left my past behind, even after living in Paris for one year.

It was then that I decided to change my name if I wanted closure. Shedding off the Im surname would mean that I had no connection to Im Daejoon, and Lee was my mom's maiden surname. 

Thus, Lyra Lee was born.

Yet now when I have been assaulted with the onslaught of past memories, I feel the broken bits of Im Byeol surface for the first time in eight years.