𝗶 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 │ 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗹𝗶𝘅

𝗔𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗮

𝗶 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀

Arriving in Korea and breathing in the polluted air felt like home. Australia ceased to be a home for me when I turned sixteen and had come out as gay to my very religious mother, who would do anything to get away from me.

Adding extra tutoring lessons so, I came home just as she was departing for work. On the weekends, I'd be off at dance which I've been doing since I was four. After dance, I worked at a cafe she made me get.

She even enrolled me in Football but, that didn't last long since, on my third practice, I ended up breaking my leg, then she took me out, not wanting to pay for anything I couldn't pay for myself with the money earned at the cafe.

After that incident, I made a joke about letting me join the cheer team. That was the first time my mother had slapped me and threw her first homophobic swear at me.

I have to admit it hurt a lot more than I thought it would. I mean, I knew it was bound to happen. I just never thought that it would hurt the way it did. I cried myself to sleep that night, I remember.

That was the first summer she'd sent me to Korea.

When my parents divorced, it was because my father had fallen in love with a man. I never hated him though - He did it the right way sitting my mother down and telling her his reason why he hadn't touched her. He never cheated, never once touched his lover until completely divorced from my mother.

During the court hearings, my older brother Minho had come out as Asexual and Homosexual. My father and his lover were especially happy about their son's outcoming and were very accepting, unlike my mother, who had looked at her son like a rat on Sydney's streets.

After Minho's outcoming, my mother decided to hand full custody of Minho over to my father and keep full of me to herself. My father cried and was heartbroken, and so was I.

Mother thought she'd have a better chance of saving me from becoming my father and brother.

I was nine when that happened and, Minho was eleven. A few months after the divorce had finalized, my father, his lover, and Minho moved to Korea. I wasn't allowed to write, call, or even talk about Minho and my father.

I was what my mother had wanted me to be, what my father or Minho couldn't be, straight.

She was happy with the make-believe life she staged for herself. Whenever family relatives or friends asked Minho and dad died in a car accident. And just like that, they were simply ghosts.

I grew sad I was cut off from my brother, my best friend, my support system. Minho was always there for me when I had been bullied, just because I was more on the feminine side for a guy.

He and my father were there when I was diagnosed with O.C.D (Obsessive-compulsive disorder) at just the age of six. He and my father helped me through those years, helped me every time I cried because I didn't understand my brian's need for the things it needed. I mean, why would I? I was six.

I had thought I was a freak. While my mother sat on the sidelines telling me, I'll get over it, my father and brother helped me. Waiting patiently, whenever they colored with me so I, could organize the crayons from darkest to lightest shades.

I was able to keep my mother from looking at me the way she looked at Minho and father. I had kept her happy, had kept her staged life for six years until I discovered boys.

Six years, six years until her world came crashing down on her when she realized she'd be alone. First, my father, the man she loved since high school, then her beloved first son, pride and joy Minho, and, now her baby boy, the one she had overly housed and protected so I could keep my innocence, Lee Felix.