"I knocked on Heaven's door for two minutes," the boy said. "How is that not cool to you?"
*****
Choi Sangwoo was just trying to make ends meet. Beaten and abus...
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September 24, 2018:
It had been a little more than a week since the 'second' audition. Sangwoo had checked his email every day multiple times in the days following, but had received no response as of yet. With every passing day, his anxiety grew and grew, culminating in an argument he had with his father Friday night, who had once again gone on a bender earlier on in the day.
The argument had led to dad and son screaming at each other. Things had been thrown around by both parties this time, with Sangwoo escaping his father's clutches by the skin of his teeth at the end of the debacle.
He'd gone to Mrs. Lee and told her everything. However, he was astonished by her dismissive reaction to the news. She'd waved the incident off as just another tiff between the two of them.
"Grandma, with all due respect, I think you're in the wrong here, because you're characterizing abuse as a 'byproduct' of an argument. Don't you think there's anything morally wrong with a parent if they hit you, or launch into unprovoked tirades against you? Isn't that fundamentally wrong? The same person who is supposed to protect you, care for you, love you, regard you with some form of respect--that same person incessantly vilifies you for absolutely no reason whatsoever?" he'd tried to argue.
"It's a part of the culture, kid. Asians do this. It's nothing out of the ordinary. Don't worry about it too much. Your father might die pretty early anyway, because my goodness, that man drinks like a horse," she'd quipped at the end.
He'd laughed at that, but realized that the other parts of her argument were seriously flawed. "Categorizing it as 'part of Asian culture' just enables the abusive behavior, doesn't it? How do I stop this? I don't want any part of it. The bond between a parent and their offspring is considered inviolable, yet my father treats it as if it holds no value."
She'd nodded in understanding. "Tell you what. You want to get out of this situation, right? Work hard enough to build yourself in such a way that no one can cause a dent in your armor. Work hard, and depend only on yourself, because at the end of your life, you only have you. People come and go all the time, Sangwoo. You are the only presence who is constantly by your side, 24 hours a day; 365 days a year."
"I understand, but why reproduce when you can't take care of what you created?" he'd asked.
"People stray from the right path all the time, my dear. It's human nature to fall. No person has had an endless run of successes. We are humans, not robots. We are bound to make mistakes. We are bound to fail at least once in our lifetime, be it a small failure or a big one. However, what makes you is how you respond to those failures. Do you evaluate why you failed and what you can do to rectify that failure, and ultimately get up and walk again? Or do you just lay on the ground, waiting for someone, something, to come pick you up? You need to help yourself before others help you. Other people need to see that you're willing to accept help. And for that, you need to first accept help from you. You need to accept that you want help, however hard that may be, because that is the first step to getting back up. You need to place your hands on the path and get in a position where others can extend a helping hand to you.
