reflection

21st century girls

I wonder how many stages people encounter before truly forgiving someone so important to them. Does forgiveness has extremely hard stages depending on how painful the deed was? Why does it feel like no matter how angry you are to the person you love, or used to love, you can't remove that special spot you gave them? No matter how much you despise the person you treasured so much, you can't seem to give the spot they have in your heart to people who deserve it better than them. You keep on making many people enter in that heart, but you can't let them take the empty spot someone used to own. And this thing called emptiness eats you up. You'll feel extremely empty and messed up because you're not able to fill the spot they left. This is the problem of people like me who have such big hearts. I let other people enter and have their own spot. But when others leave, I really leave it empty for good. No matter how many people I love in the future, missing the people I treasured in the past would still be inevitable. And that feeling will make me extremely affected, and bam, domino effect! Those shitty feelings will affect the relationship I have to the people I treasure in the present.

It keeps on happening, and happening, and happening. I can't avoid it.

I know something was wrong in me ever since I was a child. I know I saw something a child should not see. I experienced something a child should not experience.

I grew up with a good house, good brother, but not-so-good parents. But as a child, I thought it's natural. I didn't see how other family dealt with one another so I thought the family I have was natural. That's what I thought.

At that very night I turned five, I heard my mom making weird sounds I never heard before. I wasn't sure of the time, all I know was that it's already dark, and I should be sleeping. But I can't sleep; mom won't stop making sounds I can't decipher. Maybe she's sick, maybe she's dying. I don't know. I was so worried and I can't stop thinking about her. Does father beat her so bad again to make sounds like that? Was she crying?

I slowly make my way to the door where she was, holding the small brittle bottle of ointment I always use whenever her body hurts. I'll massage mom, ask a hug for her, and yay! I can finally sleep.

However, I was all wrong.

As soon as I opened the door, my eyes witnessed something I will always regret seeing.

At the age of five, I got my whole life scarred.

It was mom, with a man above her.

It was mom, without any clothes, and a man above her, without any clothes.

I have no idea what they're doing, but I know it's bad. When I see something like that in TV, they keep on telling me it's bad without answering my question on what that thing is.

My head went dizzy and my eyes started to water. I put my hands to my mouth to keep the weird sounds of crying to myself. My mom and the man saw me on the corner of the half-opened door, and they stopped. I saw both of them panic, and mom reached her hand to the door to close it shut. I was too shocked to speak. I rushed to the bedroom where I and my brother sleep. I shook him up while crying hysterically.

I don't know why, but I never saw mom do something wrong. It was always dad who does something wrong-and that thought broke me. I thought it is just dad whom I must be angry at, and I can continue living with my parents because mom is not bad. But that thing made me realize, they are both bad. And the thing they always tell me, "You should not stick yourself with bad people, whoever they are." is now going back to them. The two persons a child like me trusts the most were the two same persons who broke it first.

"Hanseul, wake up. Hanseul!" My brother panicked as soon as he saw me sobbing so hard. I told him mom was doing bad things. I told him that our mom and an unknown man were both naked in mom and dad's room. My brother seems to get the context quickly because he's already fifteen, and he quickly jumped out of bed to run at the room where mom and the unknown man was.