What is family?

As a youth I was always an outsider among children of my age. Now that I look back I can see there were many reasons for this gulf between other children and me. In any case having no friends is devastating for a child especially for a little one, I know because I experienced it firsthand. I hated going to school and harbored a fear of meeting new people, especially other children around my age because I was afraid they might reject me like others had done. Fear is a strange thing, it warps one’s mind into always assuming the worst at all times. As a child I was a rather aggressive and egoistic, all because I did not want to be hurt by others. However that was where it ended, my symptoms did not worsen any more, meaning I did not get caught up in an inescapable vicious cycle which would constantly push my ego deeper into me and away from others. Again, I can list various causes but I will never be able to forget the big role my little sister played in pulling me out into the world again.

My younger sister, with whom I am two years apart, became my best friend during those hard years of my childhood. To this day I cannot explain the reason for this because she unlike me was quite a popular girl among her friends. I can distinctly remember her constantly receiving invitations from her friends to come by their houses to play. Yet, she never really did leave the house all that often, instead she stayed home and kept me company. Actually she didn’t only keep me company; she participated enthusiastically in all the simple games that I came up with. Maybe it was my desperation to keep my sister as my friend or maybe I really did have a gift for such recreational ideas, in any case I always had some new, entertaining game in my mind with which we enjoyed ourselves. At first it was just my sister and I who played but then my sister started inviting her friends to our house and they joined in as well. Such successes with my games really boosted my self-esteem and were the basis upon which I was able to confidently dive back into society again.

Time surely does fly, in merely a blink of an eye, figuratively speaking of course, I grew up from a sulking ‘loner’ boy to a bright young teenager who loved sports and had a great many friends. Anyone who had known me from the past was amazed. In fact I was amazed at how I had changed myself so their surprise really was not so unusual. In any case I truly enjoyed life then, it was a simple life only constituted of home, friends, sports and school yet I cannot remember a more carefree and happier time. I guess, in retrospect, I feel even more strongly so because of the stark contrast this period strikes with what comes next, my high school senior year.

It had always seemed so far away but one day I woke up and realized I was a senior. The miserable times had finally arrived. It had always seemed to me like a big commotion about nothing but when I became a senior myself, I could see how wrong I had been. The whole prospect of facing a decisive tertiary education aptitude exam which might define me for life was not just daunting but terrifying. That year is one I shudder to recall even now not because of all its hardships but the stress it was filled with. I was constantly filled with fear, with worries of ‘what if this’ and ‘what if that’. Even worse was that such concerns were actually interrupting my studies seriously. There I was worrying about failure and doing the very thing which would lead to it. Of course I realized this and despaired, desperately praying for a breakthrough. What I didn’t realize was that it would come from my father.

It is strange how such things work out because, ever since I can remember, I had not been on the best of terms with my father. To me he was always someone to be feared, someone to be obeyed without question. In short, he was authority itself and this made him the furthest closest person to me. However, this all changed during my senior year. One day I was sitting in the front porch after dinner, hating to go into my room while the voice inside me was screaming at me to get a move on. That is when my dad began talking to me. At first I froze fearing the worst but as his talk continued, I slowly thawed. That night he talked to me about his own life, something I had never known until then and exactly what I had needed to hear. He did not try to be unnecessarily inspirational like motivational speakers, rather he just related to me his own life and very simply at that too. Yet, that talk reached me and everything changed. Of course, it did not make all my problems go away. There was as huge a mountain of them as before but for some reason, sitting there listening to him I felt I could pull it off and that is exactly what I did. I studied, sat the test, applied to several universities with the results, was accepted by one of them and it was done. I had survived my senior year and it was all thanks to my dad. Needless to say the relationship between my father and I changed ever since.

Unfortunately I did not have very long to enjoy our new relationship for my university life was waiting to unfold and I had to move all by myself to Seoul for it. If I had known about the rollercoaster ride I was about to experience, I doubt I would have been so excited on the day of my departure while my parents and my sister looked so down. Well I did not know and, as ashamed as I am to admit, barely suppressed my glee at the prospect of ‘freedom’ I saw on the horizon. Who would have thought this ‘freedom’ would be my downfall?

At first, I was too busy getting used to university life and school to pay much attention to this newfound ‘freedom’. University life was unlike anything I had ever experienced before and I was simply swept off my feet. Attending whichever classes I wished, having hour-long breaks in between classes, worrying about what to wear every morning, not to mention all the new people that I met! It was quite something to get used to. Yet I was after all a member of the ‘homo adaptus’, as my old English teacher called mankind, and I adapted to my new surroundings. Around then is also when my life began to spin out of control.

Once I became comfortable with my new life I began to indulge in my newfound toy called ‘freedom’ by fools and ‘irresponsible immoderation’ by the wise. I began to indulge in the superficial pleasures of the world as much as I wanted to without a care for the consequences. In the beginning, I could manage both my studies and this lifestyle but with time I became more and more addicted to the superficial pleasures. This of course caused me to slowly increase the time I spent on them until I reached the breakpoint, a precarious balance between my studies and my “pleasures”. However this didn’t last for too long either and in the end I totally lost control.

It was a nightmare I could not wake up from by myself. I needed a morning-call and thankfully that is exactly what I received, in the form of my mother and sister coming to Seoul. My sister, being the hard-worker she always was, had been accepted early to the university of her choice and since there was nothing for her to do at home came to Seoul. My mother had come with her under the pretext of helping my sister settle down. Rather, she had come because it had pained her too much to see her son falling to new lows everyday. She was truly a Godsend. From the moment she arrived, my life was completely turned around. She first cleaned up the ‘pigsty’ my house had become and then she began to help me get back to my feet. She did so much that I cannot begin to list them here. One example though that I cannot go over without mentioning is her cooking. While I lived alone, my diet had really been knocked off balance which caused me to suffer from malnutrition. She rectified that immediately by always cooking me three regular meals a day. On the first morning after she arrived I could not help but steal a tear at the amazing breakfast my mother had ‘conjured’ up. Thus I was finally able to wake up from the nightmare I had trapped myself in.

I have lived for 20 years and over those years experienced daunting adversities, times when all seemed lost. Yet I am still here persevering in the great challenge called life, something which would have been impossible without a miracle. Indeed, it was a miracle that lighted up my darkness, a miracle that gave me hope where none could be found. Yes, it was my family.