Aug.—Time’s going to slow down this month because I have a lot to say.
I had never been so nervous or excited. I still didn’t tell anyone, not even my parents, especially not them, because I wasn’t sure it was real. It felt like good luck and I didn’t want to ruin it. I wasn’t even sure it was real until the airplane landed at the Korean airport, where a translator met me, and took me to the orphanage. I was placed there two months after I was born, almost thirty years ago. I didn’t even tell Helen, although the orphanage asked me for an emergency contact and I gave them what I thought was her phone number, but I might have just made something up. I think Helen might be an undiagnosed bipolar or schizophrenic, but she’s figured out a way to live with it, although I will say she was kind of dressed like a homeless person and I can’t believe she takes care of people as her job (!). I don’t trust therapists or psychiatrists anyway.
I was so excited to meet my mom, but also terrified. I wondered if we would look alike and I knew we wouldn’t be able to understand one another, still, I just thought it would be cool to meet her, and to say hello (!) after all these years. The translator helped me make an appointment to meet my mom the following day, after I got over the jet lag and stuff. That night I went to a hostel and I couldn’t fall asleep. I left and ended up at a 24 hour café. I bought a bottled water and one cup of rice, and read a book, Blood Meridian, which is about this monstrous human being named The Judge and in the end he rapes the other main character in the bathroom? It makes me upset and I never understand it. I’ve reread it like ten times and I’m still not sure about the ending. I was up all night at the café and into the next day when finally someone asked me to give up my seat, because the café was so busy. Actually, I have no idea if that’s what the guy said because he was speaking Korean, but he kept making this go away gesture at me, and then he pointed to the door.
So I went to the hostel to change my clothes. And something happened to me. I looked in the bathroom mirror. There were other people washing up, too, but eventually they left, and I was still there. I looked at myself, and became confused. I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing in Korea. It didn’t make sense. It was like a double consciousness sort of thing and it was scary. Everything in my life split along a line. And now comes the part you probably won’t believe, but… I didn’t go to the meeting. I was really freaked out, I felt like if I met her, I would see this other life I might have had, and it would be impossible to have it make sense with the life I did end up leading, the one with mom and dad and Helen.
So… it’s true. I didn’t go to the appointment to meet my biological mom. I couldn’t do it. It now reminds me of this thing my mom in Milwaukee told me. When I was little, they had books about adoption for us. I never wanted to read them. Helen read them, she loved all those books, she told my parents she loved reading about herself, but I told my mom I thought there was something bad in them. It’s true. Don’t open doors that should remain closed. It sounds stupid, but in my life, it’s true.
Let me tell you a couple more things about Korea. Sometime after I skipped meeting my biological mom, I walked to a park, where I saw an old man feeding a family of swans. He was standing on a rowboat in the middle of an artificial lake in the middle of the city. Something about the way he interacted with the swans told me that he had been their lifelong caretaker. But then something bad happened. Some of the more aggressive, dominant swans began to peck at him. And the next thing I knew, he lost his balance, he was knocked off the little boat. There were splashes in the water, and I saw swan wings flapping violently, blocking the old man from getting to the lake’s surface. The sound they made was so loud. The man drowned. The entire time, I thought I could yell for help, but it happened so quickly, in a matter of minutes, I just didn’t do anything but watch what happened. Eventually, some other people showed up and started screaming at me in Korean. The police came and fished out the body. I sort of shrank away from the scene and went back to the hostel.
I had ten messages waiting from the translator at the orphanage. As soon as I was back inside my cramped airless room, someone knocked at the door. I didn’t move to answer it. When the person went away, I used the hostel’s computer to book my ticket back to the United States. The computer was chained to the desk, an old desktop model.
Sep.—I have always been kind of a failure at everything. I can say with confidence that I was good at one thing: I could memorize long passages from books and if you asked me what page it was on, I would be able to tell you. But what kind of job can you get with that skill? It’s pretty useless.
I think Helen used to get freaked out that I memorized an entire book on trees.
But what’s not to like about trees?
I used to possess more things, but over the past few years, I’ve started to give everything away. Someone else out there could put it to use better than me.
That’s how I feel about my organs and my body. Someone else could put it all to better use than me, someone in need, someone who wants to stay alive.
A week ago, I fell, and my face hit the floor. I tried to kill myself with pills, the easy way out. It was a moment of weakness and it almost destroyed my entire plan. I was really pissed off at myself. My nose didn’t break, but my front teeth fell out, it was pretty humiliating. I’m so ashamed of that. But it taught me something about suicide. That you have to follow through with the plan.
The dentist was going to fit me in for an emergency appointment, but in the end I didn’t go. I didn’t think my teeth mattered.