The People I Left Behind

I found out while I was in Boston, that one of my best friends from high school in Korea, was in Los Angeles for English language studies. We met up today, and had a quick lunch. I learned that my friend had re-named himself “Henry.” The entire time we were hanging out, we spoke in Korean. It felt odd; the people we talked about, the memories we shared, they seemed so long ago.

Even though Henry had lived a few blocks away from me, he didn’t even know I had been working at the International School of Seoul (ISS) the last two years I was living in Korea. Which only meant we had not met during that time. ISS was a large school with four divisions - the (American) Elementary, Middle and High School, and the British School. My two-hundred co-workers were all American, Canadian, British, South African, Australian (Aussies) or New Zealanders (Kiwis). The students I worked with were from over sixty countries. In other words, I was living in Korea, but not really.

During my time at ISS and including my time in California, I was surprised that Henry and I had not seen each other for nearly three years. He was one of those friends that even if you met up with them once every year or two, you wouldn’t really feel that time gap. However, it wasn’t the time gap that I felt today, it was the life gap.

Hanging out with Henry today, I remembered the last several years of my life in Seoul. My desperate attempts to escape the society I belonged to eventually led me to cut ties with most of the people around me whose lives were deeply rooted in the Korean soil. I wanted to get out. I wanted to see the larger world. I didn’t want to be stuck in Seoul, in the small social circles that were closing in around me. I especially felt the need to cut myself away from the "elitist" friends. I wasn’t interested in attending the weddings of acquaintances whose grandfathers owned Samsung or LG Electronics. I wasn’t interested in whose uncle was running for president. I wasn't into landing the best job or the best man. I was still most comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt and I found myself showing up at luncheons and dinners increasingly out of place. I could see my friends, five years down the road, talking about what car/property they owned and what prestigious private schools their children would be enrolled in, and how much their husbands were making. The thought of it made me want to jump into the Han River and kill myself.

I wasn't opposed to wealth or social status, but these were not the driving forces of my life. To many people around me, they were.

While I pondered what path in life I was to choose, and the options I had, a librarian position opened up at ISS and I applied for the job. A professor from my alma mater sent her kids to this school. Tuition for preschool students at this school was $20,000 a year. Professor Baek had given me an "A" in her class, but when she found me sitting in the ISS Elementary School library, checking out books to her children, she shook her head and said,
“You can do better.”
The original Korean phrase doesn’t sound as condescending but the exact English translation is not available. She wasn’t trying to be mean, she meant that she didn’t want my “talents” to go to waste. I guess I can say it's an Asian thing, as well as some of the things Professor Baek knew about me, which led her to expect certain things from me.

Whatever the case, around this time, I disappeared off the face of the earth. Most of the people in my life were distracting me from the life I wanted to pursue as an artist. I couldn’t keep the people in my life and move on to the new life I wanted.

This is why Henry and I hadn’t been in touch for so long. I remembered Henry’s older brother, Jin - a graduate of Seoul National University, working for SK Telecom (one of the top firms in South Korea), all his "eligible" female friends turning into (in his mind) potential wife figures. Near the end of my life in Korea, I was so disgusted with Jin that he was one of the first to go. Eventually, I cut all ties with his circle of friends, which had been my circle of friends as well. Henry was the black sheep of the family, very different from Jin. In high school, we congregated weekly in the neighborhood playground. We would sit side by side on the swing sets, in our school uniforms, Henry smoking cigarettes and me complaining about homework. He was one of the very few people I had kept in touch with.

And yet, today, I realized even with Henry, I felt disconnected and at odds. I was no longer that person. Henry smiled and waved bye to me as I dropped him off in Westwood. I drove away with a heavy heart and a new realization sinking in. I didn’t feel comfortable hanging out with Henry anymore. He knew me as 周 貞 延 (my name spelled in its original Chinese characters, most Korean names have coinciding Chinese characters.)

During lunch Henry had put down his spoon and said,
“Foreign life is hard. When you finish your studies and come back to Korea -”
I didn’t even hear the rest of what he was saying. He didn’t know that I didn’t plan to return and I was tired of explaining, tired of making people understand. Henry had known me for so long but he was clueless. Two of the most central characteristics of what defined me, call it American, call it being an artist, were still oblivious to him. I didn’t want to live my life explaining myself to people anymore. We used to be such good friends, now we had grown apart, and yet, he didn’t see it. Only I did.

Somehow, along the way, I’ve made specific choices of who I will keep as friends and the ones I will drop. And Henry, even Henry, didn’t make the cut. It's not his fault or anybody else's. It may be because I am not yet strong enough. The person I want to be inside, does not show its true colors on the outside, the way I want them to. And until those colors solidify, I cannot be with people from my past who will compromise the person I had been all along, the person that I was not allowed to be.

For a very long time, I used to think that I could keep all my friends, even if we were separated by oceans and continents. It’s not possible. And that's okay.