Dear Friend,

I'm writing you this letter because...
Well, because I'm desperate.

Have you ever been in a situation so severe that...
Your words become stifled,
And no matter how hard you try,
You just can't seem to make yourself say what it is that you are trying desperately to say?

This is my current situation, dear friend -
This is my reality.

I don't mean to make myself the focus of this letter -
Oh no, dear friend,
That is not my intention at all.

For you see, good friend, it is not I that is suffering.

It is her.
She is so absorbed by her own self-doubts,
Her own blind criticisms,
Her own baseless hatred,
That she cannot see what she is doing.

And I...
I see what she is doing to herself ever so clearly...
But no matter how hard I try to tell her...
To beg her to stop herself before it's too late...
I cannot make the words come out of my mouth.

Oh, friend!
Why am I such a coward?

Is my cowardice really so overwhelming that I am unable to speak;
To reason;
To provide guidance and assistance?

I suppose the reason I'm writing this letter, dear friend is...
I want to know what I should do.

My God! I'm trying my damn hardest to make her see clearly once more,
But even my best isn't good enough in this vexing effort.

Please, kind friend,
I beg of you:

Teach me the secrets of valiance and of truth.

Teach me so that I may help her
And save her from her self-precipitated downfall.

Please, wise friend,
Please humbly help a man in need -

A man caught up in the hesitation of the heart,
And a man searching tirelessly for any hope of deliverance for the diffident woman that I love.

Respectfully yours,

-Park Jung Su

_____________________________________ღ_____________________________________

Somebody help me.

Please -
Somebody,
Anybody,
Come rescue me.

I'm so lonely here on my own...
And in my loneliness come the torturous thoughts that have plagued me for too long:

'You must be perfect. You must be perfect!
How could you be your mother's daughter?
You're far too inferior,
And simply not perfect.'

'You don't need it...
You just don't need it.
It's not like if you don't eat it you'll die.
If you can't even make yourself reject a piece of meat,
How can you ever hope to have any control over your own life?

Mommy won't be here forever,
And you must hurry up and make her proud.'

'But your mother would never be proud of a woman like you.
You have no drive,
No perseverance,
And no willpower.

Not only that, but...
You'll never look the way your mother does.
Your beautiful, petite mother
Will be forced to frown upon her overweight, undesirable child
Until the day she meets the grave
And cries herself to the stairs of heaven.

And you should be ashamed of yourself for hurting your mother ever so heartlessly.'

And I can't escape the thoughts.

The thoughts are always here,
Choking me -

They linger in the darkness,
They crawl into my dreams,
They plague me in the daylight,
And they suffocate any shred of happiness I manage to find during my long, lonely days.

And because of the thoughts...
I have become...
A monster.

A hideous, hideous monster.

I have become so unattractive and so...shameful...
That I dare not leave this house anymore.

Yes, this what I have become -
A forlorn wallflower,
A waste of a human being,
And a disgrace of a daughter.

And there is nothing more I can do
Than lie here in agony,
Uselessly rebel against the barrage of scaring thoughts,
And await the day of my death impatiently,
When I will finally be out of sight
And out of misery.

_____________________________________ღ_____________________________________

3 February 2008

It was not the first time I saw her;
I had first laid eyes on her many years earlier.

I was working as a busboy every weekday after high school.
It was my first job,
And it lent me just enough money to help pay for my mother's operation.

My mother had been complaining of abdominal pain for about two weeks,
And only after she received her monthly paycheck was she able to schedule an appointment with her doctor.

After going to the hospital for further examination,
She was found to have Appendicitis.
We were relieved to hear that the surgery had been performed on multiple occasions with a high success rate and minimal complications,
But once we heard how much we would have to pay in order to have the operation...
We were in a state of shock so severe that we almost passed out.

For us, living was a struggle.

My mother had me at the tender age of sixteen,
All without a mother and without a boyfriend.

My mother never found out who my real father was -
She always had her suspicions, but she was never one hundred percent certain if her intuitions were correct.

My grandfather provided aid to my mother for the first three years of my life,
But after suffering a that left him comatose,
All the money that had once been sent to us was used to keep him alive.
And the cost of living was so high that...
Before long, all the money in my grandfather's retirement fund disappeared...
And we were forced to...
To...
Pull the plug.

It's ironic, isn't it?
You spend your entire life working in the hopes that,
When you're old and broken,
You'll still be able to support your fragile life -
But what you don't realize is that money disappears faster than morning dew,
And in the end all you're left with is your own will and your own strength of mind.

You must fend for yourself,
And nobody will be there to come to your aid -
Especially not anyone who, like the you that lived in the all too distant past,
Needs to earn money for his own retirement fund
In the hopes of sustaining his own life some day soon.

It's all just a violent circle,
And greed lies at the very core of this unbreakable cyclical phenomenon.

And because my mother and I never let greed determine the course of our lives -
Because my mother and I lived freely,
Openly following in our hearts and listening to the voices of the spirits living within us -
We were separated from this cycle.

And the only thing worse than being a part of the cycle
Is not being a part of the cycle.

So we worked ourselves to death for minimum wage,
Telling ourselves all the while that money would only sustain our lives on earth,
But faith and perseverance would sustain us until the end of the earth itself.

And we truly believed that this philosophy would save us -
We truly believed that this philosophy would bring us our just rewards
And ultimately save us from the temporary pain and suffering we had to endure in order to secure a spot among the selfless gods and goddesses of days of yore.

And so I worked for hours,
Telling myself that our philosophy was not false
And that it would indeed bring us happiness and comfort in the end.

And we saw just a bit of that great happiness earlier than expected.

When my mother left that hospital,
I swear,
I saw an angel holding her hand.

Maybe it was the hand of my grandmother,
Or the hand of my father that I had never come to know,

But, most likely than not,
It was the hand of my grandfather,
Assuring my mother that she would attain the happiness she longed for.

And I think my mother knew that my grandfather was with her,
For when she finally stood in front my face,
With her eyes alive and her smile shining to the darkest corners of the earth,
She said to me:

"I'm happy, son.
I'm really, really happy."

And I'll never forget that moment
Or those words
As long as I live.

But this account is not about me or my mother.

It is about her -
The girl that changed my entire life.

I saw her just before I left the hospital with my mother.

While my mother was sharing a few final words with the man who operated on her,
I heard a shrill yell followed by many hard, uncontrollable sobs.

I was compelled by a sudden emotional force to follow the sound of the exasperated cries,
And it was there, behind the wall,
That I saw her for the first time.

She was crying so hard...
With her eyes covered by her hands...
And her entire body shaking with every sob that escaped her lips.

And all I wanted to do was...
Hold her hand,
Just as my grandfather had done with my mother...
So that I could bring her some consolation -
Just a shred of happiness.

But I could see that she was disconsolate,
And I was determined to find out why.

It was then that I heard a doctor say to the heartbroken girl:

"I'm sorry, sweetheart...
We did what we could but...
Your sister..."

The doctor didn't have to say anything more -
Both the girl and I knew exactly what he was trying to say.

After half-way delivering his distressing news,
The doctor left the girl alone.

And in her loneliness,
She cried more loudly
And more inconsolably than before.

I couldn't stand passively listening to her sobs anymore...

And so, I did the unthinkable:

I ran over to the girl,
Wrapped my arms around her,
And said to her in a calming voice while trying to hold back my tears of pity:

"It's alright -
It's okay.
Everything will be alright -
Everything will be okay."

And she just let me hold her for what seemed like hours,
Until her mother ran out of the room next to us in ruin.

And the girl, wanting to console her mother with her entire heart,
Broke away from my hold
And just looked at me for a moment.

And as her eyes looked into mine,
I swear I felt our hearts beat simultaneously
And our souls reach out from our bodies to take hold of each others' hands.

And it was when the girl finally parted from my side,
And our hearts became disconnected
And the hands of our souls detached,
That I knew, without a doubt,
That I would never be able to forget her
For as long as I was to live.

And, until that fateful night we met again for the first time,
I was unable to keep her face from running through my thoughts
And unable to shake from my soul
The feeling of the hands of her spirit
Against those of my own.

And in meeting her again for the first time,
I knew that we were destined to help each other,
Protect each other,
Love each other,
Until death do us part -

Literally.

_______________________________________________________________________________ 

Hello there! Long time no epdate, eh?(;

Now that I'm on summer vacation, I'll have much more time to update my ongoing stories! :D

Yippee? Yippe. ;D

Darn it, I need to get better at writing romance stories! >.< I'm just not good at capturing the feelings in the exact way that I want to. I'm sorry about that! I promise that I'll improve! If I continue trying...I'll get better. I think.(:

Oh, and just to address this point once more:

If the devisions of the story are confusing to you at the moment, just go with it. They're actually meant to be somewhat confusing right now, but they'll become clear at a later point in the story. :]

Thank you for all the wonderful comments you leave for me! Your comments mean the world to me! <3

If you have any suggestions/criticisms/opinions on this chapter, feel free to share them with me! I love getting feedback! =D