Luhan

“I’m Sorry”

            Her perfect penmanship proved to me she didn’t write this simple goodbye in haste.  I knew her handwriting; slightly sloppy, curvy and with a faint tilt to the right.  This message was too clean, too perfect and unfamiliar.  It was not what I knew her as, but the girl I knew was gone.

            His crying was what got me up again.  Aroused me from my confused dazed and reminded me where I was and who I was still with.  I walked to the nursery to see my son, fidgeting and crying in his crib.  I picked him up and cradled him gently in my arms.  I rested his head in the crook of my elbow and wrapped my arms protectively around him, as if I was afraid I would lose him too.

            I guess I should’ve seen the warning signs.  “What should we eat for dinner?” turned into “Whatever you want, I don’t care.”  “How was work today, sweetie?” became “I’m tired, I’m going to lay down.”  I felt myself losing her but I tried my best to ignore the feeling.  I convinced myself that if I didn’t see the signs then they would go away on their own.           

            I watched, slowly, as we became less and less interested in each other.  The girl I once thought I could spend my life with, was turning into a stranger.  We were being eaten alive by the stress and responsibility that comes with having to grow up too fast.  As anger and resentment built up, we stopped seeing each other as allies.  My once partner in crime was becoming my sole adversary.  We began to see each other only as the embodiment of all the things we had lost.  All of our given up dreams and empty promises were sitting across from us at the kitchen table, laying next to us in bed. The passion built flame of young love had long since burnt out and I could look at her all day, but I couldn’t see her anymore. We could stare into each others’ eyes, but could no longer see each others hearts.

            Still, I couldn’t believe she just ing left.

            “What do we do now?”  I asked my almost one-year-old son.  He didn’t respond, of course, but just stared at me with his enormous, doe-like brown eyes.  I debated crying for a moment, but two things held me back.  One was that I knew whoever left that note and walked out the door this morning, was not the same girl I had fallen in love with four years ago.  My love had already been gone for months.  The second reason was that I promised myself in that moment that I would never, ever cry in front of my son.

            I just held him for a while.  He seemed content with the situation, on his thumb and every so often reaching up to my face as if trying to snatch my nose.  After a couple attempts of his little pink hand swooping up towards my face, he must have realized he liked this game and began to giggle.  Without realizing it, I began to laugh with him.  As his smile grew, mine did too.

            “We can do it.” I told us.  “You and me, against the world.”

            I had my new partner in crime.

Kris

There has always been order in my life, and that’s just the way I like it.  I like waking up in the morning, and knowing exactly what is going to happen.  I plan, schedule, control, to make sure my life has as few surprises as possible.  However, not even I was able to control all the surprises in my life. I learned that trying to control everything only makes a crack in my system seem even worse.

            I lived a plain, average life.  I graduated fro high school and attended a top university.  I was the perfect son, stayed out of trouble and worked hard.  In school I studied business, a field I convinced myself would make me just as happy as it would rich.

            During school I met a girl who seemed to be as perfect and organized as I.  We shared schedules, notes, cleaning tips, and discussed exactly how we saw our futures.  Somewhere along the lines, those futures began to involve each other and the year after we graduated, we were married.

            As we started our lives together, everything seemed to be falling into place. I was rising the ladder in a successful corporation and she became perfectly content staying at home to raise our growing family.  We had one daughter and then one son, and as far as I could tell, we were happy.  As happy as the perfect textbook-written family could be.

            Our growing apart happened slowly, methodically and calculated, just as everything else in our relationship had been.  It seemed so similar to the rest of our system, I didn’t even notice.  You could say it hit me like a train, because it did, and I saw my perfectly sculpted life shatter into a million little pieces before I even realized what had happened.

            Looking back on it, I can’t believe how long it took me to find out.  It’s not like she put much effort into hiding it, it’s not like she needed to.  I came home from work, exhausted and battered, and I ignored her.  I ate the reheated dinner, kissed my kids goodnight, then went to sleep.  My routine.

            I guess I started to realize something was off, when the dinners stopped appearing.  Full course meals turned into bowls of rice or leftover takeout meals.  I came home to find a babysitter in the living room, my wife nowhere to be found.  If I questioned her about it the next day, she was always just out for a drink with some friends.  I knew deep down that she pulled every last excuse straight out of her , but I bought them.  I was so obsessed with my routine I ignored the obvious for as long as I could just to keep things the way they were.

            The night I caught them, I blew up.  I see now how big of a fool I must of looked like.  Walking in on her, making him a meal, but being far to cozy with each other for me to think this wasn’t a regular thing. I screamed at her the usual, “What the is this?” “Who do you think you are?” “Is this how you treat the husband who puts a roof over your head?” but she didn’t even seem to care.  As cold as a stone she turned to me and said “Don’t act so surprised.” And left.  Walked out of my house and walked out of my life, as if it wasn’t our life just a few months ago.

            When we met again, she explained everything to me.  She sounded more like she was reading a well-rehearsed script (which she had probably been practicing on with that bastard beforehand), than talking to someone she used to call the love of her life.  She didn’t hold back, either.

            “You’re so distant, Kris.  How did you expect me to be okay living with someone I can’t feel comfortable around anymore?”

            “I thought you liked the arrangements.  You agreed to them in the first place.”

            “Maybe I did, but I didn’t know what I wanted back then. I thought I wanted safe and controlled but I found out I didn’t. I want something more out of life than doing the same routine over and over again.  I can’t live like this. It’s suffocating.”

            I had felt like someone had punched me in the gut.

            “Well than I’m sorry my love was so suffocating to you. Maybe I shouldn’t have let you live so comfortably, maybe that would’ve made you happy!” I yelled, feeling on the brink of tears but never, ever, showing it. “If you think that bastard can make you happy, leave. I’m not stopping you.”

            “I’m glad you understand.” Was all the said.  Her calm demeanor infuriated me, made every inch of my body burn.

            I never saw her again, after that last meeting.  The idea of seeing her face made me sick to my stomach. We handled all of the paperwork over the phone and through our respective lawyers.  When it came to the kids, I knew dual custody just wasn’t going to work.  I didn’t want to ever have to meet her again and the idea of letting my children live with her -faced self and that bastard she pretended loved her made me want to hurl.  I fought for full custody and won. She called it my consolation prize, but I knew it was a bigger victory than just that.  She just wasn’t going to let me know it.

            Now, it’s just the three of us. I don’t like having to send them to daycare and nannies while I’m away at work, but I’m still myself. I still need my routine.  Slowly, I’m bringing back the order to my life.  My routine has made a 180 degree turn, but it’s becoming more and more normal every day.  This life is definitely not the one I had planned for myself all those years ago, but I’m convincing myself everyday that it’s better this way.

Junmyeon

There are three angels in my life.

            Two are three and six years old.  They love having tea, playing dress up, and drawing.  My older angel came home from school the other day with a drawing in her hands.  I asked her, “Princess, what do you have there?”  She just smiled and handed it to me, showing off her dimples.

            “It’s our family picture”, she said.  “Look there’s me, Dahye, Daddy, and Mommy!”

            I held her crayon masterpiece in both hands and turned to my daughter.  “Why does Mommy have a circle around her head?”  I asked.

            “Because she’s an angel.”  She answered.  “Isn’t that what you said, Daddy?”

            It was what I had said.  But from the beginning, she had always been an angel in my eyes.  Even before she first got sick.  Even before the whirlwind of hospitals and surgeries and treatments wrapped themselves around our family like a serpent.  Even before she lost her battle, and I had lost my love.

She was an angel when I first saw her, reading a tattered book with headphones strung around her neck.  She was an angel when I first found the courage to kiss her, putting her warm hands on my cheeks.  She was an angel when I first told her I loved her, when I put the ring on her finger, when she said I Do, when she first told me she was expecting and again the second time, too. 

She was an angel up until the day she left.  Never losing her glow, her laugh or her dimpled smile.  I had told our daughters that she was an angel, but they were too young to understand I didn’t mean it just because she had gone to heaven.

I see her in them every day.  From the way they dance around the living room and their cheeks in when they are really thinking, to the dimples on each of their cheeks.  My first angel may have passed on, but she left parts of herself here with me, so that I could always remember her.  As if I could ever forget.

There are three angels in my life.

I have one in my memory, two in my home, but all three forever in my heart.

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