7/25 22:27

Bear with me because I think I’m having a bit of a moment. I’m not feeling too great so content warning (?) I guess: mental health and the like. I’d appreciate it if this was also not discussed with anyone, anonymity, yada yada yada.

I dropped my mom off at LAX yesterday so that she can go back to Korea and for the first time in a while I’m living on my own in my house in SD and today it really struck me how quiet it is. As an introvert I often find comfort and shelter in being alone and having my own space, but there’s something almost eery and unsettling about being home alone here. Maybe it’s because I’m not used to this place being fully empty with me being the only one occupying it, but I’m finding myself wanting to leave and see more people more often. Me leaving in less than two weeks also probably has something to do with it.

It’s weird honestly. When I’m home with my mom, it’s so hard to be in the same space as her because I feel like we clash so much. Those of you who’ve known me for a while know that me and her have not had the best relationship throughout the years, and if I’m being honest, it’s still hard spending time with her even after what I feel like has been a relative period of peace and reconciliation. On our drive up she was talking about how she wanted our family to be able to take a trip together sometime and lamented the fact that we probably wouldn’t be able to do that for a while since we’re all going to be in different places for the foreseeable future. I disagreed with her and said that whenever our family is all together, all we do is fight. The relationships that we have with one another are definitely not bad, but even though we are on (relatively) good terms with one another, whenever we’re all together, something bad seemingly inevitably happens.

Family is hard. And with me, loving my mom is especially difficult. I don’t know how to articulate it all without trauma dumping, but most of the time it feels like when I’m communicating with her, we’re on completely different planes of existence.

Side story that may initially seem like a tangent but I promise I’m not getting distracted. A few nights ago, I was playing TFT with a friend like I always do. I had already been eliminated and was watching him play, and was flaming another player for using a board that I thought was suboptimal and bad because I had used a similar comp in the past. The friend remarked that it was funny how little patience I had for incompetence and how it made me so angry.

That made me think. I came to the realization that he was right. I think I have certain standards for people within certain contexts, and when that is not met, it frustrates me. I don’t think it’s because I know that they can do better (I wouldn’t give myself the credit of being that gracious) but because I hold myself to similar standards. And that’s not to laud myself as being diligent or hard-working or trying to self-actualize myself to be the ~best that I can ever be~ but that I just expect myself and others to be competent. But in a way, that’s kind of a fucked up standard to have because there is such little room for grace. That’s not to say that I’m immediately angered by any small mistake someone does but there must be something inside of me that is angered when things don’t go the way that I expect them to. That sounds an awful lot like something that has to do with insecurity and anxiety that should probably be unpacked in therapy but that’s a story for another time.

Now I’m sure you can probably tell where this is going as I wrap back around. I’m not saying that my mother is incompetent. She is a wonderful, strong, beautiful, great woman that did her best to raise me in the way that she thought was best for me. I know that and I love her for it. But I think somewhere along the way, her vision for what she wanted for me ended up going against what I wanted for myself, and I ended up resenting her for it. I can’t really say that’s a past tense thing. I still do, but I’m trying to find a way to move forward in a healthier way. Even as I say that, it is very difficult for me to hold a conversation with her regarding things that are not surface level.

I’m going to admit something that I am not proud of. On our drive up, she was asking me about college and what I learned and “what I was most thankful to God for.” That question irked me (likely due to the precarious, nearly nonexistent, state of my relationship with God) but I told her nothing. When she tried to press me on what it was I struggled with throughout college, I told her I didn’t want to talk about it. After a few moments of silence, she apologized. I asked her why and she said that she was sorry that she had done something in the past that made me not comfortable with opening up to her. I wasn’t expecting this and it was clear that she wanted to at least try to talk about whatever past hurts. But instead, I just told her that that was 부담스러워 and didn’t want to talk about it.

I regret saying that. There are a few moments throughout my life that I still remember because of the nasty things I have said before, and I think that will be one of them. But at the same time, I’m not sure what I could have said. Accepting her apology feels artificial and lacking and too busy glancing over what has happened. A few days ago we had dinner with some old family friends and their family has two boys that I’ve seen since they were babies. They’re going into junior and senior year of high school and were asking me about things like applying to college and whatnot. I made a few jokes here and there about the nagging and 잔소리 my mom gave me throughout high school, but my mom just brushed it off and said that we had moved past it. Perhaps she has, but I think I’m very much still stuck on it.

It’s so hard. I know that I love her. She is my mother and I love her very much and there is nothing that will change that, but it is also simultaneously so difficult to show that I love her. All the ways that I usually show love to people like spending time with them, talking with them, all these different things don’t seem to work with her. I know I should be more patient and loving, but it feels so hard to because I feel like I’ve trained myself to put my guard up whenever she gets anywhere close because I’ve been hurt before. That doesn’t excuse my behavior whatsoever, I know. But now it just feels like I’m stuck in some cycle of wanting to be better, trying to be better, becoming frustrated by it for whatever reason, lashing out, regretting it, and repeating.

This is where things are going to get a little more personal. Through some turn of events, I recently find out that my mom has been taking antidepressants for the past however long because she’s been struggling with anxiety and depression. When I heard that, things started to make a lot more sense. You know that saying where people say that you dislike certain people because you see pieces of yourself in them? I think that’s a lot of what is going on with me and her. Me being frustrated with her indecision comes from my own frustrations at myself being indecisive with issues, but she is honest about it whereas I try to play it off with an air of indifference. Maybe this whole thing stems from a deeper issue that I have with myself and my inability to love who I am as a person. I’m frustrated at times with her because I’m also trying to wrestle with the idea that as I become an adult, I need to become someone that she is able to lean on, but that is so fucking hard because I feel like a) I want to be a kid again that can lean on his infallible parents and b) I don’t think I’m someone that she can lean on because of how incompetent I feel.

But as time goes on, a) starts to feel less and less possible because surprise surprise, parents are just human. I may hold them to a standard of not making mistakes and taking care of my needs, but when those things don’t necessarily happen, even if I feel betrayed because that’s how I had portrayed them in my head, that standard was never the truth. They are human. They are going through life learning and struggling and doing their best. They are not infallible. My dad had a heart attack a few months ago in Korea. My mother is on anti-depressants. They are human. But when those things are brought to light, I can’t help but feel shock, anger, sadness, grief, fear, the whole nine yards. They are not infallible and they never were, even if they gave off that impression to younger me.

It’s funny, I reconnected with someone recently that I didn’t think I ever would because we’ve hurt each other so much. But if I think about it, I gave myself and that person grace because these hurts happened in the past when we didn’t know better and were still growing and figuring things out. That grace shouldn’t magically disappear once you become an “adult,” because adults don’t have any experience being an adult. Parents don’t have any experience with being a parent until they live through it. Hurts of the past shouldn’t be the major thing dictating what my relationship with my mother looks like now, because she still deserves that grace in all that she has done for the same reason that I gave grace to myself: she didn’t know better. She was living through it and I’m sure that she knows that she has hurt me before and she regrets it as well because what she did wasn’t with malicious intent.

I’m realizing these things now. But realizing it doesn’t mean I’ll automatically believe it all. I need to start to remember and believe it and keep myself accountable in actively trying to love on her and forgive her.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. All it really took was a day away from her to realize how much she really meant to me. Call this an accountability check. I will try to be better at loving. I remember writing something similar two years ago when I first went to Korea during COVID about how life is short and you should tell your parents you love them. Two years later, it feels like I’m in the same place, if not a few steps back. But I swear, I am going to try harder. I guess this last part is a reminder to me in the future when I inevitably go through my past writing: try to be better, try to be patient, try to be loving.

As always, if you made it down here, thank you.