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There was too much pressure to get certain chores done before noon today. That meant feeling a certain amount of anxiety upon waking up this morning. I don’t like that. I managed to finish all the chores, though, and now I’m ready to call it a day. It’s 1:30pm.
Let’s talk about yesterday. I had a lot feelings all day that were encouraged, I’m sure, by the brooding weather.
First, I noticed that I still couldn’t shake the image of that murdered woman from my mind. Everywhere I went all I could see were potential victims. A woman standing on the train. Victim. A woman running into a store to get out of the rain. Victim. My friend. A possible victim too. This was really weird for me because I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I was a crisis counselor for a sexual assault center for awhile and I talked to many people who had been assaulted and I have even met women at the hospital and sat through their exams with them after an assault. All that time I never began to see women as victims. Two days ago I see a gruesome crime scene photo and I’m freaking out. So there’s that.
The next thing is that I met with Lee Byong Yoon. We haven’t seen each other in over a month. She inquired about my web page address and I suddenly realized that she might be offended by some of the things I say about Korea. I like her a lot and I care about what she thinks of me. I couldn’t deny her access to my site, so I just told her straight up what to expect. Maybe I made it sound worse than it is, but it’s better to cover all the bases. I spend a lot of time feeling bitter about being here, not just because of the cultural differences, but because of my own struggle with the choices I’ve made.
Turns out that Ms. Lee is a great ambassador for this culture and after chatting with her for a couple of hours I always feel energetic, more positive, at peace with where I am, and guilty. I learn from her things about this culture that I could never learn otherwise because I don’t know the language, which, to be honest, I’m not really interested in learning. Yet, I would probably be a much happier resident alien if I made more of an effort to learn not only the language but about the culture too. Its another one of those damn social fences that I’m always running smack into.
So yesterday afternoon I was feeling good about being here, but guilty about being a stubborn foreigner. I was quickly scanning my memory for all of the things I’ve written about living here and trying to pick out the most offensive statements. Obviously, when considering the audience to which I write, I left out a potentially important season ticket holder. Oops. But then it’s like: "Who cares?" I gotta stay true to what I feel; I have to own it. This is the point where I start chastising myself for always worrying what other people think. I never want to offend because I always want to be accepted, which is bad news all around because then I lose track of what I really think.
The emotions of yesterday are gone, neutralized by a long night’s sleep, and even in trying to recount them I can’t recall the vividness of it all so that reading back over this I see that it looks rather uninteresting and really doesn't express the depth of what I experienced. Today I’m feel rather numb to the world, which is a good place to be right now. It means more room for doing and accomplishing, as often I feel paralyzed by my feelings.
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