Sometimes I wish my parents would go back to Korea, just so they could stop using their inability to have learned competent basic English as an excuse to be irresponsible and push the burden of their woes onto my sister and I. It sounds terrible, but I sometimes believe that if the monumental, albeit imaginary, language and cultural barrier didn’t stand in front of them, my parents might be able to take care of their own bullshit as opposed to heaping the responsibilities onto their children.
I understand the value of family and that we’re all supposed to be there for one another unconditionally, but in order for things to genuinely have any remote shot at success, all lines of communication must be open, and there has to be a mutual respect and acceptance that exists from all parties involved. I have no problem with helping my family or other people in general, because I like to imagine myself as a fairly decent person at the core, but it gets to a point where people that people who don’t help themselves are beyond any external help. That’s how I feel about my family sometimes, and it makes me feel genuinely lousy.
The story goes like this: Second-generation Koreans emigrate to the United States to do some sort of blue-collar work, whether it’s something agricultural or something more mundane like dry cleaning or operating a liquor store. I can’t say that I necessarily understand the rationale behind it, but often times the justification is “for the kids,” and often times “to have a better life.” The third generation of Koreans are essentially raised as Americans with as much Korean ideals as they are forcibly engrained with. In the perfect ending to this story, they become successful and make a boatload of money to where they can support their aging parents through the remainder of their lives as well as sustaining themselves and produce the next generation and sustain them too, with hopes that they will repeat the cycle, however theoretically from a higher starting point.
But the world ain’t perfect, and we live in reality. There aren’t nearly enough happy endings.
So I’ve mentioned it before, but my own family is falling apart. I’ll spare people who don’t care the intimate details, but my parents want to split up, bottom line. They’re now living apart, but the necessary legal work involved with making it official is hitting brick wall after brick wall because both my parents are being passive retards about the whole situation and sitting quietly in their own corners while absolutely no progress is being made unless it’s essentially being spear-headed by my sister. Whom is pretty much exasperated beyond the beyond, because she has her own life, kids and career to focus about, and my parents won’t really ever address me because they like to believe that I’m completely inaccessible down in Georgia, and for some god-forsaken mentality they still see me as the baby of the family that needs to be shielded from important matters. But whatever, it’s without question the biggest dread I feel on a daily basis, and I really just wish everything could just be done with and over with, so that we can all move forward.
Previously, I was upset and depressed over the fact that I was going to have divorced parents, like 40%+ of Americans, but the way things have turned out thus far, it’s gotten to the point where now I can’t wait for my parents to get divorced, so that they can move beyond… this, whatever “this” could possibly be called.
But back to the main point, I resent my Korean heritage because of all of this nonsense lately. It’s like if my parents never moved to the United States, maybe this separation wouldn’t have become so messy, because it would have happened in their native home, where everyone speaks the same language, where there would be a veritable cherry picking in divorce lawyers and places to relocate and careers to move onto. Who knows, maybe staying in Korea would have limited the number of stresses and obstacles that have gotten in the way of my parents’ American lives to where they fathomably could have been happy. Hell, maybe I could have been born as a Korean citizen, and grew up to become a “professional athlete” that played video games for a living.
I know that this post is getting all over the place, but as always, I’m kind of just shooting from the hip. I feel resentment towards my family lately, because of a lot of the perceived selfishness I think I’m seeing. I’ve got to make an uncomfortable, unwanted trip to Virginia to help moves some furniture to my mom’s new place, but apparently none of my cousins or extended family members are going to be there to help out. I am a little puzzled by this considering almost my entire mother’s side of the family lives in practically the same county as my mom, yet I’m taking time off work and spending money to fly up to move some furniture? I know it’s more than that, considering I haven’t seen my parents in a few months, but for the hard physical part, I guess I’m naïve to think that at least one family member could spare an hour to help lift something heavy. I get that everyone has things to do and that we all have our own issues, but I don’t recall anyone in my family giving me any support when I was a little bit traumatized when my house was broken into, but I certainly got plenty of lectures about how living in Atlanta is the eternal mistake.
Don’t be mistaken, I want to help my parents out as much as I feasibly can, but it’s not going to work if it’s just my sister and I doing all the lifting. The flawed logic in the Korean story is that it’s the parents’ responsibilities to help their children help themselves become decent adults and human beings, but when the time comes to give it back, the parents still have to help themselves to get helped by their children.
I’m not going to declare that the Korean story is subject to just exclusively Koreans, because I’m sure that all sorts of ethnicities have their own variant of the same exact story. But as far as I’m concerned, varying other ethnicities sometimes seem well more adaptable to integrate into American living, or at least learn enough English to where they don’t feel paralyzed with apprehension to do simple mundane tasks.
But whatever, this shit is all over the place, I don’t really have a point to any of this. I’m just textually blowing off steam, over this impending trip that I absolutely do not want to be making. I’d rather be working on PowerPoints for the next two days as opposed to doing this. And unfortunately, I don’t really see anything good coming out of it, and that things might not end well.
