{"id":36798,"date":"2013-08-06T22:21:52","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T02:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=36798"},"modified":"2020-07-07T22:22:49","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T02:22:49","slug":"there-are-times-when-i-resent-being-korean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=36798","title":{"rendered":"There are times when I resent being Korean"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

I understand the value of family and that we\u2019re 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\u2019t help themselves are beyond any external help. That\u2019s how I feel about my family sometimes, and it makes me feel genuinely lousy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The story goes like this: Second-generation Koreans emigrate to the United States to do some sort of blue-collar work, whether it\u2019s something agricultural or something more mundane like dry cleaning or operating a liquor store. I can\u2019t say that I necessarily understand the rationale behind it, but often times the justification is \u201cfor the kids,\u201d and often times \u201cto have a better life.\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the world ain\u2019t perfect, and we live in reality. There aren\u2019t nearly enough happy endings.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve mentioned it before, but my own family is falling apart. I\u2019ll spare people who don\u2019t care the intimate details, but my parents want to split up, bottom line. They\u2019re 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\u2019s 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\u2019t really ever address me because they like to believe that I\u2019m 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\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s gotten to the point where now I can\u2019t wait for my parents to get divorced, so that they can move beyond\u2026 this, whatever \u201cthis\u201d could possibly be called.<\/span><\/p>\n

But back to the main point, I resent my Korean heritage because of all of this nonsense lately. It\u2019s like if my parents never moved to the United States, maybe this separation wouldn\u2019t 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\u2019 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 \u201cprofessional athlete\u201d that played video games for a living.<\/span><\/p>\n

I know that this post is getting all over the place, but as always, I\u2019m 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\u2019m seeing. I\u2019ve got to make an uncomfortable, unwanted trip to Virginia to help moves some furniture to my mom\u2019s 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\u2019s side of the family lives in practically the same county as my mom, yet I\u2019m taking time off work and spending money to fly up to move some furniture? I know it\u2019s more than that, considering I haven\u2019t seen my parents in a few months, but for the hard physical part, I guess I\u2019m na\u00efve 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\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be mistaken, I want to help my parents out as much as I feasibly can, but it\u2019s not going to work if it\u2019s just my sister and I doing all the lifting. The flawed logic in the Korean story is that it\u2019s the parents\u2019 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to declare that the Korean story is subject to just exclusively Koreans, because I\u2019m sure that all sorts of ethnicities have their own variant of the same exact story. But as far as I\u2019m concerned, varying other ethnicities sometimes seem well more adaptable to integrate into American living, or at least learn enough English to where they don\u2019t feel paralyzed with apprehension to do simple mundane tasks.<\/span><\/p>\n

But whatever, this shit is all over the place, I don\u2019t really have a point to any of this. I\u2019m just textually blowing off steam, over this impending trip that I absolutely do not want to be making. I\u2019d rather be working on PowerPoints for the next two days as opposed to doing this. And unfortunately, I don\u2019t really see anything good coming out of it, and that things might not end well.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, … Continue reading There are times when I resent being Korean<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,71,103,15,91,65,27],"class_list":["post-36798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-angst","tag-famiry","tag-motherland","tag-og","tag-pf","tag-travel","tag-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36799,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36798\/revisions\/36799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}