Love in the Big City

If obsession isn't love, I have never loved.

Sometimes his very existence to me is the existence of love itself

An excess of self-awareness being a disease in itself.

I used to feel like I’d been given the whole world when I held him. Like I was holding the whole universe.

Jaehee, who had taught me that every season is its own beautiful moment -- that Jaehee didn't live here anymore.

I like the universe that is you

You were the only person who did those things for me, so honestly, Gyu-ho, I actually really care that we’re not together anymore, a lot . .

I was already thirty, a legal adult for ten years, and was old enough to know that my mother did not exist solely to hinder my existence but was a person in her own right who had fought hard making her way through life. She just happened to be unlucky. In other words, the fact that our relationship had been so terrible was as natural as cancer or fungus or the rotation of our planet or sunspots.

Rain still falls during the late rainy season, as do tears even when it’s too late.

But is love truly beautiful? To me, love is a thing you can’t stop when you’re caught up in it, a brief moment you can escape from only after it turns into the most hideous thing imaginable when you distance yourself from it.

And every morning, I realized anew that the world was filled with lonely people.

Was this how the lovers of Pompeii felt when the magma covered them? I was deluged by something very hot, and the world seemed to stop turning.

Because life had always been eager to fail my expectations, no matter how low I set them.

Sometimes, the memory of a space can come to us faster than that of a person or a scene.

Mostly we slept on our own beds but occasionally in the same one, not having sex but taking turns giving each other an arm-pillow, breathing in the scent of each other’s chests or armpits, slowly coming to believe that this was what it meant to love and be together.

... a feeling of giving myself up to something, an energy I was never a minute away from; perhaps it was something close to religion. To let oneself fall into complete darkness, a kind of faith.

What was once a part of him flowed into me and became me.

—Because, whatever it was or wasn’t, you were you. Because, whatever it was or wasn’t—not because of it or despite it—I was me.

I just wanted to hold him, to fold every inch of my body and soul into his heat and heartbeat.

I became something not me, not anything, just another part of the world that was him.

In the end, I left just two syllables on the lantern. Gyu-ho. My only wish.

You asked me to forget you and that made it even harder to do.

An excess of self-awareness was a disease in itself.

I studied French Literature for my university degree. Reading Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion and Marguerite Duras’s The Lover in the same semester was like having my whole life split into two. I was overjoyed that such literature and such writing were even possible, and it fed my desire to become someone who could create such literature.

I smiled as I stood by the curb. 4:20 in the morning. But you know what? I wanted to go somewhere, but not home. Only one place I could think of: Itaewon. Like destiny, an orange cab slowed down in front of me. I climbed in and yelled, "Hey Mister, Itaewon Fire Station." Had the streetlamps and neon signs always been this spectacularly bright? Why was Seoul so beautiful all of a sudden? Everything that was once nothing seemed special and amazing somehow. And wouldn't you know it, the taxi fare still was more than 10,000 won, even when the surcharge period was over. Only 20,000 won left on this card, how was I going to get home later? Eh, whatever. I'd survive. The traffic began getting bad at Hannam-dong. I hopped out in front of the CJ Building and ran the rest of the way to G—.

Kiedy piszę (i kiedy idę przez swoje życie), zazwyczaj czuję się zagubiony, jakbym błąkał się samotnie pośród pyłu, przez który nic nie widać. Od czasu do czasu jednak czuję ciepło, jakby moja dłoń na coś trafiła. Ośmielę się nazwać to miłością. Doskonale wiem, jak kruche to uczucie i słowo, ale nie mogę nie zacisnąć wokół tego drobnego ciepła wszystkich moich palców, nie przytulić go do piersi. Pozostaje mi kochać swoje życie i ten świat. Po to, abym mógł być sobą. Aby przeżyć to życie jako ja.

Don’t be a drag. Just be a queen.

I came to the realization that life was merely the forward motion of going from one’s first hospital room to one’s last.