Reflections on a year in the life...

It occurred to me recently that it's been just about a year since the demise of the relationship that defined my 20's. Maybe it's because I spent the day reading The Opposite of Love, a novel by a former corporate lawyer-turned-author, about a 29 year old attorney who goes through a period of personal and professional crisis and self-discovery and recovery, but I felt a slight compelling to reflect on the past 12 months, which probably comes closest to crisis and self-discovery for me.

Eh, but I feel a bit too lazy right now to take on this gargantuan task of self-analysis. So I won't. I'm just going to repost some old blogs.

(October 21, 2007):

dear xanga, it's been a while. Sometimes there's just too much going on in my head to actually try to process my thoughts. I'm still figuring stuff out. I used to think that by the time I was in my mid/late-20's, I'd have the big stuff in life figured out: career, love, purpose in life. Just a few weeks shy of 28, I realize I don't have any of it figured out. But the one thing I've learned in my 20's is this: it's ok not to have everything figured out. Life would be boring if you did anyway.

Aging sucks because: wrinkles, your body can't take two nights in a row of partying, you have to eat less and exercise more.

But at the same time, life keeps getting better and better as you get older. You learn to love yourself more. You learn to listen to yourself more. You learn that when it comes to your life, your opinion is the only one that matters. You learn what makes you happy (not just what you think will make you happy). You learn that the heart is resilient. You learn to cut the BS out of your life. You've also earned the right to relax and have a little (or a lot) of fun.

When my grandmother was 28, she was a wife and mother of three. When my mom was 28, she was a wife and mother of two. I'm almost 28 and I'm neither a wife nor a mother. My family worries. But I don't. My life feel so...full. Your family tries to shelter you from the dangers of life and steer you toward the safe, secure. But if I followed that route, I would have missed out on living life on my terms. I might never have opened the bakery (a longtime dream of mine) or have experienced the relationship that shaped my 20's or have had the courage to end that relationship when I realized it was no longer working. I love the process of...figuring things out - making mistakes and learning from them, taking risks, following my gut/heart/instinct. It may not always be safe or secure, but it has been and continues to be challenging, fulfilling, fun.

(August 28, 2007):

It's hard to leave the safe haven of a relationship - that place where you are loved, accepted, cared for. The comfort of being with someone that knows you so completely. And it's heart-numbingly painful when that relationship was what you once thought would be it. My heart didn't break, it was numbed to the point of unfeeling. And yet. I absolutely feel that it was the right decision.

It would be unfair and entirely inadequate to try to put into a few words what went wrong. And even that is the wrong phrase, because I don't think anything ever went wrong. It just became clear that things weren't right. Maybe this is what people mean when they say the timing wasn't right.

I absolutely believe in life-changing, body-mind-and-soul-tingling love. And I believe everyone deserves to experience that kind of love - anything less, and you're settling.

Being single is...a whole new world. Both exhilarating and terrifying. After having been in a relationship for almost five years, I find I've forgotten how to enjoy my own company. I find myself surrounding myself with friends, afraid to be alone with my own thoughts. When you're in a relationship, you always have someone to do everything with - a movie partner, a grocery shopping partner, a gym partner, a do-nothing-at-home partner. It's hard to get used to being alone, not having the safety of someone to fall back on all the time. But it is also exhilarating to be independent: to think, feel and act for myself without considering anyone else. Being suddenly single, there is a certain void from losing that connection with someone else. But there is the hope of stumbling upon life-changing, body-mind-and-soul tingling love.

(August 20, 2007 - no relevance to self-discovery, just makes me laugh):

So ridiculous it's true.

I was thinking how much I love living in San Francisco. I was thinking how great my weekend was going - two night of friends, food and drinking (both nights hangover-free!). I was on mile 5 or 6 of a 20+ mile bikeride, speeding down a slight decline in GG Park. I saw it first. A flash of yellow/brown speeding towards my face. A half second later, a bee had somehow landed INSIDE my nose. And STUNG ME.

(August 17, 2007):

Intense sadness is painful...but it also reminds us of how alive we are, how fragile the heart is, and how lucky we are to be happy those other times.

(March 27, 2007):

Year of Calamities

2007, so far, has not been good to me. P had surgery that rendered him immobile for 3-4 weeks. Our brand new condo was flooded, gutted and continues to undergo reconstruction. Our car battery died the very morning after the flood, which was also the same morning that P's hamstring pulled in the middle of the night for no apparent reason (the doctor said this happens 1 out of 10 times after the type of surgery he had) and the same morning that I was supposed to drive us over to the hotel where we stayed while our condo was being dried out. P and I have both gotten parking tickets. I will owe the government a sizeable amount of taxes April 15. I was audited by the IRS (boo, the IRS is my public enemy #1). I have been in proximity with people who have passed away (one from natural causes/old age, one from a senseless, violent incident). I am currently on track to bill 2900 hours this year.

Despite all this, I generally feel like life is good. My life can be messy and disorderly (which doesn't mesh well with the anal control freak that I am), but it is full. I realize that a lot of this is attributable to living with P. There's something about having someone to go through everything with you that makes calamity so much more bearable. There's something about the presence of another person that makes a home a home, even if the carpet is ripped out, the walls are gutted and the books, furniture and art you love are covered with dust and drywall particles from reconstruction.

(January 2, 2007):

P's friend, a Korean-American male, visited with us for several days before Christmas. He recounted something his parents said to him: "We wanted one of our children to become a doctor, and the other to marry a Korean." His sister is in med school, he married a Korean. His parents further explained that they had been hoping he would become the doctor and his sister would marry a Korean. Instead, his wife and sister are both doctors-to-be while he is happy staying out of medicine. And his sister dates all kinds of people, but not Koreans.

I look around at my female friends and acquaintances and am awed by their intellect, drive and success. They are doctors, lawyers, bankers, teachers, engineers, scholars, movers and shakers, world-changers. Some are married, but many females that I know my age or younger are not - and they are perfectly happy. Men are our friends, lovers, partners, accessories...but they are not our masters, and certainly not our saviors.

I'm finally starting to put my finger on why so many young, professional Korean females are not married, or why they increasingly date and marry outside of the Korean race. And as most things in life, the parents (and Korean dramas) are to blame.

Kudos to the Korean-American immigrant parents who raised their daughters to think for themselves, pursue higher levels of education than the female generations before them and become whatever they want to in life. Our parents encouraged us to study hard, put our report cards on the refrigerator next to our brothers' and told us we were just as smart/good/strong as the boys. But...just as we graduate from professional and graduate schools and make our way up the corporate/academic/etc. ladder, they ask us: why aren't you getting married? They tell us that a woman's first and foremost job is to be a good wife and mother. And they tell our brothers to look for wives who are submissive (not in the arcane, old-world sense of the word, but more in the sense that they dislike potential daughters-in-law who are too sassy, opinionated or outspoken). But where are the soft-spoken, submissive Korean-American women who think it's still primarily a woman's duty to do all the cleaning, cooking and child-raising (after coming home from a full-time job)? Where are the demure, helpless women who take their man's word as authority or who bite their tongues when their fathers/brothers/boyfriends/husbands say something they disagree with? They're not out there because the same parents who told their sons that a good wife is demure and dutiful raised their daughters to think and speak for ourselves and not let anyone tell us we were any lesser because we were girls. Or, even if they didn't necessarily endorse their daughters' thinking and speaking for themselves, they encouraged higher education in America, and along the way we learned for ourselves that we are strong and smart. That our opinions matter. That we don't need a man to protect or save us. It's our parents fault for raising daughters one way, but teaching their sons to look for wives that are completely the opposite.

Korean dramas and social rules tell us that men should be the primary providers, the protectors, the head of the family. Women, smart and capable as they may be, are in constant need of protection and care. The ideal woman is physically frail and delicate. She is innocent and naive and can be taken advantage of by bad people. Her favorite activities are preparing meals for her family, art (either music or fine art), raising children and taking care of household matters. Women need men, who are physically dominant, emotionally mature, always able to tell between the good and bad guys, and much more suited to making the important decisions in life. NOOOOOOT!!

How women view the role of men in their lives has fundamentally changed since our parents' generation. We don't need someone to provide for us (Destiny's Child comes to mind: The shoes on my feet, I've bought it. The clothes I'm wearing, I've bought it. The rock I'm rockin', I've bought it. 'Cause I depend on me. If I wanted the watch you're wearin', I'll buy it. The house I live in, I've bought it. The car I'm driving, I've bought it. I depend on me). Doing laundry or making dinner is not the greatest thing we did today. We don't need someone to protect us from the world - we want someone who will engage/change/conquer it with us. But who will still open doors, offer us their jackets, take out the trash, put the toilet seat down and send us flowers just because.