On living the life we don’t want.
I’ve been battling boredom for the past few days while watching the first five episodes of this drama, entitled ‘Our Beloved Summer.’ Nothing much, unless you happen to witness a woman and a man who used to be in a relationship and have finally reunited after 5 years. Until the sixth episode came out when it finally shows the root cause of their unfinished business. Seeing a woman who fought so hard to live her life while in a relationship with a guy whose life is somewhat steady, yet they both ended up hurting each other. This scene truly hit home for me with the fact that I’ve spent nearly 21 years of my life living with no option to begin with. I failed on reaching my dream and so I accidentally need to live the not-so-called-my-dream life. Just like what Kook Yeon Soo said,
“I’ve always thought my dream was to live an average, normal life”
“Maybe this wasn’t what I wanted. Maybe I never had a choice to begin with”
And so this goes out to me. I’m frequently being asked what my dream is and the question will leave me hanging for a while. The answer will always be to have a happy stable life. I can’t even define what it means to have a happy stable life itself. The idea of my dream is still blurry. The past failure haunts every part of me. The question of ‘why’ constantly wrapping my head. As the firstborn daughter, I am supposed to plan all the things, earn the degree straight 4 years and pay the bills. Mentally, though, I never truly grew up. I feel like the clock stop ticking when I was 17 and currently I feel like an unfunctional adult. This hits me hard. I feel foreign even to myself, yet I feel obligated to explain everything.
Perhaps I can put myself in Kook Yeon Soo’s shoes and learn something. She ignored her emotions. She didn’t let herself feel anything. But, in the end, she unconsciously projected her grief onto others, even if she didn’t mean to.
So, be vulnerable. Some things might be unclear for now. Normalize making mistakes, taking the wrong path because sometimes the path itself is unclear enough to be understood. Everything that belongs to you, will always find its way to you.
