Take a gander

After almost a year living in Seoul, today marks one week left. In one week, I will be on a torturously long plane ride with layovers throughout China and Canada until I finally reach Philadelphia. 

Obviously, I’m excited to see my family. I’m excited to eat food from home, have the comfort of my family’s house back, play with my cat, be reunited with my garden, among other things.

But how do you go back to your normal life when you experienced so many things in a whole different world? Is it even possible? 

I’m going to miss the winding backstreets of Imun-dong, calm and sunny in the daytime. I’ll miss the ajumma selling mandu down the street from my school, the one my boyfriend thinks is a feminist because she gives free yogurt to girls but not boys. I’ll miss the colorful clothes sold around Hongdae, and the endless foreign shops (so expensive btw) in Itaewon. I might even miss the wide variety of subway-riding ajummas in Seoul: the ones who elbow you out of their way in the subway, the ones who creepily stare at you in the subway and say “yeppeuda,” the ones who sell random things in the subway, the scary-looking ones that always get off at Cheongnyangni-yeok….

I’m going to miss my school dongari with its abundance of musically-talented young Koreans who thrive on rock music in a society that shuns it: the ones I had bad first impressions of but learned to love, the ones that seem to only play Red Hot Chili Peppers songs, the ones who never seem to practice at all, the hard-working club president with his shaggy permed hair, the Koreans who lived all over the world (Indonesia, India, Brazil, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Guam, etc) but still ended up loving rock music, the boy with the bleached hair who got everyone in trouble with his crazy personality, the cute girl who I used to tutor English, the sexy girl who smokes like a badass (so taboo in Korea for girls to smoke) and still uses aegyo anyway, the sunbae who bought me ramen anonymously…..and of course the beautiful and quiet and somewhat socially awkward boy who plays bass better than anyone I’ve ever seen and who’d known me before I knew him and who sang harmonies with me at noraebangand who I fell in love with even though I honestly tried so hard not to…my boyfriend.

I don’t know how I’m going to be able to leave him behind.

Ugh I see this post already getting way too long and yet I could write for ages about everything else. I’ll stop now.

First I just want to say that I personally do NOT identify as a Christian Witch, however I am totally open to it, and I have a deep appreciation for both Christianity and Witchcraft separately as well.

Okay now.

I’ve been lurking around the Tumblr Pagan community, and it seems like a lot of people have problems with other people bashing their beliefs, saying immature things like, “You can’t be a (insert belief here), that belief doesn’t exist!”

Um….well someone believes it. So obviously it exists.

The funny thing about other people’s thoughts is that they exist independently of tangible reality and therefore whatever you can create in your head actually exists in theory. So a person’s beliefs, regardless of whether they ripped them off from someone else or took them from an age-old tradition or invented them based off their own spiritual contemplation…are all feasible. It’s nonsense to say (in the case I keep seeing) “You can’t be a Christian Witch, those don’t exist!” or “Those two beliefs contradict each other!” or whatever other shit people say. Because obviously you can believe it. Obviously if that person believes it, they have smoothed out possible contradictions on their own and they have no reason to justify themselves to any narrow-minded prejudiced assholes. It would be just as much nonsense to say, “You can’t imagine Legolas from Lord of the Rings dating Regina George from Mean Girls! They’re from two different stories!” Um, well do you really think that’s gonna stop a fangirl from writing Legolas/Regina crossover fics?

Okay…weird comparison.

But you see my point?

Faith is belief without proof, and if you can’t prove your beliefs then how dare you tell ANYONE that their faith is “wrong” or that they “can’t believe” it? Where do you find the downright gall to do something so narrow-minded and hypocritical as to judge someone else’s spirituality and presume that yours is more accurate than theirs? Again, how dare you tell someone they CAN’T believe something?? Sorry, honey, but they’re believing it anyway, so it looks like actually they CAN. Now shut up and go away.

My opinion on the matter.

—J

I can’t tell you how scary it is to have no air.

Like my lungs were not designed for oxygen.

I gasp and I wheeze and I sputter and I don’t even know why.

I just get nervous and it makes me feel like I can’t breathe anymore.

There is air in my lungs, I can feel it, I know it’s there, but my brain tells me it’s not enough, I need to try again, breathe deeper, it wasn’t enough, it’s never enough.

It’s all in my head, I know it.

When I forget it, I breathe easy.

But when I think of bad thoughts, remember bad things, the air goes away again, and I am gasping and wheezing and sputtering again

and people give me nasty looks because I look strange when I can’t breathe, and I make strange gasping sounds.

I can sometimes hide it rather well, which is good because sometimes I go entire weeks (often longer) with this constant feeling.

It goes away when I sleep.

But when I awake, it’s back, suffocating me.

I just want to breathe.

But no one can help me.

I’m trapped in my own body and it’s so hard to breathe.

I’m sick.

Been sick since Thursday.

Took my Syntax final sick.

It was okay but afterwards I was still sick.

Head hurts, fever, uncomfortable, overall gross.

I hate being sick ~_~

감기 아니고 무슨 일인지 천혀 몰라….몸이 빨리 좋아지면 좋겠어…..서울에 있는 시간 얼마 안 남아가지고 재밌는 걸 아직도 많이 하고 싶은말이야!!! 아~ 귀찮아 씨발

Nice quote^^ If there’s something you’re discontented with, change it. If you cannot change it, let go and come to terms with it. No reason to worry about anything.

Yay~~ today I weigh 56.6 kilos! My work is paying off~

And I wrote 2,000~ish words in my novel over the past day and a half. Productivity^^ Now if only I could channel that into studying for my Syntax final….

한국에 14일밖에 안 남았다……ㅠ

I strongly believe in the power of positivity. Right now I’m trying to use it to calm and heal myself.

The story is this: I have a Korean boyfriend here in Seoul and believe me when I say Western and Eastern culture is SO different; it’s quite astounding sometimes. Well, one of our school friends just walked in on my boyfriend and me making out. No big deal, right? Not for Koreans. My boyfriend made a huge deal about it, and I tried to comfort him and tell him it’s okay, but he regarded my “carefree” attitude with scorn, treating me like I was stupid just because I wasn’t stressed out over the situation. He was rather mean to me and it made me upset because it was so uncalled for.

I feel really tempted to bitch him out right now, but that would just make me a hypocrite, I suppose. For the most part it’s really just a laughable situation, right? It’s silly to fight over. 

*shrug*

Ah, I feel better. Life is beautiful.

Stay optimistic.

Just wanna say that today I weigh 57.2 kilos~ cool. Not so bad, right? Still gotta get back in shape though ^^”

Currently reading The Golden Compass for the first time…yeah I know, I’m probably the only fantasy fan who hasn’t read His Dark Materials yet. But I’m working on it! So far it’s a great book~

한국말 더 열심히 공부하고 있었으면 좋겠지만 요즘 기말고사 땜에 한국말대신 영어 구문론 공부해야지…잉 싫어…졸라 재미없어ㅠ

The third of my big goals is my novel. 

I’m a college student and I’m wasting putting all my hard-earned money towards my degree, but all I’m really thinking about as I attend my lectures and work on assignments is how I want to finish up the work at hand as quickly as possible so that I can get back to writing. All I’ve wanted to be my whole life is an author. It’s impractical and far-fetched but I want desperately to try it, and so I refuse to give up writing.

My progress has been slow recently though. I’ve been working on the same novel for about 5 years now and I’m still only about 40,000 words in. Granted, I did spend most of those years just planning and preparing to write.

Anyway, I’ve made it a goal to myself to finish at least a rough draft of the full manuscript before this time next year.

Gotta keep trying. :)

Spirituality is something that I want so badly but I don’t know how to get it.

My parents are über-Catholic and their beliefs really bother me at times but overall I have nothing against Catholicism or Christianity…I just don’t know if it’s my thing.

…..

It’s like…okay this is my brain right now:

I know there’s a god. But I don’t know anything about it.

I don’t know how many there are, or if it (they?) has/ve a gender, or what its teachings are or anything.

I just know something’s out there and I need to try to communicate with it and trust in it and let it guide me. I’ve felt its presence my whole life…I just have nothing figured out.

……

I take an interest in paganism particularly not because I’m sure of the multitude of gods (because I haven’t discovered that far yet) but rather because paganism tends to incorporate with it a sense of god in nature, the Earth, the human body…. Modern paganism (probably not ancient paganism) seems to be more about the individual’s journey rather than telling the individual what to do, or that the individual isn’t good enough, or that the individual is going to hell.

I can feel for that.