All roads go back to mom
When I was in undergrad, I owned a cheap, acoustic guitar. It was my pride and joy. I only knew how to play a couple songs, but I would play them with charisma nonetheless. But here is the thing: I didn’t actually want to become a guitarist. I wanted—no, ached, to be seen as a guitarist. There’s a difference.
One night when I was out clubbing, I met a cute guy who had a Jersey accent. I became mortified when I realized I was slipping into a Jersey accent myself. When Toto’s “Africa” came on, I screamed “EYE LUV THIS SWONG!” He didn’t ask me for my number.
I suffered from a lack of identity. When you have a lack of identity, everything and everyone rubs off on you. Like ink on your fingers after you handle a newspaper. I would take on the appearance of anything around me. I was everything and nothing.
My relationship with my mother could only be described as volatile. Maybe it was the generational gap between a Korean immigrant and an American born daughter. Maybe it was her undiagnosed PTSD from having escaped North Korea as a child. Maybe it was being forced to watch a physical manifestation of your culture slowly dying off as a result of your choice to leave a war-torn country. Maybe.
My mother once told me she considered killing herself when she was pregnant with me. She already gave birth to my brother five years prior. And when I was pregnant with my first child, she told me that two children were too many to handle. I guess she spoke from personal experience. It wasn’t until later when I would recognize this to be an apology for being depleted by the time I came around. Like me, she was shapeless.
I don’t think I ever rubbed off on my mother. And she never rubbed off on me. We could embrace and release, never having left an imprint on one another. We were two shadows touching. When my mother hugs me, she hugs me from the side. I think she is afraid of what she would feel if our hearts got too close.
Being empty implies that there is something missing. My mother is not empty. She is full of the stories she never told me. I was an adult when I began researching the history of Korea and discovered Japan’s colonization of Korea. I read about “comfort women”, a euphemism for sex slaves, who were taken by Japanese soldiers. I knew in my bones that my ancestors were raped. My DNA vibrated as it confirmed my belief.
When I took an AncestryDNA test, I was relieved to find my results yield one-hundred percent Korean. Relieved, but surprised.
Until just this past October, AncestryDNA sent me an email. The subject line read, “Your AncestryDNA results have been updated.” I knew what the email contained before I even opened it and clicked on the link.
I am part Japanese.
No one in my family was married to a Japanese person. I was told my entire life that I was full Korean. AncestryDNA showed that there was only one region of movement: Korea. That would mean whatever happened that resulted in my mixed heritage happened on Korean soil; a Japanese person, presumably a soldier, was in Korea when someone was impregnated. My DNA whispered, You knew. Yes. I knew.
I knew because I am a sexual assault survivor. I am also an interpersonal violence survivor. I knew because I recognized it. The story—the trauma, felt familiar. I had an abusive boyfriend in college who used to say to me, “Even your mother doesn’t love you. You think you could find somebody other than me?”
A few months ago, I accidentally misspelled someone’s name I was trying to connect with on LinkedIn. I didn’t realize that I had spelled their name like my ex-boyfriend’s. My ex’s profile immediately came up. In his profile photo, he stood next to a little girl. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. I had hoped he was dead. Maybe stabbed in prison, where he was sentenced to after hurting another woman. No such luck. I hope he doesn’t end up calling his daughter a “whore,” too.
Last year, I found a new chiropractor. I reasoned that his office was closer to my house. I visited him sixteen times before I had to take my son with me to my adjustment. School was closed that day but I had forgotten when I made the appointment. When the doctor was done with my adjustment, my son asked me, “Why is that man touching you inappropriately?” My ten-year-old son, my precious boy, saw what I could not. I was being assaulted every time I was visiting my chiropractor. I didn’t recognize what was happening to me because I was disassociating every time. My head was on a chopping block and the next thing I knew, my eyes were blinking back at my body, still twitching. When will it know that I died?
Sometime afterwards, I told my son I called the police and that justice would be dealt accordingly. My son said, “I know that’s the right thing to do.” What he doesn’t know is that I couldn’t bring myself to call the police. Even now, I am fighting the urge to say I didn’t file a report because I’m not brave enough. But logic is chiming in and saying I can’t have him be a witness and go through the trauma of protecting his mother. I’m still unsure if I did the right thing. And I’m still unsure if I am lying to myself. I’m only sure that in that moment, I knew that the lie was important enough to shape his understanding of how the world should work to protect women. Asian women in particular, who are almost always perceived as fragile, oversexualized lotus flowers. Waiting to be plucked, then crushed in the palm of men’s hands.
I don’t know how a shapeless woman such as myself gave birth. How can something be produced from nothing? Sometimes, I feel as though he gave birth to me, as he breathed life back into me. I wonder if my ancestors saw my son in utero and fed him their stories. I wonder if my DNA uploaded a new chapter, a new start; I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I had a boy. The women of my ancestors have endured an amount of trauma that would fill an ocean. And you wouldn’t know it until you heard the tide come in, rolling over rock and sand that struggles to remember. After my boy was born, I no longer became shapeless. He gave me an outline and filled me in. To my surprise, my boy sees me as loyal and ferocious. Maybe because he knew I was never a lotus. My boy always recognized me as a tiger.
About the Author
Joan Sung is a national cultural competency conference presenter and consultant and has a BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing, an MA in English, and a Doctorate in Education. Her articles regarding Asian American voices have been published in TinyBeans.com, Mochi Magazine, Memoir Magazine, and Writerly Magazine. She lives in the Seattle area with her husband, her son, and two dogs.
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