TRY IT, YOU’LL LIKE IT –
April 3, 2024 – I sat in front of my “real father” as he stared right through me like he always does. “I don’t see you,” he said in a stern voice. “You never have,” I whispered quietly back. “No one is going to hurt you,” my protector, a seven-foot burly Alaskan man, asserted in a deep, booming voice while sitting between us. I felt his bravado coarse through my body, and the tears started flowing as I expressed all the words I was never allowed to my father—my life’s greatest antagonist.
The saddest part is that it wasn’t always so bad. There was a time when I absolutely adored my father. He was all I knew—my everything. “Daddy’s girl” wasn’t enough to capture my love for him. I remember he would take me all over Seoul, snapping pictures on his film camera, dressing me up in 80s dresses in the 90s since Korea was behind in the times compared to the rest of the world back then. He was a girl dad, arranging bows in my hair before that term existed.
Anytime he had to leave, I would cry like it was the end of the world and yank his socks off so that he wouldn’t have to go. Maybe it’s because I was his first child, a girl, or because I look so much like my mother, but he loved and adored me in a special way that my younger brother never knew. He was my hero and protector until he became my greatest enemy.
