Your Problems Are Like a Bad Tattoo
No matter how far or often you move, they will always follow you.
With the turbulent past year coming to an end, and the new year beginning, I have been doing a lot of reflecting. Maybe, it is because all I do with my days is watch Kim’s Convenience for the 5th time and the comedy special that is, Inside the NBA on TNT in the wake of the James Harden trade. All of this, me sitting on my ondol (Korean heated floor system) ambling away on my dying laptop has led to some rather drastic yet reinforcing life decisions. Quoting my favorite Korean proverb once more, 고진감래 ko-jin-kam-nae, “Much bitterness before sweetness”. I hope that the 2020 segment of my life in Korea encompasses the bitterness and the 2021 segment results in at least a little bit of sweetness.
Around two weeks ago over the New Year’s Holiday, I visited Busan for the second time in a month. My plan was to look at some apartments and really get a vibe for the city while I was still taking language classes in the mornings. As opposed to my first visit where I was in “my credit card has no limit” vacation mode.
Despite thoroughly enjoying my visit, walking on the beach, and smiling every time I saw palm trees, I knew then that I was extremely depressed and that the prospect of moving to a new city amidst depression seemed impossible as well as disastrous. However, upon returning to Seoul, my depression festered to the point where I set up a virtual apartment tour for a tiny studio on Gwangalli Beach to potentially sign a lease while still having 7 weeks left in language school.
Simultaneously, I was also passively grinding my way through language classes. What does, “passively grinding” mean? To be blunt, it means I was showing up to class, actively participating and trying hard, and doing the metric f*ck-ton of homework that my language program assigns. In the “passive” sense, as soon as I hit the glorious Leave Meeting button in Zoom, I wouldn’t think about Korean until the next day at 9:10 AM and any portion of the metric f*ck-ton of homework we were assigned was most likely done through the answer key with heavy usage of the Korean-English translation app of Papago.
Without Papago, I would weigh 10lbs less and still be in level 1 of Korean. I would literally be a 6-year-old with a credit card in a man’s body. Unable to interpret menus and my phone plan contract let alone my Korean textbooks, this app has saved me every day.
Near the end of the dreaded holiday season, and with language class in full swing, I needed to take inventory on my raging depression. While I have been stuck in a state of depression ever since starting uni, this state of depression somehow ebbed this past summer during quarantine at my parents’ house in Seattle. I think the prospect of moving to Korea and the perceived excitement that comes with moving sort of helped to bring about a more optimistic mindset of covid. Fast-forward to 2021 and I find myself back in the same downward spiral of my 4th year at uni last winter/spring. I have rationalized two factors fueling my depression in Korea:
1. Language being tied to the concept of Korean Identity
2. Feelings of being new and floating through life here
Thus, my rational solutions to my rationalized problems are:
1. Leave language school and hope GOA’L doesn’t get mad at me for leaving mid-way through their full ride scholarship → and later enroll in more low-key chill classes at a Korean language 학원 hagwon (private school sorta thing)
2. Sign a lease and embrace the privilege of being 22 years old living in a trendy neighborhood of the 11th most expensive city in the world
I guess we’ll see how well my solutions work…
Ever since graduating high school, I have moved every fall thinking that I need a fresh start and that I just need to find my people. Every time I do this, the excitement of moving briefly makes me content and then the reality of being lonely and not being familiar with anything results in the same rut of depression and thus me planning my next move out. This time, I hope to recognize this pattern by staying in Seoul, living life post-covid, and finally just staying put somewhere. I want to end this pattern sooner rather than later and stop reinforcing the idea of moving from my problems. If I brought baggage to Seoul, then I would certainly be bringing it to Busan or Bali as well.
Your problems are like a bad tattoo. It will always be with you. Either you learn to embrace its imperfectness or take action and get it covered with a new piece. But you can’t keep moving about life ignoring it expecting it to magically fix itself.
In being split right down the middle between deciding on Busan or Seoul, I wondered, why do I like Busan so much? Is it a coincidence that I’ve had the best burger, best 치즈 돈까스 cheese tonkatsu, and best 카레 Japanese curry in Busan? Why do I seem to have more conversations on bumble in Busan? Is it just language school inhibiting my dopamine receptors or is it the 25 million of Seoul? Is it because I just want to get out of where I’m at right now and move asap? I ended my last post saying something along the lines of, “Being unable to commit to Seoul and therefore being unable to be happy”. But, what if I made some changes in the new year and became happy in Seoul? A friend recently suggested that sometimes we get caught up in the living aspect of Korea. Sometimes, it’s good to be a tourist in your own city and realize why you fell in love with Seoul 3 years ago. A feeling so strong that you packed up and moved here 3 years later. Maybe my unhappiness is less centered around Seoul and more on my old perspective. Isn’t that what they say, that life is all about perspectives?
As I forked over the initial deposit to secure my new apartment contract, some reflecting made me realize something. Two weeks ago, I was amidst an intense language course and about to sign a lease at an apartment I had never laid eyes on 200 miles away. Upon leaving language school, I am no longer severely stressed, my daily anxiety and mental well-being have drastically improved, and I have an apartment in Seoul. The fact that I would even consider getting up 4 weeks into my language program and moving amidst a pandemic to Busan, a city where I knew no one is truly wild. It is a sign of my crippling anxiety and depression associated with language school — an experience that was not providing positive identity reinforcement nor intrinsic reward. Realizing the irrationality of this move and taking into account my moving track record, I am confident that staying put for once will provide happiness.
