Finding My Voice in Seoul
I was desperate for the weekend to last just a little longer. The night before, Mike and I made stir-fry using the one burner in the tiny kitchen of my Mok-dong studio. We took turns sautéing vegetables. Afterwards, we ate our dinner on mismatched plates while sitting on my smaller-than-twin bed, watching YouTube episodes of “The Cosby Show.” It was an unlikely scene for a romantic night in—my still-damp laundry was dangling from a drying rack in the corner, and obnoxious noise from the streets barged in through the open window. Still, we were in the honeymoon phase of our relationship, and we were content.
Mike was a big reason I was in South Korea in the first place. Shortly after I met him, I left my life and became an English teacher in Seoul to be near him. It was exhilarating to do something just for me, so far off-script for the obedient daughter and people pleaser I had always been. New job, new country, new boyfriend—I managed to make it all happen in a whirlwind three months, so fast that I had no time to sort through the wreckage of my previous life.
When I was with Mike I was able to forget, so when he told me he was heading back early to his place in Bundang, I panicked.
“Can you stay longer? We could watch more Cosby Show episodes. We could cook dinner again.”
“Maggie,” said Mike, a little taken aback by uncharacteristic mania. “You’ll see me next week.”
“You’re right,” I said, resigning to my looming solitude. “I’ll walk you to the station.”
In the alleyway before the main road, the one lined with cherry blossom trees in mid-bloom, Mike stopped me. The sun was in my eyes so I couldn’t clearly see his face, but I was holding his hand, and I knew he was looking at me.
“I love you, Maggie.”
Mike pulled my hand into his coat pocket.
“Wha...what? You do?”
He shifted out of the sun. My instinct was to look away, but instead, I studied his face. His green eyes were peaceful. There was a slight smile on his lips. I wanted to brush away the wind-blown cherry blossom petals out of his brown hair.
“I wanted to say it earlier,” Mike said. “I’ve known this for a while now.”
“You love me?” I asked again. We had only been officially dating for six weeks, but that didn’t explain my hesitation. My insides tightened. I moved 6,000 miles across the world to be with Mike, but I still didn’t know if I could let myself say the words back. I felt the guilt rising in me. I was paralyzed.
Four months earlier, I was in another apartment with my then boyfriend. I’ll call him Tim. “What if we broke up?” I asked. “And I move out, and you take the dog?”
Even in the act of breaking up, I couldn’t be assertive.
Throughout our relationship, I had enthusiastically gone along with whatever Tim wanted. Move to Lake Tahoe? I did that, even though that meant leaving my dream job as a sports writer in Utah. Ski almost every weekend during that record-setting snowfall winter I lived there? I did that, even though my anatomical features disagreed sharply with the physics of skiing. Get a dog even though I wasn’t too fond of pets? I did that, too.
“Even in the act of breaking up, I couldn’t be assertive. ”
I didn’t want to accept it but I had been having doubts about our future for months. It was more than just the 12-year age gap between us. It was the misaligned ways we moved through the world—him as a white, former all-American Ivy League lacrosse player and me, the oldest daughter of immigrant parents. It was also the opposite ways we felt about where we lived. He was invigorated and settled in Lake Tahoe, against a backdrop of white mountains and white friends. I, on the other hand, wasn’t like other Tahoe people. I didn't grow up doing challenging outdoor activities because life itself was challenging enough. A perpetual sadness hung over me in my life with Tim—living in Tahoe was a reminder of everything I wasn’t.
But in all of our time together, I never believed my discomfort was enough to leave. Then Mike came into my life. An internal voice bloomed from a subtle, consistent static to a clear and incessant directive: This is not your life. Your life is somewhere else.
I met Mike at my first residency of my MFA program. The low-residency format allowed me to participate remotely, except for the twice-a-year, 10-day residencies. My first residency was a cocoon that made me forget my real life. It was intoxicating to meet people with the same passion for writing, including Mike. It took a couple days for me to realize how handsome he was, but soon after, I couldn’t stop noticing him everywhere: outside of workshops, in line at the lunch buffet, at after-hours fireside conversations with other students. I learned that Mike was teaching English in Seoul. All of a sudden, I wanted to learn all about South Korea.
In this residency cocoon, I entertained my crush on Mike. I let it germinate and take root. By the time I saw Tim again, it was a beating thing in my chest.
After my break-up suggestion, Tim was shocked into an unsettling silence. I didn’t know how to navigate that silence, so I just stayed as still as possible.
“I never thought you would say that to me,” he said.
He moved from the living room and lay down on our bed, his face away from me. I followed him and stood in the doorway. Everything in my body wanted to comfort him, but something held me back. I didn’t want to unravel what took so much courage to say.
I, too, never thought I’d be the one to walk away—that was not the dynamic between us. Until then, I acquiesced in almost every aspect of our partnership.
This tendency was nothing new.
My upbringing taught me being agreeable was my most valuable attribute. It was an enduring effect of being the first-born child of immigrant parents. From an early age, I was a lifeline for my parents. I called phone companies and challenged bills that were too high. My brother was born with cerebral palsy, and I translated for my parents at doctor’s appointments. It was a small price to pay considering what they sacrificed to come here. They escaped war in Vietnam, trekked through jungles, survived refugee camps—all for the chance to give their children better lives. I wanted to make sure they never questioned their sacrifices, and so I did what was expected of me.
I never considered my willingness to adapt to other people’s feelings a detriment, and when I moved out of my parents’ house, I was well-trained. I behaved. I listened. I did not speak until I was spoken to. I had gotten good at ignoring my instincts, like when a boss scolded me for something I hadn’t done. Instead of standing up for myself, I suppressed that kindled coal of righteous anger, letting it burn in my chest until it fizzled out.
So often I talked myself out of ever hearing my own voice. Like the voice screaming inside of me as I sat next to Tim on a ski lift to the top of a black diamond run, back when our relationship was new. It was my very first ski excursion, and I wanted to impress him with my fearlessness. But the longer we were on the lift, my otherwise dormant fear of heights kicked in. Tears froze in my goggles as we got higher and higher.
“Do you think I can ride this thing back down?” I asked Tim.
“No, nobody does that. It’ll be fine. There’s an easier way down. I want you to see the view.”
Sure, I could see the entire resort but who cares about views when you’re terrified out of your mind?
That I continued to ski with Tim was a testament to how much I wanted his approval. So when I finally did speak up on that frigid night in his apartment, I refused to do what I had always done. Instead of letting him talk me into staying, I moved out the next day.
I was captivated by Seoul immediately. I arrived in the country late at night and had just a few moments to throw my things in my studio apartment before I went to reunite with Mike at Mok-dong Station. I loved the cherry blossom trees lining the main street that connected my building to the station. The small, white buds clinging onto the branches formed mini constellations in the trees. Neon signs advertising PC and karaoke rooms blinked fast above me. In the dark, there was something comforting about the smell of wet pavement and fishy saltiness, the olfactory remnants of the fish tanks outside the many restaurants open late for post-drinking meals. I walked past three crowded coffee shops. The streets bustled with people, taxis dodged pedestrians, and cars honked obnoxiously on every corner. An unfamiliar buzz coursed through me.
I knew that night that Seoul was where I needed to be—not to be Mike’s girlfriend, but for me to have a place where my life could be just my own.
Even though my move felt right and I was eager to jump into my new life, I was racked with guilt when I stepped off the plane at Incheon International Airport. What did I still owe Tim for breaking his heart? And what if I was making the same mistake, moving for a man again?
I couldn’t answer the first question, but I knew what I needed to do to keep from making the same mistake.
I chose to have a life separate from Mike’s in Mok-dong, which was a 90-minute from his apartment in Bundang. My teaching contract committed me to a year in Seoul, no matter if we worked out or not. Learning from other past missteps, I emphasized having an active and equal role by making sure my voice was heard. Mike asked me what I wanted to do and instead of saying, “Whatever you want to do,” I said I wanted to visit Buddhist temples in the capital city. We went on rigorous hikes together, and I didn’t hesitate to tell him when I needed to go slower at times. He laughed at my jokes. We talked about books and writing.
Other aspects of my life were falling into place. I had always resisted the idea of me as a teacher, but I found teaching kindergarten a joyful and natural role for me. At work, I was friends with the other teachers, and I was forming especially strong bonds with my female colleagues. It felt good to feel settled and comfortable, to not always wonder why I wasn’t fitting in. More than that, I was gaining more confidence in who I was becoming, a woman who took risks, who listened to her instincts, who trusted herself to pick herself up even if she fell.
Living in Seoul was freeing because it was the first time in my life there were no expectations of me. I wasn’t even expected to speak the language or even read the signs around me. I could breathe. I felt weightless. And for the times I needed to feel grounded and secure, I had Mike, a man who amplified my voice instead of making me feel like I needed to suppress it.
Nonetheless, doubts hovered around my head when Mike told me he loved me for the first time. The guilt made me pause longer than I wanted. I didn’t want Mike to think I was quiet because the feeling wasn’t mutual. In fact, I was deeply, unequivocally in love with Mike. I might have loved him as soon as I left that residency. The tension in the moment was more about what I was going to allow myself.
I wanted to forgive myself for breaking someone’s heart, for being the cause of an unexpected and deep wound. For wanting things to work out, and then for walking away. I wanted to accept that when I was with Tim, I didn’t know how to be anything but the product of my upbringing. He was my first real boyfriend, and I was obedient in that relationship because I was raised to be obedient. I wanted to finally forgive myself. I wasn’t sure I could fully do that just yet, but the first step in doing so was to let myself love and be loved. For the real me, not just the loyal girlfriend or dutiful daughter.
So after a silence that lasted longer than I wanted it to, I said back to Mike, my hand still in his, “I love you, too.”
Maggie Thach Morshed is an award-winning writer whose essays revolve around the themes of identity and assimilation. Her writing can be found in Catapult, Sport Literate, Parks and Point, Full Grown People, among others. Her essay, "Land and Water," was featured in the anthology Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility, which recently took the Silver for Foreword Review's Indie Book of the Year in the women's studies category.