Hate Ain’t Great

The word wall in my gray matter has frozen with its little rainbow ball spinning. Writing has always been natural for me … like breathing.

Oh my soul! It is pale blue from suffocation. There lays one lung unable to accommodate air, while the other … unable to exhale. We know what happens when the brain is left without oxygen. Parts of it die.

I cannot make sense of my life as a Korean, as a transracial adoptee, as an …

Do. Not. Say. That Word.

Save us all from that word.

… American!

Navigating through a multi-layered identity as a transracial adoptee is like the Los Angeles commute. All roads lead to absolute standstill. The standstill was tolerable if there was a good audiobook, but those days are over. Ignoring the systemic problem only sustained the status quo.

In my earlier straightforward life, I was that girl who loved America. It had saved me. I played the game well … good student … good wife … good parent. The American dream was mine … until it wasn’t.

What I hid, I regret. Alone without my white privilege, without my adoptive family, without my white husband, I was reminded that I was owned by those who saw me as an object … men who sexually assaulted me before my marriage, men who smacked my ass when my husband was not around, men who touched my face when my husband was seated next to me, and then, the agencies and people who lied to me.

Korea allowed me to face the truths and gave me the ability to swim the sea of like selves. It was euphoric, until I spoke. While Korea felt like it should be mine, it just wasn’t quite mine.

I returned to a place I once called “home,” to find a man who embodied hate, rustling the leaves to reveal the dog shit underneath. The shit is teaming with parasites that invade my home from the bottom of my shoe. They are looking to find a way into my body, and here, these parasites will infect me and eventually kill me.

The America I left has devolved into a hellish, toxic place.

In this place, my son can be asked why he is walking in his own neighborhood.

In this place, a young man can be beaten to death because he is Saudi Arabian.

In this place, a man can rape an unconscious woman and serve little time because the rapist has been traumatized.

In this place, a presidential candidate can talk about grabbing “pussy” as locker room talk and still garner a substantial percentage of the electorate.

In this place, a young transracial adoptee can be assaulted in an Idaho locker room.

This is not America, and may it never see hate as great again.