How to Detest God_Part 3

I said earlier the 'first time’ I gave both my middle fingers to God, which means there have been more occasions of me doing the action of blasphemy. I’m not proud of this, but I can’t count them on one hand but two. As I aggressively poked the air with my middle finger(s), I either internally shouted ‘f*ck you’ or replaced the swear with an external scream that sounded like that from a wild animal in great agony. Some of these occasions were when I was overwhelmed with negative emotions over my failed attempts at redemption—redemption for the missed opportunity to study in America, that is. I kept applying for graduate programmes and scholarships, and it took a few years for me to finally procure both a place in a master’s programme of my choice and a scholarship that covered most of the expenses needed. Some other times that I resorted to the profane outburst, having failed to contain my anger and misery, were when my mum gave me a hard time with her verbal attacks during my prolonged period of being a baeksu (jobless moocher). These episodes are too numerous and depressing to relate, so I’ll tell you instead about two instances where I couldn’t even give God the good old ‘up yours’.

Naturally, the first one was after I relinquished my chance at the American dream I’d nurtured all my life. I was wallowing in regret and couldn’t at all seem to move on from the missed opportunity. I felt like a complete failure, although in any case, I should’ve felt the opposite since I’d attained a prestigious scholarship and admission into renowned institutes. It was something a ‘dirt-spoon born’, as Koreans put it, isn’t expected to be able to achieve nowadays, unlike in the olden days where a smart, studious person could be a ‘dragon born out of a brook’ (Korean idiom meaning a successful person from a poor family). In fact, even when I spent time with my fellow scholarship recipients before forgoing the opportunity, the invisible chasm between me and them was sharply felt at my end; they seemed much more comfortable not only financially but emotionally as they had higher self-esteem and self-confidence. And most of them excelled in not only studying but dating and relationships, which have never come easy for me. Nevertheless, I was a rare case of a modern ‘brook dragon' and ought to have felt proud, but it’s hard to feel that way when what you worked so hard for went down the drain and you’re left with nothing whatsoever. All I had at the time was brimming anger and a deep feeling of deprivation. But God clearly thought that it wasn’t enough.

I had a friend called Minnie from middle school. When I first met her, I’d just transferred to the girls’ middle school we went to from an unruly unisex one after a traumatic event of being subjected to school violence and ostracisation at the latter. (I’ll be uploading an instalment on this experience.) From the beginning, I was in awe of Minnie for she was just too perfect. She was very pretty with almost transparent porcelain skin, big doe eyes with long black eyelashes and delicate nose and lips. She had a well-rounded personality and a quiet, feminine demeanour. She was smart and an excellent student with good grades. She was from an elite family where her father was a professor at a university, I believe. She simply had no flaws at all.

The bullying at the previous school had left me wary and diffident with damaged self-esteem. And it didn’t help that my family’s financial situation was at one of its lowest at the time. My dad was a part-time lecturer who had to travel to various universities to teach, and sometimes he didn’t even have that work. One day, mum made doenjang soup with only some bits of a carrot because it was all there was in the fridge. Since I couldn’t have been more different—inferior, that is—to Minnie in all aspects, I felt honoured that she’d befriended me. So I used to treat her to meals and snacks all the time (mum never skipped my monthly allowances regardless of how tight things were), despite the financial gap we had—or maybe precisely because of it.

In our third year in middle school, Minnie moved to America. After graduating from high school, she first went to a public university and then transferred to an Ivy League one. We kept in touch during our high school years, sending each other Christmas cards and meeting up when she visited Korea. As university students, it was mainly on Facebook that we kept in contact. She continued to be an idol to me, going to an Ivy League school and spending a year in Italy as part of her studies, both of which were my own dreams that never materialised.

In the winter when I was an emotional wreck after the double whammy of quack crisis and abandoned American dream, she contacted me for the first time in years. She messaged me on Facebook, asking to have lunch with her. I met Minnie at a cheap buffet restaurant. I was updated on how wonderful her life had been. First, she was engaged to a guy who worked at one of those big-name investment banking companies. She was wearing a humongous diamond wedding band on her ring finger. It was almost ridiculously big and shiny that even her pretty face was blotted out by it. She told me the story of her fiancé’s proposal, and I’ve forgotten most of it apart from its end. It was either a romantic picnic or a romantic dinner at some fancy restaurant where he also played a tune on the piano, or maybe I’m just making it up with my limited resources from the scant reserve of romantic things in my brain. Anyhow, there was a plot twist at the end, because he gave her a box of chocolates, which she opened and found a single whole walnut inside. She was bewildered since she was allergic to walnuts. He told her to open it, and when she did, there was that irritatingly gigantic diamond ring.

On top of being engaged, she had been accepted to the MBA programme at the very Ivy League university I should’ve gone to. It was one of the institutes I’d gained admission to, the one I’d turned down first despite having been offered a bursary, because it was three-year long, wherein the students focus on writing a feature film script in the last year. One of the main issues being a monetary one, one more year of study meant an even bigger financial burden. For some reason, I always regretted forgoing my place at this school more than the other, as if I’d made a decision against what was meant to be. 

Minnie’s twofold happy news was like a double stab in my stomach (because the pertinent Korean saying goes, ‘one has a “stomachache” when one’s cousin buys a patch of land’). I’d always dreamt of a great romance but it never came about. And out of all those Ivy League business schools she could’ve gotten into, why did it have to be the one that I’d given up my place at, eh? Minnie and her life were perfect, just perfect as per usual, and I’m fine with it, but was all the rubbing it in really necessary, God? Huh?

Then I realised that it may be true that nobody can ever be perfect, not even Minnie. The purpose of her asking me to lunch was to invite me to her wedding ceremony in Korea (she was having two ceremonies, one in Korea and the other in America) and ask me to be the secondary (or was it tertiary?) photographer at her outdoor wedding shoot. Now, note that we hadn’t met in person since high school and had only been in touch online sporadically during our university years. It’s a common practice for Koreans to reconnect with their friends and acquaintances whom they haven’t been in touch with for a (long) while right before their wedding so that they can invite them to it (and collect the congratulatory money). For me, the very idea is absolutely ridiculous, but it is how it is. What with the pandemic and a popular celebrity setting an example of having a small wedding with only immediate family members and closest friends, there seemed to be a growing trend of keeping it low-key for a while. But the majority are still having their wedding ceremonies the same old way, in a ‘wedding hall’ where they invite hundreds of people and collect money from them. Minnie and I had been good friends from a young age, so it wasn’t too materialistic or selfish of her to invite me to the wedding. And since I studied filmmaking, it’s understandable that she wanted me to snap some shots at her photo shoot. But when you ask a friend to do a favour of being an unpaid assistant photographer as well as to come to your wedding with cash as a wedding gift, don’t you think you ought to buy her a meal at least? I mean, all that boasting in my face when I was a miserable mess alone called for treating me to more than just a meal. It was unfair as it is that I used to buy her a lot of meals and snacks without reciprocation when we were kids. And it was so unfair that my life was profoundly deprived of love and success and therefore in stark contrast to that of Minnie’s. So I light-heartedly nudged her to pick up the tab for the meal we shared, but she was plainly reluctant to pay that insignificant amount of money, saying that her dad had to spend so much for her (not one but two) wedding ceremonies. Who would have thought Minnie, who’s from a well-off elite family and had studied at an Ivy League school and was going to do an MBA at yet another prestigious institute, would be a penny-pincher? So yeah, it is true that nobody ever is perfect.