These days, a sense of gloom feels like it’s trying to seep into my everyday life.
But I haven’t been completely swallowed by it yet.
This semester’s architecture class assignment is to take two photos of nearby buildings and briefly explain their construction techniques. (My major is computer science, but I signed up for this class because I really wanted to try it.) Since I saw many buildings in France that looked striking to me as a Korean, I decided—after getting the professor’s approval—to choose some photos I had taken while studying abroad. That’s how I ended up opening the Pandora’s box that is my photo album.
I didn’t take that many photos during the five years I lived in France, but in every single one, I looked completely spaced out.
I looked as if I had never once considered how I might appear more attractive to others.
My head was, as it has been since birth, disproportionately huge as if it were trying to devour my whole body, and my legs looked oddly short—as if they’d been chopped off below the knee. The only reason the picture above looks “decent,” by my miserable standards, is because my feet are cut off, which conveniently hides how short my legs are.
Most people, after living long enough, gradually figure out the hairstyles, clothing, expressions, tones of voice, and even types of people that suit them. But I had been so deeply buried in my own inner world that I lived like some neglected sculpture standing awkwardly on the side of the road. Those five years were lonely.
But please don’t get me wrong—France isn’t a cold country. There were always kind people who reached out first. One professor at Le Mans University even asked me, without me ever saying “I have poor eyesight,” whether I needed an enlarged version of the exam paper. People like that existed. I simply failed to receive those relationships like a nest and settle into them.
I didn’t know who I was back then, and honestly, I still don’t.
You need an inner image of “this is who I am” in order to give yourself guidelines for how to act when interacting with others. Something like, “You’re this kind of person, so you should act this way to appear like that.”
But since I didn’t know who I was, my mood at any given moment ended up defining me. I was probably a deeply unpredictable and difficult person for others to understand.
I’d invite someone to spend New Year’s together, eat with them, and then suddenly leave because the noise overwhelmed me.
I’d refuse when my roommate suggested we go grocery shopping together (and she was really hurt by that),
and I’d leave messages from a close friend—someone I had spent my first two years in France with—unanswered because responding made me uncomfortable.
In that way, I simply let opportunities for connection slip away.
Whenever I talked to people, I always felt like I was merely a prop in their stories. I wanted to love someone wholeheartedly but felt like I couldn’t, while they seemed to decide, “This spot is for a lover, this spot is for a sentimental friend, this spot is for a work-related acquaintance,” and place me in one of those roles like a doll. (Pretty twisted of me, isn’t it?)
I’m not any different now, as I write this.
When I write, I fall into the illusion that I can suddenly see everything objectively—that I’ve somehow matured—but in truth, nothing has changed.
Do I want to change? Yes.
Do I know how to change? No.
At twenty, eager to change, I dragged myself to a soccer gathering even though I didn’t enjoy soccer (and couldn’t really play because of my narrow field of vision), only to be scolded for being terrible.
At twenty-four, I approached kids six years younger than me in France to try making friends—I even ran up to them first and introduced myself, asked for their contacts.
At thirty, determined to make myself known to the world, I went on a political YouTube channel with 100,000 live viewers and did an interview.
But all of these attempts turned out to be too big for me to handle, not catalysts for change but moments that crushed me even more. Still, I keep trying. I’ll continue doing strange things I’ve never tried before, searching for transformation.
A robot vacuum cleaner inspired me once. Watching it bump into borders again and again as it mopped and cleaned every corner made me realize, “If I want to understand the boundary between what I can and can’t do, I have to keep bumping into things too.”