Yeonjae Hwang/Chapter5 draft/Tues 1pm

 

Interviewing A.

 

I went to a girls high school that none of my friends went to. I was the only one assigned to go there, so when I entered the school I had no one in familiar and had to make friends all from the bottom line. However despite of my concerns, my first year of school life was successful. I made numerous friends from diverse groups, which all of them are still in close contact with me up to this day.

One of them is my friend called A. We were in the same class during our first year of high school, and after school we would seek for a delicious restaurant and spend pleasant times of our own. We talked a lot, contacted each other frequently, and met often even after our graduation. She was indeed one of my closest friends. I thought I had known the best about her and it was vice versa for her too.

But there was one thing I never knew since then. And this confession is based on what I have heard and interviewed from her. My friend was the only child who had lived happily with her parents. However, at the age of her middle school years, a small crack appeared on the surface of her parents' relationship. "I was too young to know such, but as time passed by I started to realize the difference and slowly felt that something was going wrong", she said. Back then, her mother was a normal worker at a company and her dad was an illegal moneylender. She said that she lived a very abundant life in terms of material wealth, "honestly, our family had a lot of money. Especially for my dad, he piled up bunch of money in a huge closet at our house and spent it as if he was using water, but you know what the strange thing was? The money never shrunk."

She told me that she still does not know the exact reason for her parents' divorce, yet she estimates that it perhaps would be due to her dad's occupation. Her mother originally knew his job before their marriage but as the job is first illegal and secondly is very harsh, which to the general public is known as a Korean version gangster, my friend reflects how hard it would have been for her mother to tolerate and sacrifice all those. "After their divorce, I stayed with my dad. It was when I was 15 years old. As I was young, I could not accept the fact that I had to live apart with my mom. Moreover, there were days when my dad did not come home for days. Later, I found out that he was in prison. Such life was repetitive for him and me. And sometimes, he brought up women that looked nearly as the same age as my mom to our house. Those new face women changed constantly. Although I was young then, I knew that it was his girlfriends." It was hard for my friend to understand her dad and accept the new faces, so there were times she shouted and swore at them whenever they showed up, eventually making them to stop coming to the house.

"I promised to myself that I would not live the same as my dad. But the fact that he is my one and only person never changes and as I am grown up than before, I am now able to control myself and manage to stop the inner conflicts within me. During my middle and high school years, I kept struggling to myself and was disappointed at things I could not change just because I could not accept the whole situation. Unlike then, now I somehow learned to accept and let go of some parts that is out of my control. So I feel a lot better and try not to care about it much." While answering to my questions, my friend looked very calm.

Concluding the interview, I asked her my last question: whether she has any regrets or not. "It would be a lie when I say no. Frankly, yes I do have regrets about what I have said to my dad when I was young. Yet, other than that, I have no regrets in terms of what I have done and my actions to handle the problem for myself." Indeed, my friend was as the bravest person that I've ever seen.

 

 

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