Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Crying in H Mart

Books!


I finished it this time!


Opening line:

Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.


Why?

Sobbing near the dry goods, asking myself, Am I even Korean anymore if there's no one left to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?


On grief:

Sometimes my grief feels as though I've been left alone in a room with no doors. Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I'm colliding with a wall that won't give. There's no escape, just a hard surface that I keep ramming into over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.


About being a teenager:

By the time I was in high school, the desire for independence trailing a convoy of insidious hormones had transformed me from a child who couldn't bear to sleep without her mother into a teenager who couldn't stand her touch.

Into the vacuum of my disinterest, music rushed to fill the void. It cracked a fissure, splintered a vein through the already precarious and widening rift between my mother and me; it would become a chasm that threatened to swallow us whole.

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