My Side Of The Story: Turning Point

We moved to the Montgomery County area of Maryland and enrolled me in Neelsville Middle School. My life here was pretty much the same as it was in Buffalo, except for a few changes.

Bullies here were more violent. Me, being a quiet Asian loser...I was a very easy target. I didn't have much of a problem with bullying before that, but then they started jumping me after school.

A lot of Americans don't wanna admit to this, but racism against Asians is accepted and tolerated in America. Especially among black people. I was repeatedly harrassed day and night for being Asian not only in middle school, but also nowadays. To this day I get someone coming up to me and going "ching chong" and darting off every five seconds. I mean every day. I walk into a room and people immediately start laughing because I'm Asian. And in middle school people used to just start throwing shit at me. And if I dare to say something back, they come and gang up on me and beat me up. There was so much racist bullying in school.

I distinctly remember a group of Hispanic girls who I got into altercations with repeatedly. The ringleader's name was...Jessica? I don't know for sure. I don't know what I did to piss her off; I don't remember how it started. It just did. I argued back at first; I tried to hurl insults back and forth along with them. But after a while, they got to me. Soon they saw that I didn't respond anymore and like they always do, they assumed they could get away with whatever they did to me.

At the time, they were right. So they took advantage of the situation.

We took the same bus home so it wasn't like I could hide from her and her little minions. Back then, I had such low self-esteem that yes, I would've resorted to physically hiding from a so-called 'enemy'.

When the blonde chick decided to pull my hair in the middle of the street on my way home though, I smacked her. Then the whole little crew jumped on me. I couldn't tell what was what. I was trying to fight off 3 or 4 girls at once. I was kicking and punching but I didn't know what the hell I was hitting.

Then I felt my body being lifted off the ground. They carried me over to the sidewalk; and they opened my mouth against the curb. The blonde girl put her foot on the back of my head.

"Jessica!" Suddenly, an older woman's voice interrupted us. "What did I tell you about that shit? Get over here before I whoop your ass!"

I was saved. Jessica and her friends got off me and went home. I dusted myself off and tried to clear my mind. That was the first time I had been banked (banked is Baltimore slang for jumped) so I was humiliated. That is when I learned what "curbing" was. I didn't like to tell anyone about that because of my pride. I was enough of a loser as it was. What would they think if they learned that I was being kicked around like a little bitch? Instead, I tried to gather my self-esteem and stand up for myself. I wasn't very successful.

Me and Jessica's friends fought a couple of times after school before I resorted to something very low. We shared the same class and Jessica had left her foam cup of kool-aid on her desk to go chat with some random girls.

I took the oppurtunity to switch her blue kool-aid with nail polish remover. When Jessica came back, she was still so busy running her mouth that she didn't bother pausing before taking a large gulp of what she thought was juice.

I couldn't help it; it was hilarious to me at the time. Such a fucking relief. I don't know what happened after she went to the nurse's office except that they had to take her to a hospital to have her checked out. Nobody ever found out it was me.

We still scrapped after school until she moved away. Having no friends and not getting along with my stepmother, I turned to my father for comfort. I could tell him about almost anything and he'd sit and listen.

Back then, I was like any other child. Until that one day when he decided to change everything.

We were just watching TV. I was sitting on his lap (which is not abnormal in Korea as long as it's within family and the child is young) when his hand suddenly grabbed my breast.

Now, at eleven years old, I wasn't too familiar with sex; but I knew certain places and actions were associated with it. My mind froze. I was in shock more than anything.

'What the hell is going on?'

His hand started to fondle my breast. I sat there like an idiot for a while. I don't know why-maybe it's because I didn't wanna face what was happening and was waiting to wake up from a dream or something. But after a while, I slapped his hand away-yes, slapped-and got off his lap.

He laughed...casually. CASUALLY. Like nothing unusual had happened. I didn't say anything-I just ran to my room and slammed the door. Certainly I was overreacting, right?

But then I'd wake up with my body in strange positions I know I don't sleep in. I paid no attention to it. Until that night, when I happened to open my eyes and see my body in another unusual position-and my dad feeling me up.

He immediately flew back into his bed-the bottom bunk-and pretended nothing happened.

So did I. I pretended to sleep. I pretended to not have seen anything; but now I knew why I kept waking up in those weird positions.

He acted as if nothing was going on, even when we were alone. If I even hinted at the fact that something was wrong between us, he'd get extremely angry and hit me. My stepmother always agreed with him, talking about how "weird" I was and how I took the smallest thing as a sexual advance; even though I hadn't said anything.

In Korea, it isn't unusual for family members to sleep in the same bed. It's not seen as a sexual thing when it's between family members. Neither is taking baths together-as long as it's between members of the same sex, or either one or both of the parties are small children.

During that time my parents weren't getting along, so my stepmom slept with my half-brother in one room-yes, they shared a bed-and my dad slept in my room in the bottom bunk of my bunkbed (I had insisted on the top one).

But after that I started to back away from physical contact; even hugs. Especially from my dad. As a child I had no problem sleeping in the same bed with him; now I refused. My stepmother would take that as a sign that I was becoming way too Americanized and betraying my family and country. I never blamed her though, because I never told her what was going on. I didn't have the nerve to. Looking at how they acted when I even hinted at it...I was scared of what would happen if I ever said it out loud.

I seriously think that when he first started, my dad thought that I was too young to know what he was doing and that he'd get away with it. He thought me that clueless that I didn't know when I was being molested.

In Korea, it is believed that children are basically their parents' property. "They gave you life, and they can take it away". Children cannot talk back or show rebellious behavior of any kind or sort; that would lead to caning or beatings with some sort of stick. They're aware of the cultural differences in America. However, because of their extreme amount of pride, they strive to keep living the way they did in Korea and shun American culture.

That is, the older generation does. The parents do. But their children, who have to go to school, etc. and interact with Americans each day, and also have not had the Korean belief system as heavily stomped onto their brains like their parents, embrace American culture. That is extremely common among immigrants; and that is why so many immigrant children develop an 'identity crisis' as they feel they are torn between two worlds. They are; and the children who so called 'snitch' on their parents while in America are seen as the lowest of the lowest.

They are completely aware that the way they treat kids isn't accepted here. Within the communities of Koreans in America, it's an unspoken rule to keep treating kids the way they do and never, ever let outsiders know about it. After all, they're just "stupid Americans". There's absolutely nothing wrong with our family-this is the way it's supposed to be. The family knew it, the other Koreans knew it, and everyone that knows you back in Korea knows it. If you don't agree, shame on you, you traitor. If you tell on your parents, you're the bad guy, they're the victims, you're disgusting.

My family was no exception. Me and my brother kept quiet about what happened at home; though I was always jealous of him because my parents were never as harsh on him as they were on me. The reason being that when it came time for him to grow up, they were Americanized a bit, whereas when I was that age they were strictly accustomed to Korean culture.

I don't know about him, but I was always going on guilt trips. One minute I hated them so much; the next minute, I was scolding myself for being such a bad child. One part of me felt it was only natural for me to tell on them like I did in 5th grade, another part of me felt that I was a heartless monster taking advantage of them.

I felt guilty every time I came close to saying out loud what was going on between me and my father. A daughter who accuses her own father of such things is, by Korean standards, a disgusting creature, even if she's telling the truth. I wanted symphathy. I wanted someone to tell me that I was not the bad guy, and my feelings were okay. But as we all know, someone like that isn't gonna pop up out of nowhere.

The myth that I hate most about self-injurers is that "they're only doing it to get attention let's ignore them". Um, hello? If you were drowning, wouldn't you want attention? If your house was on fire, wouldn't you want attention? That's like saying "oh he's only hungry, let's not feed him".

On top of that, very few self-injurers want attention. The only kind of attention you'd receive is the kind that'd fuck up your life. In the rare case that someone does seek attention by doing this, it is because they have been so blatantly ignored and neglected that they desperately need it like a starving man needing food.

Like I was when I was eleven.

There were two girls that moved in the area-Jessica and Amanda-around the end of the school year. We instantly got along and became buddies.

Ironic, isn't it? Her name had to be Jessica.

One day, we were hanging out in the girls' restroom, chatting. I don't know what we were talking about but the subject of our families came up. And I chose to spill out everything I'd been hiding.

"I've never told anyone about this, so please keep it secret." I said.

"Don't worry. We won't tell." They replied. "We keep private stuff private."

That was the worst answer they could ever have given me. Sure, I had said out loud that I didn't want them to tell, but the reason that I told them about everything was because I was hoping that they'd get the hint somehow and symphathize with me. Perhaps they'd go to the guidance counselor and tell her what I'd told them; and then, it wouldn't be my fault! I wouldn't be a traitor because I was not the one who snitched-it was a secret between friends, and I had even asked them not to tell anyone. I would be innocent, and finally, something would be done about all this, whether it was right or wrong. But I was hoping for too much I guess.

Oh, the guidance counselor. I went to see her repeatedly in 7th grade. She was never symphathetic, and soon, she began to rush our sessions, trying to get rid of me when I called for her help. She got tired of me, and just wanted me out, she didn't believe a word I was saying. Once, she met my stepmom. Now of course she's not gonna act in public the same way she acts in private, but apparently the counselor didn't think of that. She kept babbling about how "wonderful" she was and how much she "loved me" and called me ungrateful. Even though I'd told her about the beatings, I'd told her about how she threw books and me and slapped me around, but she didn't believe me.

That night, I took a pair of scissors and drew the blade up my left forearm. Perhaps then, maybe somebody would sense something was wrong and try to assisst me. Maybe then, after seeing these scars, my parents would stop blaming me and pity me instead.

I did this for three nights in a row. I did not get what I wished for. My dad found out first, but he was more worried about how others would take it.

"You gotta stop doing that! People are gonna think it was me!"

After that I stopped; only to start again the next time I had an "altercation" with my stepmom. The pain on the outside distracted me from what I was feeling on the inside. In a weird way, I was in control! Finally, it was me causing the scars, not someone else! And afterwards I could clean up the blood and "make it all better", the way I could not do with life. I was in control.

At the time, I didn't realize it, but I was becoming addicted to it. When I felt too numb-because hey, we all gotta learn to numb ourselves from time to time or else life would destroy us-it shocked me into feeling; it jolted me and it reminded me I was still alive. I was not dead; I was still feeling.

Every time your body receives an injury, your brain releases feel-good chemicals or whatever called endorphins to heal it. And the endorphins do just that-make me feel good. When my blood spilled out my body, it was like so was everything negative I had been feeling. All the pain inside my body washed out of it along with the blood.

During those cutting sessions, I was in heaven. I was the ruler. Nothing was beyond my control. I was as alive as could be and was living life to the fullest. And it was no longer about getting noticed like it was when I first started. Now, I was just addicted to it. I started hiding my scars because I now knew how people would react.

About the altercations with my stepmom. After I told the counselor about them in 5th grade, I guess she became kind of wary of that, so they stopped using rods on me since that would leave marks. Puching, slapping, throwing things at me, kicking, etc. was okay though, because if you hit someone with your open hand it likely won't leave a mark.

And once again, all of those things are normal in Asia. It is not considered abuse there to slap, punch, kick, or throw things at your own child, it's considered normal discipline. Of course, Asia does have standards for beatings. If your child dies, that's abuse. If their skull splits open, that's abuse. If their bones break, that's abuse. But as long as the child isn't seriously hospitalized, it's not abuse. Bruises and cuts and completely okay.

My stepmother however, was rather sadistic even by Korean standards. They can tell the difference between someone who uses a 'rod of love' and someone who's just taking their anger out on their kid and my stepmom was the latter. She was rather mentally manipulative and sadistic about it, she'd call me all sorts of names while she did it and she basically used me as her stress ball. I think it made her feel powerful to make me feel bad and that's why she enjoyed it. I couldn't do anything without her chewing me out about how I needed to be in a mental hospital (she said this to me while she was the one throwing books at me and throwing a shitfit).

Some of the stuff we fought about was normal stuff, like the clothes she made me wear. She was still not that used to the US and was unaware of a lot of aspects of American culture (she's real arrogant and thinks she knows everything about everything, but she's actually very sheltered and doesn't know much about anything besides Korea. Even after years in the US, she just can't get it through her head that USA 2000's in NOT like 1980's South Korea. But of course, if I tried to correct her, she'd be all "YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING YOU'RE JUST A KID HOW DARE YOU TALK TO ME LIKE THAT" and start punching me). In places like Korea and Japan, women are expected to be "cute" more than anything, so a lot of times, this ridiculously cute and pink fluffy stuff will come in style. And she'd try to make me wear stuff that was popular in Asia.

What she was unaware of was that in America, women are expected to be "sexy", not "cute", and that if I dress like THAT to school in the US, they'll most likely beat me up. I mean Jesus, I don't give a damn if everyone in Korea's wearing bright pink coats, or purple high-waisted highwaters (that's another thing, she just doesn't get that no one wears high-waisted pants anymore and that highwaters are "nerdwear" in the US, and the gaudy embellishments are tacky as fuck).

But she never listened. She'd be like, "Oh, you're a kid, what do you or your friends know about style!" She was studying to be a hairdresser at that point, so she was under the impression that if she said something looked good then it's true and I was "arrogant" for questioning her. Not wanting to be slapped, I wore what she bought me to school.

And, like I predicted, everyone started looking at me weird and laughing at me. Part of the reason I didn't have a lot of friends at that point was because of the stuff she made me wear, but if I told her that, she'd start laughing at me or getting angry. She'd ask her own friends, 40 year old Korean immigrants for validation that her clothing choices for me looked good, and then turn to me and go "see I'm dressing you well"...completely ignoring the fact that they were, you know, FOURTY YEAR OLD KOREAN IMMIGRANTS who probably knew nothing about current American fashion trends.

But the weirdest thing she did was that she'd start calling me "vain" for "wearing such gaudy heavily embellished clothes" and saying I was shallow and obsessed with looks, when she was the one who was forcing me to dress like that. I brought up the fact that I only wore this stuff because that's what she bought me, and she'd say that she was buying me that stuff because she could read my mind and she knew that was what I liked. Then she's start screaming about how shallow I am and how I need to realize that inner beauty is what matters, not outer beauty, and how if I paint my nails again she'd slap me.

Note, in Korea, "vain" is the worst thing a girl could possibly be. Over here, no one blinks an eye if a teenage girl likes fashion and nail polish. In Korea, everyone will jump on her and start calling her shallow, evil, and whorish. Her parents will likely get upset and beat her. If there's a female character in a Korean series who likes fashion, getting their hair done, or etc., you can bet that the character is a villain. In most other places, people know that just because someone enjoys fashion/glamour may not necessarily mean they're shallow; it doesn't mean they think it's important but also could mean they think it's fun. And just because someone enjoys glamour/makeup/fashion whatever does not mean they are a bad person and this is not necessarily a bad thing. But in Korea they don't think like that, and have ridiculous chastity standards for women.

She started becoming more emotionally abusive towards me more than anything at that point. She'd constantly tell me about how she looked and looked but could never find anything good about me. Even when I was getting straight A's at school, she'd tell me about how hopeless I was and how I was probably only gonna go to a community college at this rate. Even though I was getting straight A's. She'd come up to me going, "Why are you so hopeless? What do you want to be, a housewife?" When I had already told her 20 times I wanted to do something art-related, had won art contests, and once again, getting straight A's. She'd just slap me and go "No, what do you REALLY want to be? You want to be a housewife don't you that's why you're so under-accomplished!"

Of course, it's a part of Korean culture to drive your kids as hard as you can and to be overly perfectionist. I'd actually kind of understand if I'd had a B on my report card or something, but I didn't even have any B's. And they were still acting like this.

Whenever I took up anything, she'd down on me. When I was writing, she told me that my stuff was stupid and that Anne Frank was not that much older than me when she wrote her diary and I'd never live up to her. I liked to go online and I wanted to learn HTML, but she told me I was being dumb, I'm not a webmaster, and I was wasting my time. When I started drawing, she grabbed my sketchbook, ripped up my drawings, and went "Are you crazy? This is art to you? This is not art!" and force my to play violin some more. And of course, when I was doing music, she'd continuously compare me to people like Whitney and told me I could never match up.

And then she'd say that she didn't support me because I kept switching from one thing to the next and not sticking with one thing, completely forgetting the fact that the only reason I ever quit anything in the first place was because of her discouragment and non-support.

Sometimes she'd just put words in my mouth and make stuff up, like when I was reading Sweet Valley High one time for fun and she started screaming about how "you reading high school books does not mean you read at a high school level" when I never implied anything of the sort. Assuming stuff about my work and writing when she had never read any of them herself. She was complaining about the rating of a movie and I told her that it's only PG and it's not that bad, and she started screeching about how "just because you watch violent movies doesn't mean you're grown" or some shit.

This kind of emotional abuse is not normal in Korea. Canings are, but this kind of verbal and emotional abuse isn't. The hitting was normal in Korea, but she just seemed to...enjoy terrorizing me, slapping me around, throwing stuff at me and making me cry. Not to mention, my brother was never, ever treated like this. As a matter of fact, he was never slave driven as hard as I was, and if he made a mistake, it was immediately my fault for not taking care of him and not doing my part as his older sister and I'd be beaten.

I was beaten even if I got straight A's. My brother could bring home straight D's and they'd still baby him, smile at him, and they'd try to work with him humanely.

I absolutely dreaded those nightly "family meetings" we had. When they'd call my name, send my brother to bed, and they'd sit side-by-side on the sofa and had me kneel down in front of them. Then they'd proceed to interrogate me, barrage me with insults, and even though I wasn't always being physically beaten, I'd start crying from the mental pressure. I often felt physically ill and nervous.

Since they knew now that beatings with a rod were illegal here and they couldn't leave a mark, their new way of punishing me now was mental humiliation. They'd make me stay up from ten to four a.m. doing nothing but terrorizing me, and the most embarrassing thing at that point was that I'd have to go to school with puffy eyes. That tends to happen when you cry the whole night, your eyes swell up. I tried putting a cold spoon on my eyes to reduce the swelling, but it usually didn't work and I ended up spending the day at school trying to cover my face.

I think part of the reason they harbored such resentment against me was because they knew I was going to the counselor to talk about them.

In countries like Korea and Japan, you're supposed to keep your personal business to yourself. In the US it's seen as a mature thing to talk about your problems with a therapist or whatnot and you're recognizing you need help, but in Asia, it's largely a shameful thing. Especially if it's a family thing, you don't talk to anyone else about family business, and you definitely don't talk to them about your parents. Respect for your elders and respect for your parents is huge in Asia. That's likely why they hated me, though they really had nothing to worry about since the counselor didn't believe me and spent most of our sessions rolling her eyes at me anyway. She also immediately assumed we came here from Korea to "escape poverty", which is so unnerving (a lot of American people assume that every non-western country is poor and starving I noticed) since Korea is actually the 11th largest economy in the world. Most Asian nations are rich due to their hard work ethic and extreme emphasis on education, if you look it up China and Japan are the 2nd and 3rd richest countries in the world.