This is a story I have been too embarrassed to write because to put the words on paper means admitting it happened. But this is a story I feel obligated to write to remind myself of the truths that emerged because of it. This is a story of selfishness that came out of selflessness, and hatred out of love.
Growing up, I was always aware of my family’s difficult financial situation. I believe we hit the mark for poverty at one point, but my parents somehow managed to clear their debt in Korea before we emigrated to the United States.
Life was better but not necessarily prosperous in the foreign land of America. Neither of my parents spoke fluent English, and neither of them had a professional career. My father worked as a pastor for several churches in Korea until he got tired of being discriminated against and unfairly fired for his physical disability. My mother never went to college, so the best-paying job she could get in the U.S. was as a masseuse in Korean spas. For five years, she worked under terrible conditions, often scrubbing people’s bodies until three a.m., sleeping at the spa, and waking up at seven to get ready for the nightmarish cycle to repeat. I saw her every few days. My father, who stayed home to take care of us, always told me how hard my mother worked to feed us, but I struggled to grasp the extent of her hardships since all I ever did was focus on school and live relatively comfortably on the money she earned. Factually, I knew – realistically, I did not.
My family’s financial situation has always been an “inferiority complex” for me. It is not that I was humiliated to be poor (I actually consider myself privileged compared to many children who can’t even afford public education), but rather I am embarrassed at my helplessness in driving my parents to work under such horrible conditions. I know that I am the reason they work until their bodies are ruined. I am the reason they left their home country to spend these 10 years doing nothing but work – no vacations, no self-care, no time for rest. I am the reason they aren’t happy. But I also know that my parents sacrifice themselves for my sister and me because they love us. I sometimes question this love, but at the most crucial moments in life, I feel their absolute, unwavering love deep within my heart.
But this is a story of selfishness that came out of selflessness. And hatred out of love. The story that I am about to tell happened at one of the most trivial moments in life.
I was a junior in high school, and by this time I had already come to understand that I was responsible for my parents’ hardships. As a means of reciprocating their sacrifices, I decided that my ultimate goal in life was to become successful, get a well-paying job, and support my parents comfortably for the rest of their lives. So naturally, I took my studies seriously and worked hard to become an academically high-achieving student. The more I tried in school, the more ambitious I got and started developing dreams for myself – a wonderful future that included no one but me … to enroll in a top college to pursue greater knowledge. More importantly, I wanted to make my parents proud, and I wanted my 10 years of diligence to pay off.
Like many students, I devoted a lot of energy and time into building my college résumé. No doubt, I truly cared about and enjoyed these clubs, volunteer work, and extracurricular activities, but I was afraid that my college application didn’t stand out – it was missing a unique experience that related to my intended major.
So I spent hours searching online for the perfect opportunity and found one: a medical shadowing opportunity at a prestigious hospital. Despite my killer junior year schedule, I somehow managed to complete the lengthy, complex application. I believed my application, from essays to recommendation letter, was flawless – a guaranteed acceptance into this competitive program. But I was on a time-crunch and had one last obstacle to overcome: to physically mail the application.
The post office closed at five, so if I were to wait until I got home from school, I would have less than two hours to take care of the mailing. I wanted to post the application myself because it had special directions (on the instructions sheet, it said in capitalized, bold letters: “We do not accept certified mail”). My father kindly insisted that he would take care of it. I had my concern because my parents didn’t speak great English, but I acquiesced and wrote the instructions for him.
While I was in school, my father sent me a text saying that he had mailed the application perfectly. He had found a Korean worker at the post office to help him. Of course, I was delighted. Yet, later, I found out that he had done one thing very wrong: sent the application as certified mail.
The Korean worker at the post office had recommended that important documents be sent as certified, so my father, wanting nothing but the best for his daughter, did just that. Right then and there, my perfect application became an automatic reject.
It wasn’t his fault. I hadn’t explained that part of the instructions to him, and above all, he did what he did out of love. But in the moment of despair and frustration and anger, I blamed him.
I locked myself in my room and sobbed until my face was covered in tears, my floor in used tissues. My dad knocked on my door several times, telling me to get over it and come out. At one point, he threatened to take down the door, but I simply became more upset that he wasn’t apologizing and wouldn’t even let me cry out my sorrow. Ignoring my father’s pleas, I wept and wept and wept.
That night I came out of my room when I judged the situation over. It would just be another embarrassing memory where I rebelled against my parents like an immature kid. But as I exited my room, my father came out of his. His leg brace squeaking, he approached me, and instantly, I felt scared. I feared he would yell at me for being so immature and selfish. Instead, I heard a very strange noise. Something I had never heard.
I heard my father crying.
He asked me to hug him (the last time we had embraced was beyond my memory), and he explained everything: he had pounded on my door to make me come out so he could apologize. He wanted me to understand that he had not meant to make this happen. He said he had no reason to go on living if he had crushed my dream of a good college.
Foolishly, that’s when I realized that he had always loved me, and not once in his life had he betrayed that love.
My father cried, and in spite of having already run my eye faucet for three hours, I cried more in his arms. My mother, who was watching from a careful distance, joined the hug, and the three of us cried together.
I can’t remember any other time in my life when my parents wept so helplessly in front of me, with me. They have always been so strong in my presence, yet in that tragic moment, they showed their hearts to me. And I showed them mine. I explained that I had wanted to make them proud by getting into a good college and earning a lot of money. That was my definition of being a good daughter, and I was willing to do whatever it took to make that dream come true.
As my greed for a wonderful future grew uncontrollably, I had demanded more of my parents. I needed money to buy prep books for the SAT, rides to volunteer events, and time alone in my room to do homework and study for tests. I neglected the very people I wanted to make happy, under the cruel pretext of “working to accomplish my goals.” Without realizing it, school had turned me into a monster. A heartless one.
When I finished explaining my reasons, they clarified one of my greatest misunderstandings: becoming a monster to achieve my goals would not make them happy, even if the goal was to make them content. They didn’t expect me to get into a top college or pursue a well-paying job – they just wanted me to be happy. That way, they would be too.
This story was painful for me to tell, but I did because I do not want to ever forget it, and I don’t want other young people to become monsters despite their good intentions. My selfish need for success came from my selfless desire to make my parents happy, and my temporary hatred toward them was a result of my love for them. My intentions were pure, but somewhere along the way, things became twisted. I’m just glad we finally got it all straightened out.