Besides buying the bus ticket and taking a cab to the bus station, I had absolutely no plan of action. I knew that if I spent too long planning and calculating, I would psych myself out and never go. So my plan was to have no plan at all and just do it. If all else failed, I would just sleep outside somewhere like the homeless. I was already in so much pain over my life and the fact that I couldn’t be with Nell. Compared to that, camping under a bridge seemed like a piece of cake. And if I ended up dead somehow, it would put me out of my misery.
I was careful not to let myself feel too sorry for myself. Periodically, I would come up for air from the pool of sorrow I was swimming in. I’d laugh at how weird and melodramatic I was being. No one in their right mind would randomly get on a bus without a place to stay once they got off. Millions of people had worse lives than I did. I knew I had no real right to complain. I had a pretty stable family and a chance for a good education. Yet there were important things missing from my life like love and happiness, and I felt like a hollow shell of a real person. I wasn’t going to get what I wanted sitting at home, so I went on an adventure to find what I was looking for.
I met an old lady on the bus whom, if I remember correctly, said she used to be a nun. She asked me how my mom felt about me running away. I explained I was never going to talk to her again.
March 21, 2008
My first day in Austin, Texas was… interesting. Most of it happened on the bus ride here. I sat next to a sweet old lady who was 80 years old, and all she could talk about was God and Jesus. She actually made me think about my life, and for a moment I almost went back. No, I didn’t, but I thought about it. Her words were, “Well one of you has to humble yourself and talk to the other.” Maybe I should just be the better person and talk to her. But then all of my efforts would be in vain. I’m going to stick to my plan until I die. I should be dead anyway.
My next bus-mate was a great girl named May. I can’t remember all the details, but we just talked and the next thing I know she offered me a place to stay. But just a moment ago, she warned me against my plan and said she thought it was best just to go back to that place I once called home. Perhaps she is an angel from God sent to be the last warning before I walk the path to hell. That’s what the old lady might say.
May has been so nice to me that it’s almost unbelievable. She bought me lunch, prepared a bed for me, and continues to be the sister/mother I’ve never had. I don’t know how I can thank her enough. If God wants to make my career a success, then he will allow me to reward both her and my surrogate grandmother for a night.
Tomorrow will hopefully shed some more light on my situation. I can’t get into any of the clubs because I’m not yet 21. But they cannot refuse me once they see how I play the blues real good.
I had a lot of difficulty talking to people due to my selective mutism. Officially, selective mutism is an anxiety disorder where a person can freely speak in familiar settings, but can’t speak in most others. The most common scenario is when a child behaves and talks normally at home, but freezes up as soon as he or she is at school or at any other public place.
I initially did feel a lot of anxiety sitting next to the old lady and May. Something about them left me at ease, and eventually I was able to exchange some words with them.
As a child, I had a playmate named Connie who would come over sometimes. She was bossy, but I had fun playing with her because she watched Power Rangers on TV like I did. I spoke to my family in Korean, but Connie and I played make-believe in English, pretending to fight monsters or being dinosaurs from the film The Land Before Time. I got attached to her.
At preschool though, she was in a different class, and I had trouble making other friends. It didn’t help that on the first day, my family decided to dress me in a white tuxedo with huge gold anchor buttons; it was the sort of thing an out of touch sailor would wear. The jacket was itchy against my skin, and I was supremely self-conscious of how much I stood out.
I went many days without speaking a single word to anyone. One day, I overheard my teacher telling my parents, “He’ll probably grow out of it.”
The night before the beginning of Kindergarten, my parents and I went through the supply list. I panicked because neither I nor my parents, who are from Korea, could figure out what a Trapper Keeper was (turns out nobody these days knows what it is either… it’s a notebook binder). We searched the dictionary and looked up both “trapper” and “keeper” and couldn’t figure it out (this was pre-Google days). Also on the list were something called fat pencils. All we had at the house were regular pencils.
To my horror, on the first day, everyone else in class seemed as if they were born just knowing what Trapper Keepers were; and sure enough, they all had fat pencils from some special fat tree everyone in town seemingly carved out of. The other kids also had Crayola Crayons, while I had special crayons that my mother bought for me on our trip to Korea. They were made from a slightly stickier wax and had a light blue case with cute bears and Korean letters on them. Instead of being proud of standing out, I was ashamed of being so different.
I made the conclusion that my family was ignorant of the outside world and that the outside world would never understand me nor my family. It didn’t help that they only hung out with their Korean friends and wanted the least possible contact with western society as possible. I was careful from then on to be sure to never mix the two worlds.
Most mornings I would only mouth the Pledge of Allegiance to both the US flag and the Christian flag, but sometimes I would feel lucky and whisper them. I didn’t speak at all to the other kids, but I diligently completed my written assignments. The teachers soon noticed me for my excellent, A+ worthy work.
I was generally liked by all my teachers simply for being “smart”, and in turn they mostly regarded the fact that I didn’t talk to be a quirk. I was mostly liked by my classmates. There were a few instances of bullying, especially as I made the transition to public school in 5th grade. Compared to the mollycoddling of private school, public middle school had exponentially more cussing, physicality, and a rougher jungle-like mentality. I was labeled as “the kid who doesn’t talk.”
I was scared of some kids who were tough on me, but for every would-be bully, there was someone else who thought I was interesting and wanted to be my friend, despite my inability to speak to them. I would nod and communicate in non-verbal ways, and often they’d just try to guess what I was thinking. I would respond by nodding a yes or a no, or shrugging for “I don’t know.”
This exact trend of communication continued up to and well past my teen years. When puberty hit, I was worried I would never be able to find love due to how I was; I desperately wanted to. Throughout middle school, I had a crush on a beautiful girl who sat across the lunch hall at a table with her friends. Without ever talking to her, I’d imagine and plan out our marriage and subsequent happy lives together inside my own mind.
Around the time I turned 16, I started to speak to my high school classmates. I decided that if I was ever going to have a chance with Nell, I would have to accomplish a lot in the short amount of time left until graduation. Inspired by love, I started out just saying “hi” to people as I passed them in the hallway. I could answer questions, but I would very rarely initiate conversations or sustain them for longer than a few seconds.
I was happy that I could speak somewhat, but I was lost in figuring out how to keep doing it and just be normal. I was frustrated that I couldn’t get better, depressed that Nell didn’t want me, and even more depressed that I agreed with how she felt. She deserved more.
Somehow, running away seemed like a step in the right direction in becoming someone Nell could admire.