You sat outside on your balcony, snuggled in a thick blanket with your hands wrapped around a cup of steaming tea. It was too cold for this, but when you were outside, you didn't feel alone. When you were high up in the sky, everything else seemed so little and you needed that.

Only a glass door separated you from the confines of your apartment, but it was enough to see the openness around you to feel safer. You hated feeling caged, contained, but you couldn't live in the clouds, which led to you buying the biggest apartment on the highest floor you could afford.

Having one of the best paying jobs in South Korea allowed for countless options but you didn't seem to feel happy even when you had exactly what you wanted. You come to find happiness is not in the material world, yet the path you chose to follow in life was isolating.

It kept your heart ticking, it gave you a reason to get up in the morning and breathe in the fresh air of a new day and feel like you were unstoppable. Then at night the demons crawled out of the dark and you couldn't bare to be alone with them.

Depending on your ex-girlfriend not to feel miserable was a stupid and pathetic move, you knew it all too well. You often felt guilt for dragging her along knowing she cared a lot for you, you brought it up countless times, trying to free her from your selfishness, yet she stuck around.

You were more than grateful, however, there had to come a time when you had to stop it if she wouldn't. It wasn't good for her, it wasn't good for you and you had to stop overlooking the fact that you were hurting someone you loved because you were a coward.

One night stands were better, they released those feel-good chemicals in your body, they kept your bed warm and they gave you an illusion of having what you couldn't have. As long as you were clear about your intentions with whoever was willing, there was no shame in it.

You'd never been one to be afraid of their sexuality and expressing themselves unapologetically. You were the straightforward, extroverted type who had no qualms about saying and doing what they wanted. A magnetic personality to boot, which had people gravitating towards you effortlessly.

To some you came on too strong and you came across as promiscuous, to others you were an invitation to be bolder, to strip themselves of shame and prejudice, a safe space for the expression of their true selves.

It was like this that you naturally discovered your orientation, you'd never liked labels, you'd never placed one on yourself by default. One day a girl you barely knew had walked up to you and asked to talk.

She explained herself as best as she could, you seemed approachable and she didn't know who else she could talk to. She knew for a fact that you were trustworthy, nasty rumors circulated, but also stories about how kind and reliable you were were shared in every corner of your school back in Busan.

You were controversial to say the least, many people speculated you'd been intimate with the majority of the student body because you didn't go airing out your personal life and it was left to the imagination. In reality a lot approached you, like this one girl, for advice and a nonjudgemental ear.

As it was sex and sexuality you were talking about, people instantly assumed they all ended up sleeping with you. Little did they know you had been involved with a very small number of people in comparison to what most ill-intentioned peers thought.

Mirae was her name. She was beautiful, soft features, pouty lips, small nose and a dainty demeanor. The ideal of many boys, which explained why she had romantic proposals every other day that she graciously turned down without much thought.

She was not interested, she explained to you and she felt like she was in the wrong for some reason. These boys were nice, some were questionable, but many would make lovely boyfriends her family would approve of. Her eyes found themselves admiring other girls though.

The moment she let the words out to you like she never had to anyone else had her shaking. She was unprepared when you didn't bat an eyelid and looked at her wondering why she had stopped talking.

How understanding she'd heard you were had been an understatement seeing no change in the before and after of her reveal.

You had never questioned yourself when you found someone attractive, if you thought a guy was handsome or a girl was pretty you simply let yourself experience the feeling. When you offered to help Mirae, you didn't think twice about it.

She was attractive, you'd always thought her lips looked soft and kisseable and you were curious about what being with someone of the same sex would be like. You both went for it, experimented with each other, you helped her find herself and you learned more about who you were.

The right person had come along and you did what you felt was right, there was no gay awakening or coming out for you. You just were yourself and you didn't feel like you had to explain it to anyone. Unlike Mirae, she knew who she was, but she was terrified of embracing it.

After fooling around for months, you asked her to be your girlfriend and she accepted under one condition: no one else could know. You hoped she just needed time, she cared about her family, her friends, what everyone around her would think. Tradition could be unforgiving and the conservative side of society had engraved it in her brain that such feelings were unnatural.

You were patient with her, you understood where she was coming from. When your parents found out, it was just a regular day for you. You'd never tried to hide, you merely closed your bedroom door for privacy and this time your mom walked in on you butt-naked and on top of your girlfriend.

She covered her face with a squeal as she hastily grabbed your pillow and was never identified, but your mother's wide eyes were on the gentle curves of her chest which very much did not belong to someone of the opposite sex.

It was a second of shock and she closed the door, Mirae was mortified and panicking that your mother had seen her and would tell hers. That everyone would find out. Milliseconds were enough to see the horror on your mother's face and for the notion that this was "not normal" to sink in.

That night, your mother cried distraught after telling your father about what she'd seen. He had simply stood there in silence with a sad expression on his face and furrowed eyebrows and you had cried yourself to sleep. The pain of their rejection and disgust had been unprecedented in an otherwise loving family.

Even though your parents said nothing to outsiders in an effort to keep up with whatever image they wanted for the family, it was too much for Mirae to bear and she broke up with you a month later.

It was at school, were you didn't have any privacy, where you acted like strangers. A strategy to keep you from exposing her deviation. Not that you would, but she didn't want to deal with you alone, with her true self she still couldn't accept.

A week later your parents sent you to Seoul to live with your grandparents on your mother's side. You were out of control and needed to be disciplined, they'd said.

Your last year of high school was depressing, you didn't feel like yourself. But you turned your life around once you were legally an adult.

Thanks to your hardwork, you built your career and became independent so you'd rely on no one but yourself. So you could be who you were without apologizing once more.

Years later you reunited with your divorced father and he confessed he never had an issue with what went on all those years ago, but couldn't oppose to his parents-in-law*.

You had had a few partners in Seoul, none of which you could make happy. Not without giving up your newfound passion or hurting them and yourself in the process.

So eventually you resigned yourself to keeping everything casual. You didn't have time for proper relationships, it wasn't about putting in the effort, you'd tried. It all ended up the same no matter what. In heartbreak and pain that you also had no time to deal with.

If you were going to be a disappointment, you'd own it, at least you were self-aware. You were still yourself and being true to who you were was no doubt the right path to follow.

-

* https://culturalatlas.sbs.com.au/south-korean-culture/south-korean-culture-family

To be honest, I didn't have much time to read about Carl Jung's theory, so the title of the chapter might make no sense, but I've always been a sucker for psychology and philosophy: http://journalpsyche.org/jungian-model-psyche/