INTERACIAL couples suffer a lot, and their kids also suffer the same fate as their parents, sometimes it is tougher for them because they owe allegiance to two different ethnicities that want absolutely nothing to do with them. You are either this or that, and you cannot be both. That was what was happening. I was experiencing the consequences of an Asian woman marrying a white man, and I can never blame my parents.

All they ever did was love each other, even though they knew society would never completely accept their marriage. My mother's mom, who I referred to as Halmeoni, did not accept their marriage, so she cut ties with her, the moment she chose to tie the knot with my dad. My mom's father, Harabeoji, was dead at the time, so all they needed to go on with their marriage was my Halmeoni's blessing which she never gave, and they had no other choice than to wed each other with my dad's parents' support.

I knew even before I told them, that they had thought of the endless possibilities that could have happened if they never married, and let their love die the same way it began. They would not have to be criticized and would have had the community's support. My mother would have been part of the celebrations they held back in her family house in Korea, and would not have to hear any more whispers about her marriage and how it could never last.

I would not have happened and all that I was going through would never have occurred because I would not have been alive. I would not have been born to two lovely parents who would set the whole world ablaze just so that their daughter would be happy and would not have to suffer anything. I would not have met Jen, or you, we would not have been best friends.

I hated that. I loved how everything turned out, except the bullying part. I loved how my parents shunned the whole world and continued to love each other despite the criticisms all the time. The truth was that life did change drastically, and it all mattered how you looked at it.

My grandmother had decided she wanted nothing to do with my mother and abandoned her with no family to fall back on when things were not looking okay, and she needed them to comfort her or hear their voices again since they were a million miles apart. Despite that hurdle, her siblings still maintained contact with her, which made her feel like she was at home once again, and in their rambunctious presence.

Their conversations with her were always about her white husband like he was not even human. I understood their reasoning for thinking that way, because of how he was foreign to them, and they were not aware of how that same white man was imperfect at some things and at the same time faultless at other things. My parents also had me out of their controversial marriage, and I became the product of their love.

I know that while the storm was overtaken by sunny skies and golden sun, there were still going to be dark clouds looming ahead. It did not change the fact that I was being bullied and this was what could break them.

I could not stand to watch them crumble all because of me. As a little kid, I feared that I might be one to cause them to separate, and I did not want that to happen. I had witnessed a child in my grade crying uncontrollably because her parents were separating and I thought of myself as that little girl sobbing with tears and snot all over her face because my two favorite people in the world were divorcing one another all because of me.

I could not let that happen, so I decided to stop telling them what the other kids did to me at school and acted like everything was okay. I talked them out of involving the school principal, and always made sure my face was scrubbed off of any saltwater and looked okay. I made sure to always have a smile on my face whenever I was at home.

I did all I could do to impress them and give them reasons to continue to stay. I got good grades, never threw any tantrums, started going to bed early, and made sure when I had the chance, I would beg them to read me a story together, so they to have no choice but to be in the same space together, even though I was well aware they would have enough together when I finally slept, but I was a kid who wanted to do all she can to keep them together and not apart.

I could not bear or stomach the thought of them divorcing one another. However, my silence only made things worse. The bullying never stopped and I was never the same person anymore. My mother's conversation with me about how I was going to change the world started to feel more real the older I became.

I knew she said it to remind me not to take my Asian roots for granted, and I knew she was right because there were only a few people at my school who were not white, and when we all graduated and were outside in that real world, how many of us are going to be in reputable jobs, that was fair in its salary and provided a conducive work environment? and how many of us would even graduate college because of the shortage of income given to colored workers as salaries?

I knew how hard my grandmother had worked so that my mother, the oldest of her family, could receive the best education for college, which she achieved before she fell in love with my dad.

In the end, we are all objects to achieve the American dream. My mother's mom wanted her to study here and be successful, just like her father had wanted. He wanted her to change the system, and show that Asian people do dream and light their dreams awake. My mother also wanted the same dream for me. To be able to create a path of adversity. To change the way they saw us. I understood her point, and I wanted that, but how could I be that person when I was less accepting of myself and the nationalities I was made of?

All these expectations from her, my aunties, and uncles from Korea made things hard for me because I had no idea what career path I wanted to study in the future and when you are mixed it is only expected of you to study a course that seems more realistic, even though in the end you might not even get the actual job you studied for.

I had no idea what to bring to the table and I feared that I would be one of those mixed kids that did not acknowledge what they were, the privilege they had.

Our skin was not just a color, it was a mix of two colors that signified two distinct cultures and history, which made us very special.

Sometimes, I wanted to feel that speciality my mother always talked about, because I could not feel it.

My dad always said I was special and unique and a gift from God, and you too, Ashton. You would tell me how special I was and how you are grateful that we met. These should be enough reasons to make me believe, but I never could. My dad could have only told me I was special because I was his daughter and parents are often biased when it comes to their children; they see no imperfection, so they would be telling you the truth and it would still feel like it was not a genuine answer. The same could be said for you, Ashton. You were my best friend and it was only normal that you said nice things to me, but to me, they never sounded real. Even though you looked like you were telling the truth.

Since I could never talk to my parents about how I felt, I told you, because you had seen it happen and I did not have many people as friends to talk about my problems with. You knew how hard I struggled with my identity, apart from being picked on. You knew how I struggled to adore and accept myself.

You would always have to encourage me by telling me how I should not pay attention to what others were saying about me, and how I needed to start thinking positively about myself.

While I did not see anything good about me, you saw something in me I could not see. I hated and admired the way you saw me, Ashton because when I told you to tell me what I was like, the adjectives you used to describe me, did not sound like me. They sounded like a girl who had her life all figured out.

They were not about the girl who hid in her bedroom all day, once she did not have to go to school and bottled up all her problems by blasting Taylor Swift songs from her MP3 player, and scrolled through social media while feeling envious of the pretty white girls she saw. She wanted to be like them, and she would try curling her straight hair, to make it look like theirs.

She wanted to be like them, she almost considered surgically enhancing her nose. It was too broad, and I was too insecure to accept parts of myself that made me unique and beautiful.

I told myself I wanted to fit in, but I knew what I wanted was an escape from being mixed. I wanted to pick one out of both races that flowed through my veins, and I hated that I even wanted to throw away one of my roots for the other. Even though I knew it was quite impossible, I already knew what identity I was going to pick and it made me feel worse because I wanted to fit in with my peers who were mostly American, I wanted to shovel away all traces that signified my Asian heritage.

The sad part about it all was that I loved my roots, I loved being Asian and having a very distinctive culture. I envied my cousins who lived in South Korea and got to practice every culture that it is to be Korean, whereas I never got to practice some of its cultures, because I was raised in a place that was not Korea, and my mother was barely around to keep me on my toes. Although, when my mother had the time, and was not busy at the hospital, she tried to implement some of the Korean culture in our household.

She taught me about how in Korea, we never say the number four, as it is considered unlucky, because it sounds similar to the word death. So, we tried to not ever mention the number, when I spoke Korean with my mom. She bought us a matching hanbok that we would both wear during the Korean Lunar New Year, and it was what I wore to represent my culture, on world cultural day.

The first time I wore it, I remember feeling like a princess and did not want to remove it at all. I was quite young, and it looked like one of those princess ball gowns. Even though it did not exactly match the ideal dress depicted on television.

It was why, on my very first time wearing the hanbok to school, I was made fun of and the kids compared my dress to that of a balloon, and that one comment was one of the reasons that grew my insecurity about being Korean.

I hated the way my intrusive thoughts tried to convince me I was not beautiful being Korean. I hated the way I saw myself, I could not stop overanalyzing my looks, and I kept slathering brutal words to myself whenever I looked in the mirror.

No one wanted to be with the mixed breed, I would tell myself every chance I had. She was too ugly, as one could never tell really what she was. She had blue eyes that reminded her of the sky when it was daytime and was blue as ever. They were truly beautiful, but she could never love herself when all she had ever heard her whole life from her peers was that she was nothing but insignificant. She wanted to cut herself to shreds.

She was only noticed because of you. You were her best friend, and also the only person who ever noticed her, apart from her parents. Who told her to consider a future in writing, because she crafted a beautiful story in her fifth grade about a bird, a white dove with ruffled feathers that one could only see whenever it chooses to flaunt it. It sat on the tree branch close to my window one random morning and soon made a consistent thing.

I would see it every morning whenever I woke up, and being the creative person I was and never letting anything just be a coincidence, I proceeded to write about it and made it sound more beautiful than it was.

I made it sound like the dove always felt detached from the world, and so every morning it would fly back to a tree branch that for days it always reclined back to. It was not just any tree, at least to the bird. It was where the dove looked back on everything. It decided to still its wings pause its flight, and take the patience to remember the beautiful parts of its life other than flying, because all the dove did was glide through the endless sky, to reach both new and old places.

It was on that feeble twig branch, that it sat and stole the beginning of daytime to respirate and patiently admire the things it would not look at while soaring. The dove was able to realize the life it was given, and not to take anything for granted.

The tree branch became the dove's lens in realizing how much it had and how lucky it was. Soon, the beautiful and bright white dove stopped its ritual of habituating at its usual thinking spot, just like the dove that was the muse of my story, stopped appearing at my window, and I assumed that it probably had gathered enough courage to accept its life the way it was.

It was how I drew the ending to my short story, as he or she deserved a sweet ending. I could never tell the gender of the bird and it did not matter, but that did not ever stop me from wondering.

I was young when I wrote that. Now I find myself relating to it in some way. I always felt unappreciative of my life. I felt like I was not enough to deserve the life I was given. I did not have a tree to look back at my life, all I had was my sad thoughts and people constantly hurling hurtful words to make me feel worse about myself and not feel sane. They made me feel like I should not exist.

That was why I struggled with my identity. Everyone fitted a box, and I was still the nameless box. The girl had no idea how to act in a society that already had an opinion of her when she was still trying to understand herself and her feelings.

The girl who has not found out what position she wants to stand by in society. If she wanted to be with the crowd or learn to stay true to herself. I was just seventeen, and I did not know much about myself, but I knew one thing for sure, I lacked confidence.

So, I never really knew what to call myself. Maybe too stupid and made very rash claims about herself. I did not want to just be the mixed breed. The part Asian and American kid. The girl with the blue eyes and straight black hair. I did not want to have to choose. I just wanted to be Lauren Ye-Jun Kennedy. The girl who hugged two ethnicities was rocking it.

I was not sure of most things in my life, but one thing I was clear of, was that I loved you. I loved you, more than I pleasured. My heart ached, and I always had to welcome hyperactive butterflies in my belly. When I was with you, I found my place, where I wanted to be. I also wanted to be with you, if the world was not too mean and you responded to my feelings back.

These should not be my thoughts, but I only thought of you, every day. That was why, for the sake of my dignity and my relationship with you, I hid my feelings for you, and embraced reality, and that was pretending I did not look at you in a way friends should not look at each other.

I was all about girl power, and not tying my entire existence to a human being, but unfortunately, I fell into the trap of making you my entire world, because we had started as friends, and I found you as someone I could lean on when everything got too tough. When I fell for you, my entire resolve started to weaken, because I completely abandoned the idea I could survive all on my own.

I only felt more alive and instantly became happier about the day when I saw you and the familiar grin that embraces your face whenever our eyes connect. You also still tied my shoelaces for me, anytime you found out I had not tied them properly, that I had started purposely not knotting them correctly so that I could watch you all concerned about the possibility of me tripping on my shoes, and explaining how I could end up seriously hurt.

With you, Ashton, I forgot about the pile on my shoulders. I forgot about the multiple eyes on me, waiting for me to shatter. You became my getaway when things became too heavy for me to handle, and you took it as a responsibility to always take good care of me, whether I was happy or sad. Your act of gallantry and concern for my well-being was what led me to fall for you. You were just trying to be the best friend for me, and my foolish self got your concern about me all mixed up in her head, one day out of the blue, upon seeing you, she felt the fluttering of butterflies in her stomach.

I hated how thoughtful and sweet you were, and wondered why you couldn't be as ignorant and a jerk as other boys your age.

Now I had these feelings that kept me up late at night, and I couldn't sleep because I started to wonder what it would be like if you also were attracted to me. Would we have a romantic playlist like we have as friends? Would it be awkward between us, if our friendship transitioned into a romantic relationship?

I thought of this because I had only seen the friendlier side of you, where you teased me and I responded to you by punching you in the arm. I had no idea what it would be like if we were to be in love, and that kept me stirring all night because I could only wonder. I decided by myself that I was never going to tell you that I had feelings for you. I was afraid things would not be the same and I did not want that. I still wanted you to be the Ashton I have known for almost my entire existence. I did not want you to act awkward around me in case you did not feel the same way I felt. I was going to hide my love for you until we were nothing but decomposed bones. I could not risk losing you.

When we entered senior year, I decided to become a doctor. This had nothing to do with my mother. This was all me. As a kid, I admired my mother and the way she stood tall, despite being harshly treated at the hospital, for being Korean, but she never gave up because of that inconvenience, instead, she soared through them and did what she had always wanted to do: treat sick people, be there in their moment of weakness, comfort them and make them realize, that this is all just a phase in this wretched life.

My mother was an orthopedic doctor and dealt with a lot of fractured bones. It is through her I figured that so many people break their bones every day while trying to live their lives in the best way possible. Most of the accidents she encounters are motorbike accidents, mountain climbing that eventually ended on a wrong note, and lots of teenage fights many men break their bones by fighting their fellow men, and it was always on something silly and should not warrant such injury.

I thought it would be best to study medicine. Although I was not sure what kind of medicine I wanted to indulge in, I have always loved doing things that were too difficult for me to handle. So expect me to turn up practicing the hardest medicine line.

I also loved biology. I was obsessed with the nature of life, and I also wanted to help mend broken people. I was no hero, I could never be, but I wanted to be there for those people who needed my comfort and did not, but at the end of the day I wanted them to walk out of the hospital in one piece. I just had no idea what kind of doctor I wanted to be.

In my junior year in high school, I volunteered to be part of the medics at a sports event that my school had hosted. It was a race, and there were a lot of dehydrated students who were sent to my care, I loved every minute I had with them. It was there and then, I knew what I wanted to be, and I also realized I might have always known what I wanted. Even though this would be a complete contrast to my experience growing up, I loved people.

I did not have many friends, but from the few people I had managed to share one or two sentences with, I found myself hoping the conversation could last longer than it was held. I loved every minute I had with Jen, maybe it was because she was naturally nice and she was like a mother to me the same way I was like a daughter to her and was always invested in my very boring life, that was why I assumed people who were not critical were sweet.

However, my experience with my peers should make me hate people but that does not diminish my love for wanting to relate with people. It only makes me believe that there are people who are the worst beings on earth and would make you feel like wanting to squeeze their throats to their ultimate demise, and there are people who are very opposite from them and are not terrible. For example, there are some people in my school who talk to me and look like they want to, and conversations with them in class were not terrible.

It felt good, and I tried to steer away from my introverted lifestyle whenever I saw familiar faces and tried speaking to them despite the backlash from my peers who thought of me as a barbarian. I was so sure that the relationship with my patients would only solidify if they saw that I was like them and did not treat me as if I was different from them.

I also wanted to encourage people like me, to fall into what their heart wants, and not care about what the the whole world thinks. It was their dream, no one else's, and if they wanted to do it, then they should. No matter the color of their skin.

You were not fully convinced that I wanted to be a medical practitioner, because you still believed I was only choosing that path because my mother went through that line and because it was a safer option. You believed I was better off being a writer, or anything else that did not come down to those three professions. I did not listen to you, because I had already chosen medicine as my course of study when I started applying to colleges.

It was better to be safe than sorry, and I was still going to write anyway. I was not going to abandon writing stories all because I chose to study medicine. I loved writing because it allowed me to bring life into characters that I'd made up in my head.

It also allowed me to express myself in ways I never would be able to in the real world. I wrote poetry sometimes when I wanted to capture what I was truly feeling inside. Whenever I wrote, I felt like an angry cloud, that was only waiting to pour. When that finally happened, I always felt immensely better.

I also wrote a few songs, that only you have ever read because writing song lyrics was quite hard and I felt I was still an amateur when it came to songwriting. I always played with a lot of words, just like I did with poetry, but this was different. I always had to write them in a way that fell in line with a melody. That meant I was always by the piano, whenever I poured my heart out in my journal.

I hoped that one day I would be able to publish my book someday, even though I still had a lot of unfinished projects. Neither of them has truly felt like the one, but that did not mean I never stopped writing. It might not be an easy task, but I knew one day I would be able to complete a book that resonated with me. Maybe after that success, I would be able to have the courage to write our story someday.

You might have been married by then, when you find out at some point in our lives, that I loved you, and it would be too late, just like I wanted.

You were my star, Ashton.

You turned my whole world upside down and made it even better.

I was glowing because of how well you took care of me. That was the problem. I fell for your chivalrous act and mixed up your kindness for love. I knew you did not love me... in an unsuitable way that friends shouldn't feel for each other, but it made me start seeing you differently. It made me start thinking wild thoughts and that only brought me pain, because this was bound to never be anything other than torture.

I wanted you in ways I will never be able to put in words, and it kills me, knowing I will only be the one to know how much I loved you, and I could only dream about being with you because, in the real world, we would not make much sense.

We had been best friends for years, and have never felt anything else other than platonic love towards each other. Until I happened. Until the boy I considered the brother I always wanted but never had, became so much more than my best friend, and I started paying more attention to the details of your face, the length of your smiles, how gorgeous you looked under the splash of the sun, and how I always acted and felt different whenever you were close to me.

My palms started getting sweaty and my cheeks always reddened to the color of a tomato. You had assumed I had a crush on one of your friends because they all happened to always be there when I would turn all gooey and lose my rationality all because of you.

However, the fact remains that we would never be the way I wanted us to be because you could not stomach the thought that it could be you I had a crush on and rather excused my weird behavior as an obsession with one of your boys.

That was why, I could never tell you about my feelings, because I know, Ashton, that just those three words can flip all we ever knew over and I would be the one mostly affected by it because I started this whole mess in the first place. I should not have loved you, but I did anyway.

***

A Very Long Time Ago :

You watch me inhale the air, before looking away and admiring the scene in front of us. The sky was darker now, and I could barely see your face. Except for the outline of your nose and jawline. You had a pretty jawline.

"You know it's always going to be you, Laurene. If it's not you, I don't know who else."

I look at you. I tried to see you beneath the darkness. I just could not. However, my heart accelerated at this point. Hiding these feelings was hard to keep. "It is like this. You begin my existence and end my existence. That's how much power you hold of me. I hate that, but it's that way. I hope you don't break me one day." You laugh, but your smile quickly departs from your face, as you become all serious again and I try adjusting. "I love you, Lori." You were being sincere as your voice was shaky.

This was not new. I look at you, my heart beating beneath my chest. "I love you too, Ashton," I replied to my best friend. Only I meant that I love you.

—