I grew up loving dogs.

I grew up loving every single breed of dog and investing so much time learning about dogs. I know more dog breeds than the average poor child of an immigrant should know.

I cannot get dogs with fur because I have terrible allergies.

It makes me sad to my core but I can’t fix something that is biologically wired into myself.

I remember when my dad told me about his past and talked about how people ate dogs.

He asked if I would ever try and I said,

“No, Appa, would you?”

I felt disgusted as to why I would ever eat a dog and again I thought,

I can’t fix something that is biologically wired into myself.

I never knew why he joked about eating each dog that passed by on the street.

I was a child and he would tell me about living and growing up in the farms of Korea.

I was a child and he said he would plow the fields at the age of 12 and asked,

“What the hell are you doing playing games at 8AM on a Saturday?”

I was a child when he said, “You don’t know how to take care of a dog.”

I was a child when he said, “I worked in a deli and I was held at gunpoint and I remember hitting the gunman’s hand so hard that the gun dropped on my side and he ran.”

I was a child when he let the TV fall on his head instead of the pastor’s head at church because for some reason everyone gave him the dangerous jobs.

I was a child when he was bleeding from a crack on his head running down deep with the color of hidden depression and a dying need to make sure that he was the one to take the pain because he could not handle it if someone else were to be in his place.

I was a child when he stopped talking to me about his past.

I was a child when I would play games and feel that my dad didn’t love me.

 

I grew up with my mom. She told me everything. I grew up with my friends always telling me what was on their minds. I grew up with lonely nights and stress even I can’t explain.

I grew up with friends who would drag me everywhere but never take me anywhere.

I grew up thinking I was a moving truck and every time someone came to me with problems I’d move them into their new home except the new home was my memory bank.

I grew up never forgetting any of their problems. Even though I housed their stress for them, I cannot stop but think that I was the problem in the end because I could not help them.

I grew up feeling like a burden.

I grew up going to school burdened that if I didn’t do well in school my parents would hate me.

I grew up and stopped trying in high school because I thought my dad didn’t love me anyway.

I grew up.

 

I quit gaming cold turkey in sophomore year. That christmas I told my mom I really wanted the new Pokemon game but she said she’d only get it if I stop playing games. I said yes.

In my head I thought I just had some incessant need to play Pokemon but it was really an incessant craving to go back to a time where I felt truly happy. I was so focused on mindless first person shooters and the first person to ever suggest a good way to stop was my mom.

I thought to myself, maybe my dad will love me if I stop playing these games.

I remember getting the shit grades in the beginning of high school and remembering my dad’s face when he saw them.

Maybe that’s why I’m so deathly terrified of having bad grades or doing one thing wrong because having bad grades always meant that my dad didn’t love me.

To me, indulging in things that made me happy made me think that my dad wouldn’t love me.

I got into a great college and received stellar grades.

I was overwhelmed by stress the first year because I was stuck in a toxic whirlpool while trying to maintain a good enough GPA and making sure no one worried about me.

 

I went home on Thanksgiving, but my dad didn’t.

I went home for breaks and my dad wasn’t there. Why wasn’t he there?

I realized my dad was not a loving father. He was a father that had some kind of emotion greater than love that I can never compare to.

He was never there because he works too many jobs and has worked too many jobs since he first came to America.

I promised myself to work hard solely for him because it pains me everyday I wake up and think that he’s already driving and won’t be back until dawn.

He wants me to be happy and he wants everyone to be happy but I will not be happy unless he can stop fucking working for 3 companies, for too many private clients, and just get the fuck off a car seat and into a couch to relax because he has never been on a physical vacation since his adolescence. After all of this, how could I have thought he didn’t love me.

 

I broke up with my toxic girlfriend and found real happiness.

I opened up to my dad about it all over breakfast with my grandma.

I never thought I could do that. I thought I was biologically wired to never talk about my feelings.

They opened up to me and they talked about how the farm has 24 seasons based on what to eat especially when you’re poor and it is the middle of August and unbearably hot. They talked about being so poor and not being able to afford much especially when it was this hot because what could you eat besides the unowned dogs you found on the street?