My Father's World

 People always tell me that my father spoiled me.

My mother says it.

My sister says it.

Friends say it.

Therapists have implied it.

Even complete strangers seem to figure it out eventually.

The difference is that they say it like it's a criticism.

I don't.

My mother and father spent most of my childhood trying to teach me completely different lessons.

My mother believed that life was something you prepared for. You learned patience. You learned compromise. You learned how to hear the word no without falling apart.

My father believed something very different.

He believed that if something mattered enough, you fought for it.

If somebody stood in your way, you pushed back.

If you wanted something badly enough, you found a way to get it.

And if the world refused to give it to you, then you took it anyway.

My mother thought my father was creating a monster.

My father thought my mother was trying to make me smaller than I was.

They spent years arguing about it.

I spent years choosing sides.

I chose my father's.

Because when I was a child, my father made me feel like I was the most important person in the world.

That feeling is powerful.

More powerful than people realize.

Once somebody teaches you that you are special, it becomes very difficult to go back to being ordinary.

Most of the stories in this essay sound ridiculous.

Some are funny.

Some are embarrassing.

Some probably explain exactly why I turned out the way I did.

But every single one of them comes back to the same thing:

My mother spent years trying to teach me how to survive in the world.

My father spent years trying to convince me that the world should adapt to me instead.

I know which lesson stayed with me.

The Hanbok

One of my earliest memories is Chuseok.

I must have been three or four years old.

My father had bought me a beautiful hanbok and spent what felt like forever helping me put it on properly. He was always particular about details. Everything had to sit correctly. Every ribbon had to be tied properly.

I remember being impatient.

I wanted to see it.

He wanted it to be perfect.

When we were finally done, he stepped back and looked at me.

His eyes lit up.

He smiled.

Then he told me how beautiful I was.

I don't remember feeling embarrassed.

I don't remember feeling shy.

I remember feeling proud.

Accomplished.

Like I had done something important.

Looking back, that moment probably sounds insignificant.

A father complimenting his child.

Parents do that all the time.

But my father didn't look at me the way other parents looked at their children.

He looked at me as if I was extraordinary.

As if I was the most beautiful person in the room.

As if I was something precious.

And that feeling stayed with me.

My father loved theatre and storytelling.

When I was young he would organize little performances for me at home. Sometimes I played princesses, queens, or characters from old stories. In traditional Korean theatre plays I ended up playing the female role.

I loved it.

Not because I wanted attention from other people.

Because I wanted attention from him.

I wanted that look.

That smile.

That feeling that I had done something worth admiring.

When my father watched me perform, I felt larger than life.

Nothing felt impossible.

Nothing felt frightening.

When he looked at me, I never doubted myself.

The older I get, the more I realize how unusual that was.

Most children spend years trying to earn approval.

My father handed it to me freely.

He didn't tell me I might become special one day.

He told me I already was.

And because I was a child, I believed him completely.

To be honest, part of me still does.

 

The Bread

The older I get, the more I realize that my parents were not really arguing about bread.

They were arguing about me.

One afternoon my mother bought a loaf of bread.

The next day she put it on the table and told me to eat.

I looked at it and immediately complained.

"Mom, you bought this yesterday."

To me, that was a perfectly reasonable objection.

To my mother, it was insanity.

"The bread is fine," she said.

Then she launched into one of her lectures.

Other people eat bread that is much older.

Other people eat whatever they can find.

Other people would be grateful to have bread at all.

That was how my mother saw the world.

If something still worked, you used it.

If something was still edible, you ate it.

If something was good enough, then it was good enough.

I hated that philosophy.

I didn't want yesterday's bread.

I wanted fresh bread.

So I called my father.

To be honest, I don't even remember exactly what I told him.

Probably something dramatic.

Probably something unfair.

What I do remember is what happened next.

Not long afterwards, his chauffeur arrived.

I got into the car.

The chauffeur drove me to my father's house.

And I ate there instead.

My mother thought this was ridiculous.

She thought I was spoiled.

She thought my father was encouraging it.

She thought he was teaching me that I could escape every inconvenience instead of learning to tolerate it.

The problem is that I didn't experience it that way.

What I experienced was something much simpler.

My mother told me no.

My father said yes.

And as a child, that felt like love.

Maybe that's why I always preferred his world.

It wasn't easier.

It was warmer.

It felt like having somebody permanently on your side.

No matter how unreasonable you were.

No matter how ridiculous the situation looked to everyone else.

Even if the argument was only about a loaf of bread.

 

The Cake

Birthdays were no easier.

One year I wanted a very specific cake.

Not just any cake.

That cake.

I don't even remember why I wanted it so badly anymore. Maybe it looked better. Maybe somebody else had one. Maybe I had simply decided that was the cake I wanted and nothing else would do.

My mother looked at the price and immediately said no.

Because to her it was unreasonable.

"We're a little tight this month," she said.

Then she offered a solution.

"I'll bake you a better one myself."

My mother was always offering alternatives.

Compromises.

Different solutions.

Different routes.

To her, that was practical.

To me, it felt like losing.

I didn't want a different cake.

I wanted that cake.

So I complained.

Then I complained more.

Then I called my father.

His response was completely different.

He didn't ask how much it cost.

He didn't ask whether there were cheaper options.

He didn't suggest baking one at home.

He simply asked:

"Is that the cake you want?"

I said yes.

"Then you'll have it."

That was it.

Decision made.

Problem solved.

Looking back, I sometimes think that sentence summarizes my entire childhood.

My mother always asked:

"What is reasonable?"

My father always asked:

"What do you want?"

Those are not the same question.

And they often lead to very different answers.

The funny thing is that people hear stories like this and assume I learned that money solves everything.

That isn't what I learned.

What I learned was something much stranger.

I learned that wanting something intensely was enough reason to pursue it.

That desire itself mattered.

That if something was important to me, then it deserved to be taken seriously.

I know my mother hated that lesson.

I know she worried about where it would lead.

But I would be lying if I said I didn't love it.

There is something intoxicating about having somebody look at your desires and say:

"Yes. That matters."

My father did that constantly.

And after a while, I began expecting the world to do the same.

 

The Computer

One thing my mother never understood about me was that I hated sharing.

She thought sharing was important.

I thought sharing was annoying.

One day my sister needed the family computer for schoolwork.

My mother told me to let her use it.

To her, this was completely reasonable.

There was one computer.

Two children.

So we should take turns.

Simple.

The problem was that I didn't want to take turns.

I was already using it.

I had things I wanted to do.

And honestly, I didn't care that she needed it for school.

That was her problem.

Not mine.

My mother and I argued about it for days.

She kept trying to explain why sharing was important.

I kept explaining why I didn't want to.

Eventually I called my father.

As usual, he listened.

Then he solved the problem.

A few days later a new computer arrived.

A much better computer.

My computer.

The family computer was still there.

My sister could use it.

My mother could use it.

Anyone could use it.

But nobody touched mine.

Problem solved.

Looking back, I think that moment perfectly captures the difference between my parents.

My mother wanted to teach me a lesson.

My father wanted to solve the problem.

And to be completely honest, I preferred my father's approach.

I know people reading this are probably shaking their heads.

I know exactly what they are thinking.

They think my father was encouraging bad behavior.

Maybe.

But that's not what it felt like to me.

That happened so many times throughout my life that it eventually became something I expected.

Because in my father's world, finding a solution was always more important than teaching a lesson.

And I loved that about him.

The Stars

The biggest mistake you could make as a child was taking someone else's side against me.

Especially if you were Seunghoon.

One day I had a collection of decorative stars that I loved.

They were blue and gold and, in my opinion, far superior to the purple ones Seunghoon's younger sister owned.

She wanted some of mine.

I didn't want to give her any.

That should have been the end of the story.

At least in my opinion.

Instead everyone decided to make it their business.

My mother thought I should share.

My sister thought I should share.

Even Seunghoon thought I should share.

That was the part that made me furious.

I could tolerate adults disagreeing with me.

I could tolerate my sister disagreeing with me.

But Seunghoon?

Absolutely not.

To me the issue wasn't really the stars anymore.

It was the fact that he had chosen her side.

Looking back, that probably sounds dramatic.

At the time it felt enormous.

I remember feeling betrayed.

How could he not be on my side?

Why was everyone acting as though I was the problem?

The argument became bigger and bigger.

Eventually I did what I always did.

I called my father.

His response was immediate.

If I didn't want to share my stars, then I shouldn't have to.

Simple.

Problem solved.

He came and picked me up.

And just like that I was back in my father's world again.

A world where nobody asked me to share things I didn't want to share.

A world where I never had to compete for loyalty.

I didn't realize it then, but that argument wasn't really about stars.

It was about something that would follow me into adulthood.

I wanted the men I loved to choose me.

Not because I wanted everybody's approval.

I never cared about everybody.

I cared about specific men.

And when those men took somebody else's side, it felt unbearable.

Even today, if I'm being honest, that feeling hasn't completely disappeared.

The stars are long gone.

The argument is long forgotten.

But the feeling?

That stayed.

The Stairs

One of the biggest differences between my parents was what happened after I got into trouble.

My mother wanted to know what I had done.

My father wanted to know what had been done to me.

Those sound similar.

They aren't.

I remember one incident at school particularly well.

A boy and I got into an argument.

I don't even remember exactly what it was about anymore. What I remember is being angry.

Very angry.

Eventually I pushed him.

Unfortunately for both of us, we happened to be standing near a staircase.

He tumbled down several steps.

The school was not impressed.

Neither were the teachers.

Soon enough my mother was called.

Then my father.

To my mother, the important question was obvious.

"Wonsik, why did you do that?"

To my father, the important question was completely different.

"What did he do to you?"

That was always his instinct.

Not to start by judging me.

To start by defending me.

I remember him asking me what had happened.

I told him my version.

He listened carefully.

Then he did what he always did.

He took my side.

The next day he handled the situation himself.

I wasn't punished.

I wasn't grounded.

The next day my father went to the school himself. By the end of it, the teacher was transferred, the detention erased from my file and the problem had disappeared.

My mother was furious.

She thought I should face consequences.

She thought I should learn from it.

She thought my father was protecting me from lessons I needed to learn.

My father thought something else entirely.

He thought his job was to protect me.

Period.

To him, those were not the same thing.

People always ask me if I can see why my mother thought he spoiled me.

Of course I can.

I'm not blind.

I understand exactly why she thought that.

I just don't agree with her.

Because when I think back to moments like that, what I remember isn't getting away with something.

What I remember is certainty.

I remember knowing that no matter how badly I had messed up, somebody was still on my side.

Somebody was still willing to fight for me.

That feeling is difficult to explain if you've never experienced it.

It feels like standing behind an enormous wall.

The world can still hit you.

People can still dislike you.

You can still make mistakes.

But somewhere behind you stands somebody saying:

"You're not facing this alone."

That was my father.

And if I'm honest, I loved him for it.

 

The Favorite

Looking back, I don't think the gifts were the most important thing.

Not the computers.

Not the cakes.

Not the chauffeur rides.

Those are the stories people notice.

What mattered more was attention.

My father's attention felt like sunlight.

Even now, when I think about my father, I don't first think about the money or the gifts.

I think about the way he looked at me.

I remember one night when I wet the bed while staying at his house.

I was crying.

The sheets were expensive.

I felt humiliated.

I kept apologizing because I thought he would be angry.

Instead he smiled.

Then he stroked the back of my head and said:

"Who cares about the sheets? We can wash them. We can buy new ones. They're just things. You do not worry, okay?"

That was one of his favorite phrases.

"You do not worry, okay?"

Then he would smile as if the problem was already solved.

That was my father.

The strange thing is that most people never saw that version of him.

Most people saw somebody strict, intimidating, powerful, and sometimes cold.

I saw somebody else entirely.

The man who smiled when I was embarrassed.

The man who fixed problems before I even knew how to solve them.

The man who somehow always made me feel safe.

People often ask me where my confidence comes from.

The answer is simple.

My father.

He spent my entire childhood convincing me that I was remarkable.

And eventually I believed him.

The strange thing is that it wasn't just confidence.

It was something deeper.

I wanted to be his favorite.

Not one of his favorites.

His favorite.

I wanted to be the most important person in the room.

The person he would always choose first.

And to be honest, I think I was.

At least that's how it felt.

People often assume children want fairness.

I didn't.

I didn't want fairness.

I wanted devotion.

I wanted certainty.

I wanted to know that if everyone else disappeared tomorrow, I would still matter.

My father gave me that feeling.

Over and over again.

He chose me.

Again and again.

Looking back, I realize how unusual that was.

My father never married.

Whether that was because of me or whether he would have made the same choice anyway, I honestly don't know.

I never asked.

What I do know is how it felt from my side.

I never had to compete with another partner for his attention.

I never had to wonder whether somebody else would matter more than I did.

I think that was the first relationship in my life where I never had to fear being replaced.

In my mind, he was simply mine.

Looking back, I think that certainty mattered more than I understood at the time.

I sometimes wonder whether that is where everything else began.

Because later in life I started wanting the same thing from other men.

The men I loved.

The men I chose.

I wanted what I had with my father.

The feeling that I came first.

The feeling that I was irreplaceable.

The feeling that no matter what happened, they would choose me.

Again and again.

At the time I didn't understand the connection.

Now it seems obvious.

The need to be chosen didn't begin with romance.

It began much earlier.

It began at home.

 

The One Person I Couldn't Win

For most of my childhood, if I wanted somebody's attention, I got it.

If I wanted something, I fought for it.

If somebody stood in my way, I pushed back.

That was the world I understood.

Then there was Seunghoon.

I met him when we were children.

The funny thing is that I don't have some dramatic story about us becoming friends.

There wasn't a big moment.

No grand declaration.

No magical event.

I simply saw him and decided.

That sounds ridiculous, but it's the truth.

I remember looking at him and thinking:

"There he is."

That was it.

Decision made.

I didn't fall in love.

I didn't develop a crush.

I didn't slowly become interested.

I chose him.

And from that moment on, the rest of my life became considerably more complicated.

The problem with Seunghoon was that he didn't behave like everyone else.

He didn't automatically take my side.

He didn't automatically make me feel special.

For the first time in my life, I wanted something that couldn't simply be arranged, bought, solved, negotiated, or fixed.

I wanted him.

And he had his own opinions about that.

Sometimes he chose me.

Sometimes he didn't.

Sometimes he understood me.

Sometimes he made me feel completely invisible.

I hated that.

Looking back, I think Seunghoon was probably the first person who forced me to experience uncertainty.

My father's love never felt uncertain.

Seunghoon's did.

My father always chose me.

With Seunghoon, I spent years wondering if he would.

And that feeling drove me insane.

I don't mean that figuratively.

I mean it literally.

For years my life seemed to revolve around a single question:

"Will he choose me?"

Not once.

Not temporarily.

Not when it was convenient.

Always.

I wanted certainty.

I wanted to know where I stood.

The difference was that Seunghoon wasn't my father.

He was his own person.

And unlike my father, he could say no.

 

The Breakdown

For most of my life there was one constant (apart from my father).

Seunghoon.

Even when things were difficult, he was there.

Even when we fought, he was there.

Even when I drove him insane, he was there.

Then one day everything collapsed.

I had wanted Seunghoon since I was eight years old.

Not for a few months.

Not for a year.

For most of my life.

The problem was that I was terrified of losing him.

He was my best friend. For a long time he was my only friend.

I knew he had autism and I worried constantly that if I told him how I felt, I might overwhelm him or scare him away. So I kept quiet.

Year after year.

Then school ended.

We were going to different universities.

For the first time I could see a future where we drifted apart completely.

I felt like I had run out of time.

So on his birthday I came up with what I thought was a brilliant plan.

I wrote a note that simply said:

"Do you want to be my boyfriend?"

Then I hid it inside his birthday cake.

I waited.

And I watched.

The problem was that Seunghoon was overwhelmed that day.

Without noticing the paper, he swallowed it.

Just ate it.

Gone.

But I didn't know that.

I thought he had seen it.

I thought he had read it.

I thought he had chosen to eat it because he didn't want to answer me.

I thought he was rejecting me.

In reality he never even knew the note existed.

But I didn't know that.

All I knew was what I thought had happened.

And in that moment my entire world collapsed.

My past felt erased.

Every memory suddenly felt fake.

Every dream I had built around him felt destroyed.

My therapist later explained it as abandonment fear mixed with black-and-white thinking.

Maybe that's true.

But that isn't what it felt like.

What it felt like was losing everything at once.

It broke something inside me.

I stopped functioning.

I stopped caring.

I barely left my room.

Days blended together.

Weeks blended together.

I smoked.

I drank.

I watched television without paying attention.

I slept at strange hours.

Sometimes I didn't speak to anyone.

I wasn't interested in fixing myself.

I wasn't interested in therapy.

I wasn't interested in moving on.

The only thing I felt was loss.

And loneliness.

A kind of loneliness so deep that it felt physical.

Like a hole opening beneath me.

My mother wanted me to heal.

My father wanted me to survive.

That difference matters.

Because I wasn't interested in healing.

I wasn't ready.

I didn't want acceptance.

I didn't want perspective.

I wanted relief.

I wanted distraction.

I wanted to feel important again.

I wanted to feel desired again.

Most of all, I wanted to stop feeling abandoned.

My father understood that immediately.

So he did what he always did.

He looked for a solution.

Not the correct solution.

Not the healthy solution.

A solution.

He spent an absurd amount of money on the most attractive male escorts.

Because he knew men still mattered to me.

He knew attraction still mattered to me.

He knew attention still mattered to me.

And he knew that for a few hours, being desired by somebody made the pain quieter.

Some people will read that and think it's insane.

Maybe it is.

I don't care.

Because it worked.

Not perfectly.

Not permanently.

But it worked.

Those men gave me something I desperately needed.

Sex to distract me.

Attention.

Company.

Distraction.

Fantasy.

Conversation.

Most importantly, they made me feel visible.

For a little while, I stopped feeling like the discarded version of myself.

I felt wanted.

I felt desirable.

I felt important.

That didn't cure me.

It didn't make me healthy.

It didn't make me stop loving Seunghoon.

It didn't make me stop obsessing over him.

What it did was keep me alive.

It gave me enough interest in life to keep going.

Enough interest to leave the house.

Enough interest to keep moving forward instead of disappearing completely.

People can argue forever about whether my father's methods were right or wrong.

I honestly don't care.

Because when I was drowning, he wasn't trying to teach me how to swim.

He was trying to keep my head above water.

And he did.

I know what people say.

I'm not deaf.

I'm not stupid.

I've heard every version of the story.

Spoiled rich kid.

Daddy's boy.

Entitled.

Bought.

Corrupted.

I've heard people pity my father for ending up with a son like me.

I've heard people pity me for ending up with a father like him.

I've heard people say I was spoiled.

I've heard people say I sold my soul for comfort.

Maybe some of them genuinely believe that.

The thing is, they are judging a life they didn't live.

They weren't there when my father told me not to worry about the sheets.

They weren't there when he drove across the city because I didn't want yesterday's bread.

They weren't there when he bought me a computer because I refused to share one.

They weren't there when I collapsed over Seunghoon and spent months hiding from the world.

They weren't there when he spent a fortune trying to pull me back onto my feet.

They weren't there for any of it.

So people can say whatever they want.

They always will.

I hear it.

I just don't care.

At the end of the day I still live my life, not theirs.

 

 

Being Chosen

People often ask me what the difference is between being loved and being chosen.

For me, they are not the same thing.

Love feels calm.

Being chosen feels powerful.

If somebody loves you, that's wonderful.

But if somebody chooses you over everyone else, that's something different.

That means they looked at all the other options and still picked you.

Again and again.

I think that feeling has mattered to me for as long as I can remember.

When I was a child, I wanted to be my father's favorite.

Not one of his favorite people.

His favorite.

The person he protected first.

The person he worried about first.

The person he loved most.

And for most of my childhood, that's exactly how it felt.

I never had to wonder where I stood with him.

I never had to compete for his attention.

I never had to question whether he would choose me.

The answer was always yes.

Then I met Seunghoon.

And suddenly the answer wasn't always yes anymore.

That's what made him different from every other man in my life.

It wasn't his appearance.

It wasn't his personality.

It was uncertainty.

For the first time, I cared deeply about somebody whose choices I couldn't control.

Somebody who could choose me.

Or not choose me.

Somebody who could stay.

Or leave.

Somebody who could make me feel like the most important person in the world one day and completely invisible the next.

That uncertainty consumed me.

People often think my obsession with Seunghoon came from love.

I don't think that's the whole story.

I think part of it came from wanting certainty.

Wanting to know that I mattered.

Wanting to know that I was irreplaceable.

Wanting to know that if he had to choose, he would choose me.

That doesn't sound romantic.

I know that.

But it's honest.

Nothing hurts me more than feeling replaced.

And when one of those men chooses somebody else, it feels unbearable.

Not because I lose.

Because I disappear.

At least that's what it feels like in the moment.

Everything suddenly becomes smaller.

My confidence.

My certainty.

My sense of belonging.

All of it.

I know where this feeling comes from.

Once you grow up feeling chosen, you spend the rest of your life noticing when you are not.

That doesn't mean it's healthy.

It doesn't mean it's fair.

It doesn't even mean it's rational.

It just means it's true.

And whether I like it or not, that truth has followed me through every important relationship of my life.

 

Choosing My Father's World

The truth is that my mother spent years trying to teach me how to survive in the world.

If anything, her lessons pushed me in the opposite direction.

The older I got, the more I chose my father's world.

Eventually I realized I didn't belong to hers at all.

I know that's probably not what she wanted.

But it's the truth.

Love works the same way for me.

People say love is about affection.

For me, it has always been tied to being chosen.

Not by everyone.

I don't care about everyone.

I care about one man.

And nothing hurts me more than seeing the man I want choose somebody else.

Not because I need universal approval.

Because I want to be his first choice.

His favorite.

The one he chooses above everyone else.

That feeling has followed me my entire life.

It followed me into my relationship with Seunghoon.

People think the story is that I loved him.

Of course I loved him.

But I also wanted to win him.

I wanted him to choose me.

Again and again.

Whether that came from my father or whether I was born that way, I honestly don't know anymore.

What I do know is this:

People say my father spoiled me.

Maybe he did.

People say he protected me too much.

Maybe he did.

People say he taught me the wrong lessons.

Maybe he did.

But when something goes wrong, he is still the first person I call.

He always has been.

Even now, when something goes wrong with Seunghoon, I call my father.

And somehow he still tries to fix it.

That probably says everything.

If I had to choose between my mother's world and my father's world, I would choose my father's every time.

I always have.