When I set out to write my books, I established 3 core values for my writing:
1. Entertain
2. Comfort
3. Teach
I’ve always wanted to help my readers learn difficult things in a fun way and to feel comforted by the trials and growth of my characters. Maybe if I translated my mistakes and sufferings into a fun, fictional story, someone out there would benefit from the lessons I’ve learned.
I never factored anything about myself into my core values. It was always about my reader, not me. I didn’t make it a priority to discover anything spectacularly new about myself. I never even imagined I’d unpack dormant traumas through the writing process. So, needless to say, I was very surprised when the act of writing my books turned out to be the longest and most intense therapy session I’ve ever put myself through.
Book 2, in particular, turned out to be the most grueling part of the therapy session that my Eyes of Awakening saga has proven to be, especially because Book 2 led me to examine and analyze my anger issues. I’ve known for a long time now that I have bad anger issues. But through writing my second book, I was forced to dive past my anger and deeper into the darkness of my mind and soul. And in those depths, I learned that I’m also a very sorrowful person.
It’s difficult to admit that I’m sad deep down. I feel vulnerable admitting that the foundation of my anger isn’t an undefeatable power that can consume anyone who crosses me but instead, is tears, is helplessness, is a desperate desire that things could have been better not only with myself but with those I’d cared most about. Johnny Chang, the prison minister whom I wrote about previously, defines anger as “unprocessed trauma.” He’s absolutely right, and I’d add that anger is often a sorrowful person who’s simply trying to manage and survive their trauma. When life places an unbearable burden upon your shoulders, there comes a time sooner or later when you can’t carry that weight alone anymore. And if no one is willing to help you carry that weight, you’ll instinctively search for ways to rid yourself of it. Inevitably, you’ll find yourself left with two choices: you can crumble under the weight, or you can explode and in so doing, incinerate that weight.
Angry people are so often judged as irrational people, irresponsible people, crazy people, mean people, bad people, sinful people. But when a human being is cornered and every which way they look, faces only turn away, fingers point and condemn, and mouths sneer and belittle, is it so irrational to choose to fight back rather than let the monsters of your past, present, and future tear you to pieces? Angry people are often condemned and rebuked for using anger as a futile and evil means to control uncontrollable circumstances or to impose their will onto others, and yes, there’s definitely truth to that. But I don’t think that’s an entirely fair judgment because that’s often not the whole story. Angry people turn to anger because anger does work. At least in the short run. And their anger helps them a whole lot better than nothing, which is what everyone else gives them apart from their condemnation and impatience.
I know it may seem like it’s easy and selfish for me to ask you for your mercy. “I’m an angry person who’ll get angry at you, but please show me mercy because I’m just trying to look out for me. I don’t want people to be mean to me even if I’m mean to people,” is probably what it sounds like. But it can actually be very difficult for me to ask for mercy, not only for myself but for others like me. I understand what we look like on the outside.
I think of people like my grandfather. My family now calls him “a toothless tiger” in Korean because he’s become so docile in old age. But back when he was younger, they had called him a fearsome tiger because tigers were, indeed, feared in Korean history and folklore as one of the most dangerous animals in the country. They were known for prowling around in the mountains and tearing men apart. My grandfather, in many ways, tore apart his own family. He beat my grandmother, my father, my aunts, all on a regular basis. His anger had begun to calm by the time I was born, but I still grew up listening to awful stories of what I now recognize is domestic violence.
My father sometimes talks about the one time, when he was a child, my grandfather had been in a fury and was chasing my father around the house, trying to beat him for something or another. It was around the holidays, and there had been a large decorative pumpkin within reach. My grandfather, unable to catch my slippery dad, had grabbed that pumpkin and thrown it at my father at full force. My dad, who’d grown quite good at dodging things over the years, had dodged the pumpkin, which, of course, hit the wall and exploded in all its orange and pulpy glory. My grandfather had let out a thunderous roar in response and grabbed the next thing within reach: the wooden piano bench. He hurled the bench at my father, who, of course, dodged that as well. Needless to say, the piano bench exploded too, along with my grandfather’s rage. He continued chasing my father around the house in a blind fury. I’m not sure if he ever ended up catching my dad that day.
Growing up, I’d only laughed at this story because my dad laughs whenever he tells it and enjoys telling it with entrancing gusto. (I think I get a lot of my storytelling skills from my dad.) To him and me, that story was somewhat of a triumphant and even humorous story as it was a tale of my rascally dad successfully escaping my fuming grandfather while still managing to aggravate his ire even further with an almost vengeful satisfaction, similar to the rabbits in Korean folktales who outsmart the hungry tigers trying to eat them. As I grew older and began to understand my own anger issues more deeply, though, I began to recognize the story for what it is: a sad and awful tale of an angry father abusing his small son.
I struggled a lot with what to make of my grandfather as I, with age, began to see more clearly what misery and chaos he’d put my family through. On the one hand, he was a literal wife beater. He was one of those fathers who beat the living daylights out of his own small children and passed down a generational curse of anger that flowed even in my own veins.
On the other hand, he was my grandfather, the same man who had greeted me with a silent kind of cheerfulness whenever we had visited him in the Bay Area. He never really smiled all that much or laughed but instead, seated me on his knees, opened up a special, big drawer on the side of his work desk, and pulled out sheets of shiny stickers he had collected for me. I had loved those stickers. Now that I think about it, he never gave gifts to anyone else but me.
As I later learned, he was also a small Korean boy who’d witnessed so much death and tragedy during WWII and the Korean War. He’d seen things no human alive should see, never mind a small boy. One of the stories that saddens me the most is of when he was around 4 years old. At that young age, he was forced to watch invading communists steal his loyal and loving dog, beat it to death in front of him, and grill it on a spit. (There’s an old Korean superstition that dogs taste better if you beat them to death. Likewise, browner dogs are supposed to be meatier and tastier. My grandpa’s dog had been brown.)
My grandpa still remembers how that dog would go into the mountains to hunt small quarry and instead of eating it, would bring it to my great grandmother so that she could cook it for the family. Cook it she would, and the dog was always satisfied with receiving just a small portion of what she’d cook and gifting the rest to the family. The dog had never been trained to do that. It had brought back the food out of its own free and loyal will. It would also guard my grandpa, a small child fearful of the dark, and if my grandpa needed to go potty, the dog would willingly act as his guide and guard in the pitch-black, electricity-lacking night of mid-1900s Korea.
I have 2 loyal dogs right now, and if they were torn away from me, beaten to death, and cooked before my very eyes, I don’t know if I could ever recover. The sounds … the smells … the sight…. My grandpa said there were very few times he sobbed harder in life than when he’d watched the torture and death of his dog.
That was only the beginning for my grandpa, though. Everything from watching droves of people starve and freeze to death in the train he and his mother used to escape Seoul during the war, to taking shelter under dead bodies to survive Korea’s freezing winter nights, to suffering intermittent blindness due to starvation and malnutrition, my grandfather had gone through so, so much.
I’ve lost 5 children over the years, and I can’t bear to imagine them going through even one of the traumatic events my grandfather endured, never mind the whole slew of them, and at such a young age. I see my friends’ kids running around, and I think, “My grandfather was even younger than that when he was smuggled through treacherous mountains and across the 38th parallel into South Korea. He was younger than that as he watched Soviets snipers kill random people in his group of fellow escapees. He was younger than that when he was forced to watch his mother tumble off the sides of cliffs again and again and then keep on struggling to keep up with the group, bloodied and bruised.”
I can’t excuse my grandfather for how his anger destroyed so much.
But I also cannot even begin to understand what it was like to suffer all that he did.
And I beg that others would have mercy on my grandfather, too, despite everything he did.
If I could somehow magically go back in time, I wouldn’t go back to punish my grandfather every time he hit my father, but I’d go back to protect him from all the gunfire, the death, the starvation, the inhumane horrors. I’d go back to give him food and shelter. I’d go back so that I could put an arm around that small boy and help him survive, even though it would be impossible to tell him that it was all okay. Because it was not at all okay, and that’s why my grandfather wasn’t okay either. How could he not have anger in his heart after everything he’d endured? All that trauma had to translate into something.
As for me, I started using anger as my tool, my coping mechanism, after my dad got into an affair and a messy divorce ensued. At one point, I simply got sick of crying and got mad instead because in anger, I found aggression, adrenaline, and vengefulness. I found strength. I found the will to keep fighting, and I had to keep fighting. Only I could work hard and pull myself out of the miserable pit life had shoved me into.
And the scary thing is, it worked. I became successful in every way a young adult at that age could hope to be. I climbed out of the pit. And it was all because I was pissed at everything and everyone, and I used that rage to do something about it. But I didn’t know back then that my anger was bought at a price. No one told me that my anger would poison my soul.
Even now, so many years later, there have been many occasions in our marriage when Albert has had to tackle me to the floor, wrestle me down, and hold me as I kicked and screamed for everything from harm to death, not just for enemies but even for myself. I’ve harmed myself many times out of hate. Despair desires destruction, and if anger helps my world to burn faster, then why not?
I’ve hurt people I shouldn’t have hurt in my anger. I’ve said things I shouldn’t have said, done things I can’t take back. I don’t want to excuse the things I did in my anger. In my despair. But please understand that in many ways, I was not myself. Please understand that the tool of anger, which I used in order to survive for so many years, betrayed me without my knowing. Please have mercy on me when I can’t show mercy to myself. Please know that I do want to take responsibility. I want to do the right thing. I do love my friends and family. But I can’t do anything if I don’t have hope, and it is so incredibly difficult to have hope if people around me only judge and condemn me.
Please have mercy. I’m not proud of the things I’ve done, but I need mercy in order to do the right thing. Condemnation and ostracization only add fuel to the flame. But mercy and love are powerful salves that help heal even the deepest of wounds.
Please, have mercy on us. Please show us patience, even when it’s not deserved. I’ve learned through writing my books that anger is simply the red blossom that rises from black sorrows.
I feel selfish to find so much healing and even fun in writing. Shouldn’t I write solely for the benefit of others and not myself? Is it okay to “write for me”? But perhaps it’s not so much writing for me as much as it is finding answers. Perhaps the memories I excavate, the answers I find after examining them, and the peace that healing brings will also bring peace to those around me and anyone who reads my work. Perhaps creativity is a tool we can use to practice vulnerability. Doesn’t all real change come first from honesty? Isn’t honesty just another word for vulnerability? Isn’t vulnerability contagious once its benefits are experienced? Isn’t a book an experience in written form?
I think I’ll add one more goal to my original list of core values:
Ann’s Core Values in Writing
- Entertain
- Comfort
- Teach
- Inspire
BOOK 2 OF EYES OF AWAKENING
SATURDAY
JANUARY 31
I Can’t Wait For You To See
The End Of James’s Journey …