Found on Facebook: A Letter to a Mother I Barely Knew

Some people write love letters to their moms. I’m writing to the wild woman who once ate a random flower on the streets of Seoul and told me to do the same.

Dear Mom,

If the letter to Dad was the Super Bowl, this one’s… well, fuck, I had to stop right here to come up with the right analogy. It’s like, if I knew the exact date and time my life would end, I’d hold this until the second before and then hit publish. There’s always too much to say to someone dead.

I found you on Facebook years ago when I was living in LA. You had sunglasses on. You looked like a regular older Asian lady, and I laughed because it reminded me of my Grams. Such a contrast from the one photo I can still see in my head from childhood — the one before Dad probably burned or recycled everything in Seoul’s finest system. Striking eyes. Sharp nose. Fox-like.

The first draft of this letter, the one I planned to send on Facebook, had a very different TL;DR:

“Dude. You fucked me up. You’re an asshole. Who cheats on their spouse, abuses then abandons their kid, then breaks up a family, oh, and there was another before me, and then frolics off like it’s nothing? I can’t abandon my dog. How are you out here with no conscience? You’re why everything went wrong in my life. I wish you’d—”

Then you actually did, in fact, die.

And it got real weird in my head after that.

Here’s what I know now: I wasted too much time blaming you for everything. You held the power stick, and I’m taking it back. I don’t want to catalog the pain. Therapy gets it wrong when it makes you dig and re-dig. You can’t think your way out of feeling. The past is the past.

Still, one dream keeps coming back. A delicate memory with you.

We were walking in Seoul. There was a bush of flowers — I think yellow? Orange? You plucked one, told me to smell it. Then you ate it. Just like that. Then told me to. I was scared, but I did. It was sweet. I wanted more.

What the hell were those flowers?

Anyway, they stuck. I’ve done wild things in my life, sometimes with no fear at all — probably because fear was the baseline. I should’ve died a few times: drowned three times, got lost on the streets of Cusco with nothing but a map and a broken phone, wore no seatbelt in the back of a Hyundai that was crushed into an accordion on Route 4, dodged a drunk BMW by a centimeter on a Lime scooter. Each time, I thought of those flowers. Petals.

So what is that, Mom? You still here? Particle form? Or am I just parenting myself and hanging onto the metaphor? I don’t know. My money’s on spiritual, though. Science and God seem to be in on the same joke.

“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” — Werner Heisenberg

I see you every time I model. Dad might think he gave me this mug, but it isn’t just his. When I started modeling, I was pretty shy, but over the years photographers mention I have this “gaze” that I channel once I get comfortable. This photo reminds me of you the most:

I also had drawing skills before I even practiced. Still surprise myself sometimes with a pen; I can draw pretty quickly. That’s you.

Honestly, as I regain my footing and find my rhythm, survival just feels like the part where I’m clocking into my day job. Don’t get me wrong, I love the people I work with, and some of the problems are pretty cool to solve. I’m complaining when that’s really everyone, I guess. But the creative world keeps pulling me back, harder than anything else. That’s your blood. Now, I lean in.

Also Mom, I don’t hate you. Weirdly, I’m grateful. Being left to fend for myself made me a blank slate — no programming, no restrictions. A free agent. I don’t know where life is headed, but I do know this:

When I have a family, I will never abandon them.

Not because it makes me noble. Because I’d be terrified to miss out. You probably already knew that. Which is why, yeah, you’re probably still hanging around me in particle form.