The trip to Chicago with Hyunsil started out incredibly. It was also incredibly cold, but hey, whatever. Actually, going to Chicago in February is one of the dumbest things that I ever decided upon, and not talking Hyunsil out of going to Chicago in February is ranked #2. Now to get to what ranks as #3, as well as #4, and probably a few more numbers as well...
The last night we were in Chicago. Like I said, everything had gone relatively swimmingly up to this point. I was on cloud nine, and we were getting along very well. I felt nearly invincible, and nothing on this trip was going to go wrong.
That night, we go to the John Hancock Building, which I will state has the best night view of Chicago. We're looking out at the skyline, and as she turns around to head back to the elevators, I advance for a kiss. She pushes me aside, and says, "What are you doing?! I have a boyfriend!"
Um...what? This was news to me. I knew, she had an EX at home, but apparently, before she left, they got back together, and surprise, I was not told anything about it. On top of that, her actions around me and toward me the time we were in Chicago were indicative of everything but her having a boyfriend. So all that, and now in one instant, I look like an idiot. Moreso than usual. I mustered a poker face, but on the inside I was fuming. It was just the fact that I got shut down that I was upset about, or the fact that her mixed signals caused me to look like a moron, but the fact that I now feared I have ruined our friendship in that one split second.
The next morning was as usual. However, we were heading back to Indianapolis for a week, then back to Southern Illinois for a visit with my family. We head downstairs to find it snowing, which is bizarre, because I had literally been outside 30 minutes later to get a lemonade at Panera, and come downstairs again to find the streets covered.
Hyunsil, picks this time to warn me she needs bags for her snacks before we leave. She also still wants to go to the art museum. I tell her I'll go get the bags really quick, then come back and we'll decide about the museum. I head two blocks to Walgreens, and almost fall in the middle of the street on the way. Yeah, screw the art museum, we're headed to Union.
We spend most of the time there (5 hours-ish until our Train should be boarding) eating, talking, and working. She had bought an English book at Borders on Black Monday (which I have dubbed it), and she had brought me a Korean book, so we were both spending time helping each other in our books.
Well, it turns out we picked the day of THE blizzard to leave Chicago, and our train gets delayed an hour out of the station. What's worse is Jake was picking us up at the station in Indianapolis. I call him from the pay phone, and can't get hold of him. Friggin Rifts. Leave a voice mail saying I'd call when we left the station. Not too long after, we start boarding, and I try to call, but the phone won't process my credit card, so I give up.
The train ride takes forever thanks to the snow. Hyunsil spends the ride sleeping and listening to my iPod. I spent it trying to sleep and failing, so most of my time was spent thinking and watching over her. I hope didn't just creep out the world with that statement. When we hit Indy, I woke her up. As I saw the RCA Dome (draped in the Colts Super Bowl Champions banner...OMGSPLOOGE), I leaned over and, in an attempt to impress her, say, "Igeoseun Indianapolis-imnida." (Translation: This is Indianapolis. I waited till we got the Dome because I didn't want her to think Indy was desolate. You get to the Dome, and obviously there's a lot of crap). It worked.
We hit the station at 3 am. We were supposed to be there at midnight. Oh lord, Jake is going to kill us. We head downstairs, and yeah, Jake has that look on his face. Not my problem.
We get home, I give her a quick tour, and get the pullout bed set up for her. She decides to go take a shower. And as I'm laying down, I hear her turning the water on and off repeatedly in the bathroom and realized, "OMG, I forgot how confusing that faucet is, and now she's naked, so um...yeah." Me and Jake laugh about it, and write her a note, slip it under the door, and go to sleep.
The next couple days were hit and misses. One day, it would be perfect, the other, Hell. On Friday, she tells me, at the Children's Museum, the first time I ever drove downtown, that she was going back to Chicago, and wasn't going to So IL with me. By now I'm fighting back tears, as the fears of Monday night come to fruition.
I remember sitting in the parking garage for a second trying to collect myself. She asked what's wrong, and I don't remember what I wound up saying. Undaunted, we head to the circle and see the monument, then head back towards home.
When Jake gave me directions downtown, he took me through castleton on 82nd St, not on the Interstate. What he failed to mention, and I had failed to notice while I was there, was that 82nd St. turns into 86th St before you hit Meridian, and that I should be looking for 86th on the way back. Because when I turned onto 82nd, it turned into a residential area and I got lost for 1 hour. I remember parking for 10 minutes in some guys driveway and crying on the steering wheel, as Murphy's Law had enveloped every aspect of this day. Hyunsil started patting me on the back and tried to console me, but she was the last person I wanted to touch me at this point, because I felt like she was the reason I was in this mess to begin with.
There I sat, spent most of my poker bankroll on this trip, and it was all blwoing up in my face. Now I'm lost in Castleton, and feel like an idiot. I blacked out the rest of the way home, but we got there somehow.
When we got there, Caleb asks, "How'd it go?" and I shot him one of those looks to kill. I started trying to transfer pics from the entire trip to the computer, when Hyunsil grabbed the mouse and tried to dictate which pics stayed and which didn't, and went insofar to say I wasn't getting any. I finally blew up, growled out, "Do whatever the fuck you want, cause I don't care," and went up to Jake's room, and started crying. Jake came home to me on his computer sitting with a tissue in one hand, the mouse in the other clicking away at Full Tilt, and I just started babbling on about how horrible the day had been.
The next day, the plan was to go to the speedway and then to a hockey game. I was expecting it to be much like the day before, only with Jake driving. Nope, Hyunsil was perfectly fine. I attributed it to PMS, assumed it would get better, and left it at that. We had a blast that day. The next morning, she left.
I couldn't even stand there to watch the bus leave. I walked away crying my eyes out. We got home, and I started packing to go back to Southern Illinois. I couldn't hold myself together long enough to pack, let alone the fact that when I grabbed my blanket, the one she used while she was there, it still smelled like her. I just broke down with that blanket in my arms. Once again I black out until I'm on my way home. When I got there, I was informed I was no longer welcome in Indianapolis.
The first day I spent hanging around the house, talking with Mom, telling her about the trip. I was feeling slightly positive about the whole trip.
The next day, I checked my e-mail, and found this from Hyunsil:
hi Corey i think this is the last mail to send you..I barely remember anything for the next couple weeks. I just felt like a wreck. My goals to rebuild my roll, down the drain, because I couldn't focus. All my fault, all her fault, this is all BS, why does this crap happen to me consistently? Those were the thoughts that rushed through my mind. I didn't want to think about it, but man, how could you not?
i came to the hostel safely as you prayed for me thanks a lot
but ..i can't keep in touch with you anymore..
okay take care..
byee
this is the last time for me to use the internet here and i will delete urs
on my messenager when i come back..
everything's ruined okay u did make a mistake byee
I eventually got my head straightened out. I blotted the whole thing out of my mind, and acted like February never happened. Started talking with my stepfather, started playing poker again, only I was breaking even. But hey, I was not worried about that, because I knew things would work out.
Then, yeah, Round 2.
I get a comment on Myspace from Hyunsil, saying, "What's your e-mail address?"
I sent one back saying, "Why do YOU wanna know?!" Thinking, that would end everything.
I'm having a great day, then I get a phone call from Jake:
"Hey man, I need to know what you want me to do. You got this letter up here, and normally I'd just send it out, but...it's from Hyunsil."
I had him read it over the phone. This is what it said, along with my thoughts about what was written.
To Corey;
Hi, how's everything?
Pretty crappy, thank you. Maybe you can really make my year and come back to the States at Easter and burn my house down.
It's me, Hyunsil.
Next up on the Captain Obvious Show: Are Marshmallows sticky?
It has been a really really long time since we had last talk. I arrived here (in Seoul) safely because you had prayed for me a lot, thank you very much!
I hadn't prayed for her at all, I had tried to forget her. If I prayed, it was that someone would screw her over as badly as she had done me.
When I was in Chicago alone, I was embarrassed so much!
You shouldn't have even been back there, and you know it. And the embarrassment should've been about the way you jacked me, not about walking around the States with no guide/interpreter.
You know...I was just upset that you set me free and made me be alone
OMGWTF ARE YOU SERIOUS?! I wanted to keep you around! YOU'RE the one who pushed me away! You're the one who told me, "Go to Ridgway," and now you're pissed at me for actually doing it?!
Even though I came over there because of you.
Well, you have yourself to thank for the aloneness, and if you keep up the current trend, you will be doing so well into your 40's.
It doesn't mean that I wanted to date with you...just wanted to be with you.
Yeah, well, that's information that should've been shared with me before the trip. Instead of talking about the possibilites of sex, and this and that along those lines, why don't you just come out and say THAT instead of the stuff that completely negates that line of reasoning. Yeah, that would've been helpful for my perspective on the trip.
Also, yeah, saying you have a boyfriend BEFOREHAND helps too.
I still haven't come up with the logic behind the "just wanted to be with you." line.
Yeah, we had a great time, and I'll never forget.
Me either, sadly. Mostly the BS though. Maybe liquor will help.
Whenever I see lots of pictures taken in the US, they remind me of you. -_-;
I thought that was going to be a good thing till I saw the emoticon. I swear she needs Bipolar meds.
Corey, I don't know how you feel now..
You don't want to. Because the only thing I can think of that would equivocal to you is bathing in a bathtub full of scissors...wait, that sounds perfect, you go ahead and do that, and understand how I feel, and I'll be here waiting when your arteries clot.
But I just... I don't wanna lose a friend like you.
Should've thought of that before you sent that e-mail. But I forgot, women DON'T think when they PMS. My bad. You should work on that.
I hope your reply will come soon.
I hope you have powerful lungs that would be necessary to hold your breath as long as it would take for my reply to come. Actually right now, I don't. I hope you hold your breath and die.
And I hope to see you in Korea soon.
Only if God hates me as much as I think he does!
I want to apologize all my fault in the US.
So you write this letter to complain about how I "abandoned you," when I, at your request, sent you back to Chicago, and went to Southern Illinois, and now it's all your fault?! Yeah, it's all your fault, and I hate you for it. And now you've got my mind so messed up that I've lost focus on everything again except sorting this out. Why won't you leave me alone like you said you were?!
I wasn't going to write back. Honest to God. But I got drunk several nights after this letter, and got pissed off, and wrote a five page letter that basically said what was said above in long form, followed by telling her, "If she wanted to keep me as a friend, she was going to have to learn what a friendship was, and actually reciprocate what was being put into the friendship by the other party."
I never got a response back.
Most of what happened between now and the end will be discussed in one of my later blog posts, but in June, I finally broke down. I couldn't stand it anymore, I needed to put an end to this standoff. I bought a phone card and called her. When she picked up, I said, "Hello," only to hear her hang up.
I was pained by that result. Two days later, I get a comment on Myspace saying that she was in class, and couldn't talk, and to call her back.
So I did, and things pretty much returned to normal. Well...as normal as it can get after going through all of the above.
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