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I arrived in the United States, the so-called land of opportunity, in my mid-twenties, a graduate student from South Korea. I carried with me a suitcase of hope, packed with borrowed dreams and quiet determination, unaware I was stepping into a lifelong continuation of sorrow. I studied for six years, one in Arkansas and five in Oregon, and yet returned to Korea without the degree I had labored for. What I left behind was not just a diploma, but a portion of my youth, my saving, and the alternate paths I might have taken.
After another decade in Korea, wandering through the ruins of old ambitions, I returned to the States in my early forties. I’ve remained ever since, an exile not from a country, but from the life I once imagined. It seems likely I’ll end my days here, not having built monuments, but having whispered into the wind—hoping something of me lingers.
Looking back, my life feels like a gust of wind—swift, invisible, and without monument. It has been a quiet battle for survival, and perhaps it is a miracle that I have not vanished altogether. I’ve lived like a forgotten instrument—turned but untouched, resonant with songs no one asked to hear.
In the corner of my storage room rests a plain, unremarkable guitar—silent, patient, and more knowing than it lets on.
I once tried to learn guitar in my early twenties, practicing for one month before surrendering to the truth: I had o talent for it. I let it go and never owned one again.
The guitar that sits here isn’t mine. It was left behind by my only child, my son, during a visit. Six years have passed since he placed it in my home. In that time, we’ve fallen out of touch. Only my wife hears from him, exchanging a few text messages each year.Once or twice, I’ve picked up the guitar again, fingers fumbling over strings that refuse to sing. If I couldn’t make it sing in my youth, how could I now? The guitar does not mourn. It simply waits- a silent witness in the shadows.
And perhaps that is the metaphor of my life: not only could I not play the guitar, but I’ve never truly played life itself—neither in Korea nor in America. Aside from bringing my son into this world, I feel I’ve left no mark.
I came to America with dreams, gave birth to my son here, and watched those dreams dissolve. I returned to Korea, hoping to find footing, but wandered instead. Eventually, I came back to the U.S., where my days have passed in quiet drift. And now, I find myself in the twilight of this journey.I write this memoir to leave behind some trace of my existence for anyone who might think of me once in a blue moon. My life is stitched with mistakes , misfortunes and despair and may not be worth remembering. But I write so that something of me remains.
Because I have so few photographs—just a handful from my early thirties, and a scattering after sixty–this memoir must become the album that time forgot: a quiet archive of moments never captured, lost to memory, or never born. I hope it to be a record of exile, of survival, of the rituals that stitched together a life no one asked for but I lived anyway.
I came like the wind – uninvited, unannounced—
and I will vanish like dust scattered across a foreign sky.Born In Korea, but destined to die in America,
This land became my grave even as it gave breadth to my son.Here, I sit with dry tears, the kind that no longer fall,
waiting for the hush that ends a life and begins a silence.The guitar my son left behind does not sing, but it listens—
a witness to the music I never played.