Anita,

My friends and my teachers.

Even maybe my parents.

I never told you the background of my life in my home country but I was a very good student.

I spent around a month outside the school every year to compete and train for a National Science Olympiad, my SAT scores is #4 in my entire school, when I never had any private intensive lesson outside school. I have a very good relationship with all of my teachers in high school to the point where they would defend me when I got into some kind of troubles, I also had quite a lot of friends.

A lot guys took interest in me because of my appearance (please do not take this the wrong way though, I hope you understand) and I also dress very well, I look “classy” and even though I never told anyone my friends knows that I am well off seeing how I always travel every year, and wear a lot of “branded” stuff. A lot of girls gets intimidated and jealous of me.

I would say that my personality is quite nice, that I am able to build a very deep friendship that could lasts for a lifetime with certain people. I can be very funny and bubbly as well.

I guess a lot of people respect and acknowledged me as a person based on that. Most of that sounds superficial, I am well aware but I was “someone” in a sense.

In Korea, the girls they dressed up even more beautifully, they always wear make up, always traveling, they are very smart and they work as hard as I do and even harder, they are more of a perfectionist than I am.

basically Koreans beats me in every single thing that I used to be really good (or even best) at.

Sometimes I wonder if I had never went along with my father and stayed at my home country to study law.

Maybe things would be really really different. I really regret coming here, more than anything in my life. Every time that I visit my home country, visiting my best friend Henderson in his university – a lot of guys would ask him to introduce me to them, complimenting me, basically giving me VALIDATION.

Gyunnie gave me that validation. As the president of student council, a Business major, a Korean – he validated Monica. That I am nice, pretty and smart enough to be with someone like him. Even Koreans are having a hard time dating someone like him, so the fact that he CHOOSED me was a clear validation.

In my home country, almost everyone gave me a clear validation.

-Monica

Anita,

I understand. What I have been feeling is not his pain, but my own.

Gyunnie did not created it, I created it by myself, my own mind created it.

I agree with the statement that those around me are indeed sometimes feeling sad / discontent but I never acted like this, I never actually “tortured” myself.

I mean yeah I feel sorry / bad for them but it will just be for a moment and I won’t even let it affect my life, at all.

Me “concerning” Gyunnie is indeed a form of self torture.

Self torture that comes from my own guilt, for not being the best girlfriend for him. For not being more supportive and understanding through his difficult times, maybe things would have been different IF I were more supportive of him, who knows.

I blame myself for losing him, it is my own fault that I lost someone that I loved.

I deserve to be punish for that, and that punishment is – feeling that constant concern and worry over Gyunnie happiness and well being.

I do not deserve to be happy if he is not happy. I do not deserve to be healthy if he is suffering mentally.

-Monica

Anita,

You wrote : shift your focus from him to you and to engage in empathy for myself

Can you explain this in more details?

How can I do this?

Anita,

Words cannot express how grateful I am to have you during this process.

It is about time, for me to close this chapter of “Gyunnie” in my life.

I never imagine that I would come here everyday and talk to someone like you, sharing Gyunnie with a stranger that is miles away from me.

Tonight, I walked past a road that he used to take after dropping me off in my house, imagining myself as him. I cried, I was filled with a lot of emotions … I did not cry because of Gyunnie, it is just the memories was so real to me. I imagined him walking those empty road at 3-4am, walking pass those 2 traffic lights. While wearing his jacket in the spring weather. I can imagine it so vividly.

I made a promise to myself tonight that this long weekend of Thanksgiving will be the last time that I think of him, or get sad because of him. Seeing the current situation of Monica saddens me. I feel so sad for myself today. I am living like a crazy person. I am not taking care of myself, not eating or sleeping well. I went from one of the most fashionable student to become one of the laziest when it comes to dressing up. I finally opened my eyes to my own situation after 4 months.

It took me this long to pity myself. To put myself first. I feel so sorry for myself, it is not Gyunnie that I owe an apology for, it is Monica. I found a lot of old pictures of myself when I was in high school while rumming through my laptop today. I found pictures of me and my friends, pictures during my prom night, during my 17th birthday, me with my favourite teachers, me on my graduation day, a picture of me and my first love, a picture of me and my parents – those pictures become a reminder of who I am.

I realise that I was never lost … I just forgot, for a moment – on who is Monica / Mina besides being Gyunnie`s girlfriend. or ex girlfriend. I let him identify me as a person. His dreams became mine. His problems became mine. I was him.

I am very ashamed seeing those old pictures, Anita. I saw myself, and it was so hard to believe that it was me. I realise that before I met Gyunnie, I was a student and still is. I was a daughter and still is. I was a friend and still is. I was a very compassionate person, I was a very good student, I loved shopping, I loved watching rap shows, I loved going out and take tons of pictures.

and as of right now – I am still a compassionate person, I am still a very good student, I still love shopping, I still love rap songs, and I still love going out and taking pictures.

I am Monica, and I am very grateful that I get to remember myself again.

Anita,

I understand.

Do you have any analysis regarding on what I had wrote? Do you agree / disagree?

Or maybe you have a different opinion?

-Monica

Anita

You wrote :

“There is no indication in it of affection or intimacy on his part, only politeness and social graciousness.

There is no indication of him having an intent to resume any kind of relationship, be it friendship or otherwise.”

I feel the same way as you.

I was …. presumptive about the whole friendship thing. During the relationship, I mentioned to him that I have a very good relationship (platonic) with all of my exes.

Me and my exes do not stay in contact, but I still consider them friends because I feel like we shared a lot of memories and affection together.

I still have a pretty good relationship with my first love, the one I dated in high school, we still follow each other on social media and have nothing against each other what so ever. We have a good platonic friendship. We can share a happy birthday message once a year, and that is it.

Upon hearing this, Gyunnie was confused. He did not understand how exes can stay friends. He only had one real ex girlfriend, they broke up in such awful terms that they never spoke to each other again or even have each other phone number / social media. He is not familiar with the concept that exes can be your friend.

He never agreed to be my friend, Anita. I just realise that. I forced this friendship thing to him. Even during the break up talk, he never said anything about staying in contact as friends. His personality is “all or nothing” so MAYBE to him, either I am his girlfriend or nothing. It is hard for him to find a middle ground, sometimes. That side of him was the main reason why he easily decided to move college and wasted one year of his life.

Regarding the words “dating” and “relationship” – I cannot really give you assurance because of the translation. Maybe he was referring to “dating” as it is the proper words to use, you cannot say “I do not know the right manner in a relationship” because it sounds really weird in Korean, but I will not defend his choice of words, you can assume that for him it was only dating.

He did tell me that he loved me. After some pressure from me, I guess.

I asked him whether in the past, to friends or family or ex girlfriend – did he ever say “I love you”?

He told me, only to his close friends as a joke when they did something good for him. He asked if this was my way of asking him to say “I love you” and I said no. It was a lighthearted conversation, I was not serious. Yes, I was fishing but I never really excepted him to say it.

He said I love you after the night of that conversation. I did not say I love you back.

Later on, after a few weeks, we kissed and he asked me why I never told him that I love him.

I told him at that point.

Nothing about future, only tiny bits when he told me how he was willing to postpone his military service for me and come down to K University from Y University every week, it is something involving his future that he was willing to change for me. That was it.

You wrote : “Fourth item is your perception that you have close friends while in reality you don’t share your intimate thoughts and feelings with anyone (so you wrote)”

During my depression period or episode, I refused to reach out. The truth is, most of my good friends (at least 10 people) knows what is going on with me in general. They are aware that I am depressed and always tried to reach out but I was always … very closed on them, I guess. I have 2 best friends named Jessica and Henderson – I talk to them in a daily basis. They also knew that I almost killed myself during these past few months. They tried to make things better, tried to made me feel involved but we are so far away. Distance is the real problem here. They asked me to seek professional help, forced to go out with people so I won’t feel so lonely but I was just very negative and refused to listen.

Yesterday was the first time that I can truly see my friends effort in helping me, their support has been super amazing.

Henderson in particular, as a guy, helped me a lot with seeing things from Gyunnie perspective. He mentioned that I was too serious with him from the very first day. We are only 19, and I am very rushy to get married – in a way maybe Gyunnie feels it as well. That I was taking the relationship into a very serious manner.

The truth is, we almost broke up when Gyunnie told me that he was moving college. I CLEARLY told him that it would be better to break up now if he is not all in. Gyunnie told me that he was all in, he was willing to commit to me LONG TERM regardless military service and the distance between Y and K University (which is a 2 hour bus ride)

He promised me that. He broke it off himself. That was why maybe he apologised during the birthday message, because he is aware that he was not consistent with his own words. He did it out of his guilt.

To give you more context, I think the break up trigger was when I told him that I am not the type of girlfriend that can go without seeing my boyfriend for a long time of period. Something in Gyunnie snapped after I say that. From that point, he realised that the relationship is doomed. He was and still is a bad liar, so the shift was very visible.

-Monica

[MORE UPDATE]

I feel really distraught. I cannot really sleep or eat.

I felt like Gyunnie wasn’t in the same page as I was when I talked to him. We were on the same page for the birthday message.

But now, the way that he replied was just confused and cold. Confused at why I suddenly bring out stuff from the past, cold because he didn’t felt the same as I do.

I feel like I am going crazy – all my delusions and one sided relationship was really … false. It was never real. I talked to Gyunnie all this time as if he felt the same as me but he did not.

He moved on. After that birthday message, he moved on. I was just a part of his past, a distant memory that he does not want to remember at all.

Anita, I wish that this isn’t reality. That reality isn’t so painful. That it isn’t so hard to bear and live with.

I wish that I am not breathing at this very moment.

-Monica