Hello, blogosphere. A little about me. I grew up in a very conservative Korean family with a tiger mom. You know the Asian report card, A=average, B=bad, C=crap, D=death, F=f***ed. It's true. I suffered through overly-critical, judgemental, controlling, negatively reinforcing parents. Played the violin and piano. I played on the middle school volleyball and tennis team, and was captain of the high school team (I wonder if my record of aces still stands). I was a pretty good kid. But I was also pretty depressed. I converted to Christianity my senior year of high school through my volleyball coach, who believed that God was the answer to my depression. I did feel a true spiritual conversion and my depression did subside, so I continued to learn about Christianity and what it meant for my life.
Then I went to college where I found more of myself. I joined a couple Christian groups. Since I was a late bloomer to the social scene due to parental suppression, I was free to flutter as I pleased. It got me on probation for a semester, but meh. I was happier to make new friends and discovered that men were actually attracted to me! Given my low self-esteem, I was in denial and amazed at the same time.
Post-college, I lived and worked in the suburbs of Chicago. I was very active in the church. I played guitar and percussion in the worship band, I attended bible studies, and attended the young adult group in addition to Sundays. A year into this, I was visiting with a friend who I hadn't seen since college. She came out to me and didn't tell me in college because she was afraid I'd judge her since I was a Christian. I did not, nor did I ever give the lgbtq community much thought. We started hanging out and I discovered these new feelings when we went to go see Chocolat in the theater. What was this? I couldn't sleep the first night, then...oh shit, are these romantic feelings?! No. It can't be. I'm a Christian. That doesn't happen to Christians. I was in a deep depression for 6 months.
I realized that I was still attracted to men, so it was easy to play straight for the next several years and compartmentalize groups of people in my life. I was a chameleon, emphasizing the aspects of my personality that were more appropriate in front of Christians and in front of queers and in front of family.
During this time, I did confide with a few Christian friends and my church ended up trying to pray the gay away. Then I went on a missions trip with that was sponsored through that church and decided to serve in the Dominican Republic for 2 years. This didn't mean I proselytized. It meant that I was in charge of the child sponsorship program and taught English to youth at risk and to adults in the community.
After my stint, I came back to some pretty bad reverse culture shock. I wasn't near any beach in the DR. I was in the middle in the mountains in an impoverish town where I didn't have power or water a lot of the time; where the water was muddy during the rainy season and you just had to shower in it. Where dengue and giardia were very common. You get the point. Back to the reverse culture shock...I fled to Europe for a month.
Upon my return, I was so lost. Friends and society advanced and lived without me for a couple years. What the heck was bluetooth?! I didn't know what to do. I was really struggling with my sexual identity and faith. I hadn't explored much of my identity and the feeling was strong to open that Pandora's box. So I went through a very thorough slut phase. I will go into more detail about that in future posts.
For the sake of not writing an actual book, my journey finally brought me here: I have accepted and love myself as a Korean-American bisexual Christian female, even though each of those communities reject me for some aspect of my identity. I embrace who I am and I don't compartmentalize anymore. I am all of me to everyone and it feels great.
