A letter to the GS

Dear GS,

Here we are, more than a year later, and still our relationship hasn't changed. Well, I mean it hasn't changed on the surface. You are still too busy, and I'm still always annoyed with your inability to commit time to me, to us. Our arguments are still the same, and our challenges maybe even more complicated than they were a year ago. But our relationship a year ago was still fresh and new; our time together precious and little; our love filled with urgency and passion.

And as the year passed, your physical distance fostered in me an emotional distance. While your commitment and love for me hasn't changed, my actions and indeed my feelings for you have been growing cold. You question me in passing. You raise the issue without actually raising it, and I dismiss it by telling you that you are silly. But you are right. I don't shower you with kisses like I used to. I no longer utter the words "I love you" or 'I miss you' in the morning or at the end of the day. I give you the emotional distance that I feel, maybe as a result of your physical distance.

None of this was really conscious on my part. I kind of noticed in a detached way, as a person observing my own emotions and actions from another's eyes. I worried about it in unemotional way, as though I was watching the passing of the seasons. I thought I was giving you subtle warnings that I was growing apart from you, but I wasn't really being honest enough with myself to be honest with you about it.

So now, I ignore the longing glances you give me when we are together; I turn my back to you when you need physical assurance in our relationship; and I don't reciprocate the acts of kindness and love that you still manage to give me, despite my emotional distance. Worst of all, I pretend I don't see that hurt look in your eyes when I do all of these things. I can see that you are trying to feel your way out of the dark- trying to figure out what might strike my fancy and bring back my neediness, urgency, passion and love.

And at this point I am so full of doubt about our future that I guess I feel like all of this distance is necessary so that I'm not blown out of the water when I discover that the relationship we have in Korea is not a relationship that could work in any other time or place. The impossibility of immigrating, the distinct possibility of you ending up in jail either as a result of your political activity or wife's family leave too many openings for failure. I know that you are not ready to give up, and at this point I'm not either, but I guess I feel like I'm protecting myself from the distinct possibility of life without you later by trying to minimize the emotional impact of life with you now.

I don't think you fully recognize how afraid I am of a future without you, nor that I am also afraid of the difficulties that a future with you will also almost certainly entail. Our problems and obstacles seem insurmountable.

I'm not writing this because I want to tell you that we are over. In fact it is completely the opposite. I want to figure out how I can make the flame within me burn hot again. I want to give myself to you. I want to have enough faith in us to make it through whatever it is we are going to have to face together. But I cannot get those kinds of reassurances from the kind of life that we live now. What I want to know is, when will you take a long enough break from solving the problems of the world to help me solve the problems of our relationship?

I am sorry that I need you to be here more. And I'm sorry that I'm not strong enough to just support you in fighting for a better world. I'm sorry that I am not selfless enough to say that the movement is more important than our relationship and you being away so much is okay. In the beginning, I thought I might be all of those things, but I'm not. I'm sorry for making you believe that in the beginning I was all of those things. As it turns out, I'm just a normal person with average ambitions and needs. If you were looking for superwoman, I'm not your girl. And for that, I am also sorry.

GS, I do love you. I do want this to work. But I'm lost. Please help me find us again.

Your jaan

edited to add: I don't know about the appropriateness of posting stuff like this. On the one hand, it seems way too personal, but on the other hand, I don't really have anyone in Korea to talk to about this stuff so this is, sadly, my only outlet... More on my completely pathetic and lonely life later...