I Am Steel... Saturday, December 10

I titled today's entry "I Am Steel" because that's exactly what I felt like today; that's what I had to be today to endure the dinner party with the in-laws today.

It was a toss up between making myself feel like steel and feel like Snickers' burden.

So here's the scene.

Snickers and I headed over to his mother's house today for a family dinner party celebrating the upcoming and very quickly approaching marriage of Snickers' sister. Everyone in Snickers' immediate family were there -- mother, father, two sisters -- and his oldest sister came with her twins and husband while the other sister, the one getting married, came with her soon-to-be husband. There were 10 of us in total.

For the most part, the women (minus me that is) kept busy in the kitchen and really didn't get to enjoy the meal with us -- a part of Korean culture I don't agree with. My mother would NEVER let us start a meal until she sat down... but anyways, this isn't Canada and Snickers' mother isn't Polish/Austrian. The meal was great; Korean sushi with lots of side dishes and then a fish stew. Everything was going smooth, real smooth, that is until Snickers' parents presented the upcoming newly weds a massive present. It was beautifully wrapped in old style Korean clothe with a white clothe tied in knots around it. It looked stunning. Inside the gift was a beautiful wooden box, similar to that of a small treasure chest, with wedding day hamboks, various other things, and a beautifully written letter on scroll paper. I wanted to be happy for the couple and share in this special family wedding ritual but I couldn't.

I felt hurt, I felt embarrassed and I felt like I had robbed something special from Snickers that he would have, could have and should have also recieved but didn't. He didn't because I am not Korean but I think it's more than that. When we got married we didn't even so much have any kind of similar special family dinner nor did we recieve anything more than a envelop of cash dropped off by one of his sisters. I'm not a fan of cash. My parents never allowed me to accept cash unless I had done something to earn it, like working for it or doing chores. Also, I've always viewed cash as a cheap way of getting out of having to put any thought and effort into a gift, and they know this.

At that very moment I hated Korea. I hated Korea from the bottom of my heart and wanted to seriously scream at the top of my lungs. I don't know what I would have screamed had I but I'm sure it would have been a blur of not-so-pretty words with tears and fists of pure anger, bitterness and resentment.

So on that note, I got up and walked out of the room.

I didn't say anything; I just got up and walked away. I joined the twins in the other room where they were drawing. I couldn't be in the main room anymore. I'm sure they thought nothing of it and I know they never meant to hurt me but that's the thing. They never thought anything of it and they had hurt me.

Randomly I sometimes ask Snickers if he wished I was a Korean girl and he always replies with the same answer, "Hell no". I know he's being honest with me but I also know his life would be so, so, soooooooooo different if I was a Korean girl.

On the drive home I turned to Snickers and asked him, "Didn't we get married?" It was a rhetorical question but sometimes I seriously wonder if some people here take our marriage serious and I want to ask it. Still to this day several people refer to Snickers as being my "boyfriend", after a year and a half of marriage though it's not funny. It never was funny to begin with.

I didn't go into depth with Snickers as to why the rhetorical question but instead told him that the more he tells me to understand his family the more and more I don't. I adore his father, K-Gere, his mother tries but sometimes it's an unnatural try, and I think his two sisters are quite super sweet to me, but their innocence is often insulting to me because it means they often totally miss what's really going down, like tonight.