I took today off of weight training. I train Sundays now so this week today, Wednesday, will be my day off. Day off just weight training that is. I still had my morning sparring today.
And with a free evening off training, I made a special home cooked meal.
Dinner for two at The Penthouse Sweet Suite ended up turning into meal shared by three and a casual chat at the dinning room dinner table turned into quite an intense chat about reactions and responses I got from yesterday's homepage posting.
A lot of people private messaged me, wow, but for every handful or so of people who had my back and were encouraging, there was one or two who were discouraging.
It was to be expected.
People are going to say what they want to say, you can't change that. And while many support me and have my back, many are quick to judge and put me down. I can handle it. I'm 35. I've experienced my share of life and am in no position to have to explain myself to anybody, seriously, but I will because I am so over keeping things in my head. In Korea I very much lived in my boxing club and in my head. I don't live in either places now. This is Canada. This ain't Korea!!!
I know many don't understand why I kept it a big secret, the poison in my relationship, but I did try to reach out and the extent to which those I reached out to showed any concern was having one of my young boxers sleep on my office couch a couple of nights when Snickers was really angry.
My boxing club was my dream come true and I justified staying in that relationship and taking the abuse because I felt most people don't reach their dream but I had and if taking the crap I did meant keeping my dream of owning my own club alive, then well, I was going to take it. It wasn't on a regular bases, the abuse, but I know one time is one too many times. My boxing club was my baby and I just couldn't bring myself to let it go just like I couldn't bring myself to let my dogs go. I could never bring my dogs here to Canada, despite the nonsense that some say and want to throw at me. I have five dogs -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 -- and one of them is the size of me. They are just as much my dogs as they are Snickers so do I take all of them or only 1 or 2, or a few, and then how do I pick?! Moreover, they'd be going from living in a 11,000 square foot living corridors with lots of human interaction to a 1,000 square foot apartment with me never really home.
Snickers was the love of my life and then he wasn't and I know exactly when and where it went wrong. It started to go sour when we loaded each other up with roles and labels about a year after we opened up Hulk's Boxing. We went from being a married couple to being business partners and then boxer and coach. Snickers didn't want me to continue to fight but I insisted he coach me and let me fight. The social expectations that came with carrying such labels and role expectations meant us as a couple were thrown into a vice and every so often something would happen or someone would come along and turn the vice, squeezing us and upping the stress. Whether it was the continual push on me by his family and culture to have a baby and Koreanize more or the stress that came with owning our own business together and each wanting to run it a certain way, that vice handle kept on turning and turning. And I think there's something that a lot of people don't realize; Snickers was just as much under stress as I was, it was just different but none the less there were most definitely pressures and stresses pushing down on him. It was just on a different level but it was there. I don't say that to justify what he did to me, to us, but he also got hurt too. I wasn't the only victim here. I had the bruises to show for my struggles and he had the added weight to show for it.
People can judge, that's fine. That is their right I suppose. I've put much of my life out here on a public page for all to read, ridicule, judge, and dissect but I hope most realize that in me revealing what I revealed yesterday that this homepage in no means exposes my entire life but is merely a small glimpse into it. Do you know what I did today? Yes but only to a certain extent. You only know that I sparred in the morning and then had dinner tonight but you don't know what I did before, in between or after. This is my homepage, it's but just a small glimpse into my life.
I'd like to note also that when I first made the move here to Canada, I did in fact come as a sponsored athlete and the plan was only to be here for a year. That was very much the plan. I needed to escape Korea because I was feeling rather smothered by all the attention I got from not only being female pro boxer, foreigner and owner of Korea's largest club, but also because of the publicity we got from having done a reality show that showed us in a light that made me rather vulnerable as a foreigner in Korea.
I needed an off switch and not only did Snickers know this but so did my sponsors. It was a sponsor who originally suggested me the year off but originally we were thinking of me moving to Japan. Me moving to Canada just seemed like such a logical off switch. It was a chance for me to play catch up with friends and family, live comfortably in a country I was obviously familiar with, and it posed the perfect place for me to recollect myself. More importantly though, it was the perfect place for me to relearn how to breath again and live without wearing all the burdens, expectations and whatnot that had been thrown on me as a foreigner, a female, a pro boxer, an entrepreneur, a wife to a Korean husband, and a foreign in-law to a Korean family.
It wasn't until a few months into living in Canada that I decided I needed to make this move a permanent thing. My life is so different now. I am very happy and I honestly have never been so happy in my entire life. Experiencing an extreme level of sourness has really made the sweet all that sweeter. I most definitely look at life now with a whole different perspective. Everything and everyone is different to me now and I hope I never forget this natural high I am on. Life is good, it's real good now.
I'd slap down divorce papers in a second if I could but I can't. I would love to close the book on Korea but there are legal restrictions with what I can do here in Canada because I have been living out of the country for so long. Legally, in order for me to have the Canadian courts deal with my divorce I have to be in the country for a year so, until then, I am separated.
2 comments:
Hi Amy, I've read your blog for a long while now. I came to it as a fellow expat in Korea. I even contributed 100 dollars to your new boxing ring.
On a personal, purely selfish level, I'm sad that the story I first encountered on here had to change so drastically. On a human level though, I'm very happy for you and congratulate you on the positive steps you've taken over the last six months.
Best wishes for the future.
Toby
Hey Toby!!!!
I hear ya....you and me both are sad with how things turned out but such is life but life continues and so does my story. Thank you for being happy for me, I appreciate that and I appreciate you telling me that. My move to Canada has been as exciting as it has been hard and nerve-racking. Still very much in transition but I have a solid crew of people around me supporting me and encouraging me.
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