Lie #2: My name is Josie....

Her parents were somewhat of a mystery to her. She sensed what knowledge she had of them were only simple tales heard at family get gatherings, but not the detailed stories she desired. She knew that had to be special people to have sent for a lonely orphaned infant from across the sea. But who they were, she spent years trying to understand. 


Residing in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, her father worked at the local college and her mother, a former special education teacher, now spent her days a a life coach to her three young children. Devote Christians, God came first in the home, with discipline a close second.


There was always enough to go around financially, but nothing was wasted and frivolous purchases were few and far between. Whether this was because of basic necessity or a by-product of having grown up at the end of the depression, it is not known. The structure of the somewhat ridged household brought both the good and the bad that that entailed and she would not understand the importance of growing up in such an environment until much later in life.


What she did know from the beginning was that she grew up in a  loving home. Everything she had ever seen on television reminded her of that one true fact.Nothing that she had ever watched on Oprah ever made her question it. Of course,a loving household often meant restrictions and unfair expectations, in her opinion, but there was never yelling or even raised voices in her recollections of her formative years.


If anything,it was the lack of communication that was the one downfall of her childhood. Her father, a quiet computer professor; before the Microsoft boom, before the dot.com generation, was a man who spoke few words, but thought deeply with a mathematical mind that was confusing to her. Growing up, the youngest son of eleven siblings, she imagined that it must have been difficult to be heard in a home filled with so many voices and assumed that this is why he internalized his voice and remained content in his silent reflections.  


On the other side, her mother was optimistic and talkative, always one to share in the conversations with the other mother's that often gathered together. Yet, the daughter sensed that there was something behind her mother's cheerful disposition. It would be as an adult that she would question her mother's lack of gumption when it came to serious matters. It was as if her mother felt uneasy speaking her mind in case it would upset or differ from the general concessions. It would be years later that she would begin to understand the environment that her mother had grownup in and why her mother, underneath the positive attitude, remained tethered to a childhood where positive words and actions were often used to cover up the secrets of chaos and addiction. 


She often wondered what brought her parents together, but knew that as parents, they were a good team. A balance that brought secure consistency to her life,no matter how stifling that felt at times.

She grew up in a green house with a red brick porch and a white glass front door. The front hall had a wood floor and a wood staircase on the left wall that led upstairs to the bedrooms and pink,later green and purple bathroom. There was a coat closet in the hallway that after a pot-pie incident became a cave to run away to and an old fashion metal steam heater that would become a drop-off spot to dry wet mittens and hats throughout the dreary months, this being most of them in the rain soaked town. There were four bedrooms upstairs. Three of them would be used by her throughout the years. Sometimes shared with her younger sister, sometimes as a solo escape from the world she lived in. 


She doesn't recollect the house every being cluttered,with the exception of her bedroom. She doesn't remember seeing her mother do a daily clean as she would find herself doing years later with her own family, but such mundane things surely didn't warrant a space in her memory. It was particular tangible memories she did have of this residence where she spent so many years. The heavy green curtains in the living room, that would be memorialized behind her passport photo for all eternity. the big red fake leather chair that she could squeak her toes across as she sat and watched Sesame Street. The piano that she would listen to her father play church hymns on and where she would later sit upon the glossy black piano bench and cry when she didn't want to practice for her weekly lessons.


There was a fireplace that was only used for Christmas parties when she was told to stay upstairs, but she would sometimes sneak out of her room and sit at the top of the stairway and listen to the hushed voices and see the flicker of the flames reflected off the glass French doors that closed off the living room from the hallway. 


There was one party she was invited to, a honored guest,  when she was only nine months old. Two days before Christmas on her arrival into the country of freedom and promise. It was at this party that her not only her life changed, but also her name as she was introduced around as Josie, her newly given name; named in honor of her new proud mother. 




For years I hid the fact that Josie is not my true name. Not that I am particularly fond of my birth name, nor could I even say it correctly until a sweet old Korean man at the local grocery store taught me phonetically how to pronounce it. For as far as I am concerned, and since I have no recollection of life before my "American birth", my name is Josie. Recently however, my mother mailed me the contents of my adoption files and there I was, a tiny eleven pound version of myself, a stranger in a 37 year old torn and faded manila envelope wearing a homemade name plate across my chest, Yun Sun Jung. 

I get teary thinking of my own children and the special attention I made in the choice of their given names. How can I so easily forget my own, condemn my own? Who lovingly choose out this name for me? I will never know. In fact, for all I know, this was given to me by a worker at the orphanage as part of their daily paperwork. So I don't feel bad at my lack of ownership, that is not why the tears form slowly for me. It is because while I know I  was not conceived or born the conventional way by my mother, it is this woman that chose me, loved me  and  named me even  before I arrived that snowy winter day into her loving arms.

Lie #1: I am at peace with myself....

Ever since I was a young child, I was taught that it was bad to lie and yet I find that I have been lying my entire life. Not that, "I didn't hit my sister", when indeed I had, type of lie. But rather, the "I feel fine", when I feel like shit, type of lie. Why do I do it, I don't know. Perhaps if I could be honest with myself, I'd understand better. Perhaps if I could muster up the courage and get myself into therapy for more then a month jaunt at a time, I could start to uncover the reasons behind a lifetime of lying to myself and to others.

In any case, I suppose everyone is a liar, but they don't really know it. I have come to accept it as a reality in my life. Not that I see myself as a villain in my actions, but rather I've come to accept that sometimes the truth is too hard to manage at times. Sometimes the truth can hurt too much to say out loud.

One might ask, then why should we believe that I am telling the truth now then? Because for the first time in my life, I've found the ability and the strength to be honest with myself .For the first time I have the courage to believe that living in an honest state of chaos instead of succumbing to what society has taught me to be or to want to be, is more important to me than living in the lies of my own cowardice.

It is Easter Sunday, for some people, the celebration of new life, if you're the religious type. Perhaps you'd think that that is why I choose this day to begin this blog. I could lie and say that it is, but rather it's the inspiration of a dear friend, who renewed the spirit of the writer in me. So I end this day with a vow to myself... to live each day to the fullest, to not hold back anymore from the past that has been pulling me down my entire life. To quit lying to myself and purge it all in order to do so. My hope is by writing this down I can finally put it all to rest, reflect on the lessons I learned from the lies, bury them in the past and begin a life worth living with honest emotion and honest convictions. Once again, I wonder, am I lying by thinking this is possible...I guess I'll find out.

In the beginning....

Yun Sun Jung. Born in 1972, across the ocean in a land filled with almond shaped eyes and olive skinned people, she is but a faded black and white snapshot in a faded worn photo album. Who is this dark haired baby with the "doe in the headlights" look upon her face? Did she cry when she was first born? Did her mother nuzzle her against her warm breast, sweaty and exhausted from a hard labor? Or did this black eyed baby emerge from the womb alert, content and curious of her bright new surroundings? Only that woman and God can answer this for sure. This is the first of many mysteries that will haunt this child for decades to come as she struggles to survive in a world where the questions are many and the answers few.

I look into the mirror and wonder where the years have gone. I neither look young nor old, but somewhere in between. Is it my Asian genes that mask my age or is it the dazed, blank look in my eyes? My blue black hair is now tinted a dark brown as I attempt to cover up the coarse gray strands that have crept in over the previous years. My irises, still dark in color are surrounded by whites that are reddened by daily lack of sleep and stress. I would love to say that I see wisdom behind those eyes, but rather, I will call it experience. Of innocence and childhood, of teenage angst and youthful follies and mishaps. Of first love and all encompassing lust. And most recently, of unconditional motherly love and relationship disillusionment.

It is now in my 37th year that I find myself at a crossroads in my physical, emotional and spiritual life. I have bore my children and as I approach sending them all off to school, I ask myself, now what? What is my purpose? Where is the woman I was told I was to become one day? From all my extensive research on daytime television talk shows, I realize that this has been the normal scenario for woman all around the world since the beginning of time and I am certainly not alone in my renewal for purpose. The only difference in my situation is that I must ask myself, did I ever feel that I had purpose? Value? That is the ultimate question that I ask myself. One I hope to answer by writing this blog, this journal, this memoir of sorts. My true story of the unique authentic me. Perhaps by writing of years gone by, of current struggles and observations will inspire me to find peace in myself. Perhaps it will allow me to let go of the lies embedded in my brain and in my soul and discover the woman I was meant to be, but have yet to become.