The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness Read Online Free PDF Page A

wake up again. It was only after I approached thirty that I got to thinking about how worn out and exhausted I must have been back then.
    I was about to turn thirty and one day I felt extremely, utterly tired. I realized, right away, that my fatigue dated back to those years, that I had already turned thirty, or even thirty-two, many years ago. What made me realize this was none other than writing, which I was so in awe of.
    Is that how it goes with writing? That as long as you are writing, no time is ever completely in the past? Is this the fate that befalls all writers—to flow backward, in present tense, into a time of pain, like salmon migrating upstream, swimming against the current back to where it started, struggling through waterfalls that break and tear its fins? It always returns, pushing through waterfalls, carrying a deep wound inside its belly, risking its own life. It returns, taking the same route back, tracking its own trail, traveling that singular path.

    I am at the Job TrainingCenter. I wake up at six A.M. in my dormitory room. Sometimes when I awake, I still think of the pitchfork that I threw into the well. What would it look like down there, sitting still at the deep bottom? But there is no time for idle thoughts. I hear the bell summoning us to the athletic field, where we stand in line and perform the health exercise routine to a merry melody. Then we clean our designated areas, wait in line to wash up, after which we have breakfast. I have never before seen this kind of dinnerware, a single tray with slots for your rice and soup and all the side dishes.
    To my sixteen-year-old eyes and my sixteen-year-old tongue, the tray feels unfamiliar and the kimchi tastes odd. I have a hard time eating at first, because of the strange-looking tray and the odd-tasting kimchi. When Cousin asks me why I am not eating, I blame the kimchi: I can taste a strange kind of fish sauce in the kimchi; Mom only uses sauce made from yellow croaker. As for the tray, I cannot find the right words for what exactly is wrong with it, so I don’t bring that up. Back in our country home, my rice and soup bowls would be sitting facedown on the kitchen shelf. Cousin buys me a pastry at the snack stall. She is nineteen years old and I am sixteen and she does her best to cajole me.
    “You can’t keep spending money on bread like this. We have very little money and we won’t be making any until we find a job and get paid.”
    I relent and take a spoonful of the soup from the strange tray to my mouth. I am again reminded of my bowls on Mom’s kitchen shelf, which brings tears to my eyes. Floating on top of the soup, inside the strange tray, I see my seven-year-old brother’s sleep-soaked face the day I left home, asking, “Where are you going, Sis?”
    I take a big scoop of my rice. I drink up the soup. I chew on the stringy and odd-tasting kimchi, and swallow.

    The teachers all refer to us as theindustrial labor force. Even in the middle of soldering classes, we are reminded that we are here as part of the industrial labor force. The doors of our dormitory rooms at the training center are each marked with a sign carrying the name of a flower, as in kindergarten classrooms. What was the name of my room? Rose? Lily? All I remember is that there were lockers attached to our wooden beds. Some years later, there was a popular comedy skit on TV, titled Atten-HUT! I used to watch closely whenever it came on because the interior of the military barracks in the show was very much like the dormitory room where I slept as a sixteen-year-old. The only difference is that our rooms have a loft, accessible by a ladder. Five of us sleep on each floor. Cousin and I help each other, as Mom told us to, and climb up the loft to our designated beds. Following roll call at nine P.M. , lights must all go out. Nights when I cannot sleep and lie staring at the ceiling in the dark, I get to thinking about the pitchfork inside the well, just as I do when I