Departure
How much reality do I need, to make
up for all these years,
of only seeing you in my dreams?
To have this life
of loose red ribbon, blue tassels, braided silk thread, without knowing
how to make a knot.
Ketamine and coming back
When I arrived back in New York after the 15 hour flight, something’s not right. A familiar sensation in my body telling me that I’ll soon be unrecognizable. We made the descent, touched down, and in that stiff narrow airplane seat, I had an acute awareness that I had just abandoned my body and physical tether to the world. I myself became something of a hallucination. Time began to disintegrate and fracture before my eyes. Out of the oval window I saw that it was night time. Moving like a phantom, I followed the line of people and get off the plane. By the time I got out of the airport, finding my way to the car pickup area and pushing a $6.00 cart with two suitcases, two duffles, and a backpack balancing on top, I’d lost all sense of self. I was not sure where I was or what I was doing there. My head was swirling in mania and meaninglessness. I studied the patches of orange light shining so deeply and magnificently bright against the dark blue sky. It was the first time in my life that I felt like a stranger in New York. The passenger pick up area was a mass of chaos, four lanes wide all crammed with cars. There was a police officer yelling over a megaphone, trying to organize the cars and keep the lanes moving while people shouted across the road trying to find each other. An elderly East Asian woman stopped in front of me, our carts lightly bumping into each other. She looked intently at me. It was like a moment of pause amongst the madness. Her eyes are soft but blank; we both seemed to be existing in some unreality. She asked kindly which airline I took, and I told her with composure, Korean Air. She gave me a soft smile and a nod and then turned away, walking off with her cart.
I tried not to think about the meaning of that interaction and kept moving forward with what I knew I needed to do. The mission is to get home. Astoundingly, I was able to order the car, and I was able to wait patiently for it to arrive. I wasn’t anxious or angry or hyper yet, but my brain was in disarray trying to find a connection between the past three months and the present moment, wondering what’s left for me now, what’s left for me here. Aside from feeling like I was in a different dimension, I was having a crazy craving for ketamine. Like I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I saw in my mind the baggy sitting in the top drawer of my desk. The whole car ride I stared blankly out the window and thought about the ketamine waiting at home for me. It was 2:00AM when I got back to my apartment, and I was suddenly full of energy that I didn’t know where to place. I walked mindlessly around, setting down my bags and turning lights on, until I stripped down to my underwear and sat at my desk. I took a few bumps of ket and pace around my bedroom until I went down the hall and came back with an x-acto knife. I sit in relief at my desk chair while I bandage a patch of red on my thigh. I wonder what I’d be doing if I were in Korea at that moment, and why I wasn’t there doing it.
It’s like that for a couple weeks. There’s as much madness as there is emptiness. I’m urgently reaching out to everyone I know and making more plans than possible to attend; fervently shopping online for things I can’t afford; spamming my Instagram with exhilaration, posting series of unrelated pictures; I start three writing projects that I’ll never return to; and spend nights taking ketamine and typing away words that make no sense together, both in English and Korean. I don’t eat, and I sleep for a couple hours throughout the day. My brain is full of noise, a million ideas and thoughts, voices speaking to me all at once, like the radio is glitching and every channel is playing at once. But at the same time I’m hollow and distant, only feeling full on days of red rage. Before I crash into depression I do attend some plans and meet with friends after my months away. I laugh and don’t apologize when they come over and see the state of my bedroom. Piles of clothes are scattered and strewn across the floor. My desk is so cluttered with makeup, medication bottles, and cigarette cartons, that you can’t see the surface. Rows of empty mugs on the windowsill, notebooks and pens scattered on my king sized bed, an array of hair accessories, jewelry, and nail polishes tangled on the top of my dresser. And among everything are the duffles and suitcases from Korea that I can’t bring myself to unpack. Sometimes I take out a T-shirt from one of the suitcases and press it against my nose, breathing in the scent of laundry detergent I would use. Although nothing makes sense to my maddened mind, there is one fact I know, the only thing I know to be true, I’m not in Korea.
The inevitable Mood Swing
The mania crashes into a mixed episode which crashes beautifully into bipolar depression. I don’t stop writing, but it’s far more difficult to describe the essence and impact of depression than mania. It’s almost like it’s so disturbing that it shouldn’t even be told aloud. It’s been 35 days since I returned from Korea (that’s how I’m measuring time). For the past couple weeks I have spent every day the same, not leaving the apartment, laying in bed with ghostly stillness. I get rejected from two jobs, and I cut myself again but worse this time. My therapist checks in on me every day, and I let her. I don’t reach out to friends, and they don’t reach out to me. I sleep over 15 hours some nights and smoke weed all day with my ashtray on my bedside table. I still don’t eat, and my room’s still a mess, but it feels different this time. It’s as though it’s the bedroom of someone who’s died, their stuff untouched and intentionally left in its chaos. I lay in bed on my side, imagining my own death and comparing different ways that I would commit suicide. It’s always different each episode, but this time I fantasize about jumping off a building, falling into death. I have episodes of sobbing a couple times a day, burying my head into my pillow, screaming and writhing in pain because it physically hurts. I always say that in these moments, it feels as though someone has died, and I’ve been eternally grieving at finding out the news. In between the mixture of cries and howls, I pray and beg aloud for the suffering to end, to some higher power that made me this way. I feel Korea everywhere, and when I’m reminded I weep and shake and turn off the lights. When I drink my coffee in the morning because it has regular and not banana milk, when I hear the song I’d listen to on my way to school every morning, when I’m in the shower and use the shampoo I brought back because I didn’t finish the bottle. Above all, it was the rainy days that would evoke the longing to be in Korea. In Seoul, when it rained, it was like for those few hours, life had tucked itself away. In Seoul it’s never a quiet rain. Raindrops splattering onto pavement and roofs, drumming against the window panes, feet sloshing through pools of water, a river streaming down the side of the street and into the grates. I fall asleep easily on those nights, knowing the rain is still awake.
There was a day I was on my way home, and it was raining harder than I’d ever seen before. I watched from the bottom the water pour down the hill that leads to my apartment, rushing over the road’s surface with fervor. I trod against the current, planting my feet hard with each step, being careful not to slip. When I got to the flat street at the top, I caught sight of the night time orange cat running under a truck parked on the side and curling up against the dry concrete. There was a motorcycle at the end of the street, driving towards me slowly with the sound of wheels splashing in deep water. I made eye contact with the motorcycle’s headlights, shining white against a black sky, and squinted my eyes. The light reflected the scene in the pools of rain on the ground. I imagined falling into one of the puddles and entering an alternate universe in which Korea had always been a part of my life.
I have an appointment with my psychiatrist a few days later, and he bumps my antipsychotic medication from 80mg to 100mg. Before, and during, my three month trip, the regimen I had was working perfectly. I was lively and normal and steady. Since coming back, it’s like the Bipolar mutated, and suddenly the medications that were working so well became insufficient in treating the grief of leaving Korea behind.
The context
Go to Seoul, go to Yonsei University and learn Korean. Words I heard time and time again from my grandmother. My grandmother who mailed me newspaper clippings of the top 50 universities in the U.S. when I was applying to college. My grandmother who once told me she was embarrassed to be seen with me because of my tattooed body. My grandmother who only cares about Columbia when I talk about graduate school. But also, my grandmother who has a copy of the bipolar book that my psychiatrist first recommended to me, who always calls me 우리 예쁜 손녀, uri yeppeun sonnyeo, my beautiful granddaughter, who is so much like me. She’s insistent but casual, Go to Seoul. Learn Korean. I would push it to the side, just another unwarranted opinion. When she says it though, pressure and criticism is replaced with love and intention, like it’s a hope and not an expectation. One day she says it again over the phone, and this time I plainly and honestly tell her, Okay. I tell her I’ll look into it, and I do. I’ll be between jobs and have the summer free, and I had always wanted to spend time with Korea.
I spend my time there from June to August, about three months. My mom’s old friend’s son is also going to Seoul at the same time to learn Korean at Yonsei, although we are in different programs. They put us in touch, and we decide to split an Airbnb. The thought of having a roommate brought me a relieving sense of comfort, knowing that someone I knew would be in the country, and that I wouldn’t be living all by myself for so long. I can tell by our similar style of texting that we’ll get along, and we do, very much so. We spent a lot of time together while we lived there, becoming good friends as much as roommates. We had organically established a synchronized waking up and getting ready routine in the mornings before school. The bus stop was right down the hill from our apartment, and at 7:50am (which eventually became 8:00 which eventually became 8:15) we would step outside, comment on how hot and bright it was, take our daily selfie, smoke a cigarette, and make our way to get on the 7024. On the weekends I found myself at the Buddhist temple. Sometimes if I really needed it I’d go on weekday nights. I’d take off my shoes and sit on a cushion in front of the large statues in a large open-aired shrine room, close my eyes and sit tall, picking a mudra to use throughout my meditation. On the occasional nights that my mood would slip just a tiny bit, I’d go to the temple. I’d breathe with my head down in front of the Buddhas, and when my tears stopped, I’d walk around the temple grounds, sometimes seeing a cat prancing across the garden, before going home.
My brother came to visit me toward the end of my trip. I never would have imagined that one day we’d be together, just the two of us, in the motherland. I took a couple days off of school to spend more time together. I brought him to the restaurants and shops and neighborhoods that had all woven themselves into the fabric of my life there. I brought him to the temple. I got him a T-shirt at the Yonsei bookstore. He practiced Korean, slowly reading every sign we saw, deciphering the characters and putting the sounds together, repeating the word until it came out smooth, without a stutter. I must have shown off sometimes, but mostly I encouraged his learning and taught him what I knew. The day before he left was a Sunday, and I would have school the next day again. After our day out I cried and cried as we walked up the hill to my apartment. We had lunch after my classes the next day, and before we said goodbye, he handed me a little envelope with a look of vulnerability, saying it’s just something to open later. When he hugged me, I felt years of fragmentation become stitched together. Knowing that for those days, we had Korea to ourselves. Knowing nothing about Korea, but still, somehow, knowing everything.
Now
The antipsychotics start kicking in two weeks later. I still think of Korea everyday, but the melancholy morphes into fondness. I still use the shampoo and listen to songs from my time there, and I wear the bracelets I got at the temple, and they all feel like good luck. I’ve continued studying Korean, and I practice everyday, writing journal entries and speaking with Mom and Halmoni. My room is tidy; I don’t do ketamine anymore; I don’t cry everyday; I understand where and who I am; I have a sense of time; and I’ve unpacked most of my things from Korea. How curious it is to leave as one person and come back as two.
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About the Author
An emerging writer, Isabella Yoon Miranda is a multiracial native New Yorker and graduate of Wesleyan University. Their creative nonfiction work centers themes of language, culture, and mental illness. Living with bipolar disorder as a queer Asian American, writing has been a vehicle in making sense of her experience of (un)reality. Isabella likes to spend time with friends and family and play with their cat, Jasper.