It didn’t stop me from feeling sick with every hour that passed where she didn’t answer.
It took two days, but I finally received a response. Seeing her name pop up on my screen gave me such an immediate, visceral reaction that I had to lean against the nearest wall for support. It was a combination of anxiety so strong I almost vomited and a sense of vertigo. Seeing her name here in Cumbria, when she belonged so firmly in Korea. It was like two worlds colliding.
I was frankly surprised she’d answered at all, but I wasn’t surprised at the brevity of her response.
Hana
Because not everything is about you, England.
[Sent 0823]
I almost – so very almost – took a deep breath as a kind of relief hit me at seeing the words.
However, a moment later any peace I might have had crashed down around me.
Hana
But it could be.
[Sent 0825]
Chapter 13
It was starting to feel like Groundhog Day.
I’d wake up, debate the merits of bothering to get dressed when I was going nowhere, seeing no one, doing nothing.
The isolation didn’t bother me as much as it did others. I’d always been a little on the homebody side, so not being able to go into town or visit with the few people I still knew in the area wasn’t really a problem. My social meter was easily filled up by regularly video-chatting with Becka, or less regularly with Jihoon, who very rarely had a whole day with nothing on.
No, the isolation was fine.
It was the lack of absolutely everything else.
I read books, I helped around the house, I played my old acoustic guitar. I watched telly.
I was bored out of my mind.
Dad was working from home now that his term of compassionate leave was over, but on his lunch breaks we went for walks. This was the highlight of our days now that the Government had allowed everyone to leave their homes for “periods of outdoor recreation”. Dad made so many prison jokes about inmates being allowed in the yard, even Mum got sick of it and told him to pipe down.
Sometimes we went to the local reserve and played ‘red squirrel, my point’. Sometimes we walked down to the local village and listened to the librarian in the tiny library as she read poetry from an open window.
Dad had gotten it into his head that now the weather was warming up, we should spend more time in the garden. He’d gone online and purchased all sorts of garden games, like giant connect-four, horseshoes, and perhaps most disastrously; swing ball. The less said about the latter, the better.
But the essence of my day remained the same. Empty.
All my life, I’d had some kind of occupation. From college I went to university, and even when I’d graduated, I’d had a crappy job that I got out of bed for.
Then I moved to LA.
Then Korea. I’d been antsy there, too, until I’d started working at ENT.
It wasn’t the work so much that I missed, but doing nothing, day in and day out… it kept at the forefront of my mind how utterly rudderless my life had become. I was beginning to feel like a plot device in someone else’s story.
The devoted daughter. The quirky flat mate. The secret girlfriend.
These days of endless non-occupation were making me feel… abstract, vague and undefined.
There was absolutely nowhere to hide from the things I’d been resolutely not thinking about.
