A Room Within My Mind

                                                                 Young Hahn

  I don’t know how much time has passed. I am staring at the blinking cursor on the complete whiteness of a computer screen. Inside my mind, I’m chasing after words in the cloudiness of space—wandering around in the fog of nothingness where I cannot grasp hold of anything. The temperature rises around my head as if I’m about to catch a cold. My throat is dry with an unquenchable thirst. Then I ponder why I struggle through all the physical agonies in search of words to write. I question what significance literature has in my life.

  It was Author Shin Ji Shik’s “The White Road”, which led me to feel the power of literature for the first time. I read the book several times, and tears welled in my eyes each time I was done with it, because I was completely absorbed to feel and breathe in the main character’s position, truly sympathizing with his heart. At that time, I became convinced that a writer is someone with the ability to move readers’ minds. Afterwards, perhaps because of my failure to pass the entrance exam for a prospective middle school that I wanted to attend, I suffered from emotional instability while my self-respect and dignity were not yet fully established. In the meantime, a Korean literature teacher paid special attention to me. She coaxed me to have a presentation in front of the composition class, advising me that I possessed refine sensibilities and potential to produce good writing works if I’d seriously study literature. Quite inspired by her encouragement, I presumed that literature would be my academic direction. However, life obviously did not always pan out the way I planned it; I gradually became quite distant from literature. Although I sometimes regretted not having taken the path of a writer, I just kept letting myself feel content to have the teacher’s complimenting words carved in my mind.      

  One summer afternoon, I received a call from my youngest son’s special education counselor, notifying me that my child with a certain disability had finally finished his course and would attend the completion ceremony. Suddenly, I felt something crawling up from the pit of my stomach to my throat. It was an inexplicable wave awakening my soul and making me actualize the presence of a hidden dark room at the corner of my heart. In that room were the traces I had shared with my son. Now I felt as if I had to open the door of that room. I wanted to give life to the lump of confusion, convert it to words, and help it walk out of the room. By borrowing the power of literature, I thought I could reach out and connect with the other people who also had their secret room hidden in their heart. Instead of talking about pain and suffering, I made up my mind to express the living and moving shape of heart just the way it is.

 The opportunity to study literature came about as pure coincidence. Writing essays felt to me like exploring an invisible huge elephant, and I realized I had been living with a daring pride to make-believe I was a talented literary person. My fantasy started to shatter as soon as I raised my pen to take out what was embedded deep down in my heart. Especially today when I am sputtering around the same spot with no progress on writing, only a sense of despair and doubt regarding my inability as a writer surrounds me. I look back on my ordinary life, which I’ve become comfortably accustomed to, and I even wonder if I had any passion for writing in the first place. Nevertheless, what keeps me up even when I feel like just dropping down is the very first decision of mine, which was to open the door and clean up the closed room. I cannot yet free myself from the rollercoaster ride of hope and despair; however, the reason I never let go of literature is because of my longing for the freedom to speak and my desire to communicate with the ones who want to go hand in hand with me. I’m determined to keep training myself with essay writing and build up the power to open the closed door.

    I want to light up the inside and organize the room to find the hidden words that are purely my own without any disguise or exaggeration. By doing so, I believe I will be light and free as a bird flying in the sky. If I can clean up the old dark room and fill it with new hope, I will surely meet the warm season of life. If my eyes are not shaken by my little egos, I know I can uncover the basic literature of human love that I yearn to describe through my heart. I am determined to keep waiting with a firm belief that day will certainly come.