Week 6 / Individual Counseling / 160429

0.

I couldn't remember last week's content, so I read the impressions from the 5th week of counseling, and it made remembering easy. Records are really useful.

1.

In childhood, the only people who listened to my stories seem to have been my grandfather and grandmother. It's not that my parents didn't listen, but I have almost no memories of doing so with my parents. Whenever there was a conflict with my parents, I'd tell my grandfather and grandmother about it. The things I worked out that way, hmm.. became difficult after both of them passed away. When my grandfather passed, I cried my eyes out. I have no memory other than crying. I didn't cry throughout the whole funeral period, but on the day of the burial procession, because I was the eldest grandson, I stood at the very front holding my grandfather's portrait. I don't know now whether that was harsh. As the eldest grandson, I think it can be that way. Only, I was indeed too young to bear that emotion. But then, where is there young or old in emotion—all I could do was cry my eyes out.. I really could do nothing but cry my eyes out. My father was beside me—my father rode in the car together all the way to Damyang—but my father didn't easily show tears... Come to think of it, my father shed tears when they began to cremate my grandfather. That, at least, was something even my father couldn't hold back his grief over.. As for me, rather than at the cremation, I cried during the funeral Mass at the cathedral, when leaving the funeral hall on the burial day holding the portrait, and when we held the funeral Mass once more at the Catholic cemetery in Damyang.. *sigh*..

2.

My grandmother passed away suddenly. The truth is, I wasn't prepared for my grandmother's passing. Already before the third grade of elementary school, I had begun to agonize over death. After I began that agonizing, my grandfather passed away, and my grandmother also passed away in a traffic accident, leaving me without the two people beside me to whom I could pour out my stories. My grandmother grew very lonely after my grandfather passed. So I would sometimes sleep over at my grandmother's house. I didn't really mind it. Since I'd lived together with my grandfather and grandmother in my kindergarten days, it wasn't awkward either, and for me, in a sense, rather than my parents, in the 'childhood I began to remember,' my grandfather and grandmother were the closest people..

3.

The story of my grandfather and grandmother that I began to bring up that way carried more emotion than I'd expected. Today's counseling, in which an unexpected outburst of tears came that I couldn't even imagine, was truly strange. It's hard to express in a single word. Since any emotion comes in a complex blend, expressing it in one word never makes sense to begin with, but even so, this time was really hard. It was bewildering too.. In any case, when I feel an unexpected emotion like this, and it's a sad emotion, I seem to burst into tears. Through counseling, I'm getting to know myself more.

4.

I remember the situation in the household after my grandfather passed away. The conflict between my father and my aunt, the conflict with my uncle, the conflict with my grandmother, the house problem—the counselor said something to me with a nuance of 'wasn't that somewhat of a burden for young Su-chang?' I'm not sure whether it was a burden. They were stories at a level I didn't understand, back then. Thinking about those events now that I've grown older, they were quite complicated matters, but I was in a period when I had eyes as pure as 'Ok-hui' from 'Mother and the Houseguest.' Though not a kindergartener, to me, still an elementary school student, those matters were simple matters, yet they were also not simple matters.

I was also envious of friends whose grandfathers and grandmothers were still alive. That's still the case now. Those two were truly enormous presences to me. It took me over ten years to come to realize this.. Since elementary school I had never once properly thought about this part, this one part of life, but today I came to think about it. I think today's counseling is rather significant.

5.

As the counselor listened to my story, she said the feeling of the relationships I had with my grandfather and grandmother might be similar to the feeling about my relationships with the close people around me. Hearing it, she's right. I tend to deeply treasure relationships with people where I can listen to the other person's story while also comfortably telling my own. Each time one of those falls away, it seems to hurt my heart beyond measure. That's probably why the pain was so severe this time—I thought that, having gone through the same kind of pain again like the year before last, it would be more familiar than before, but when it becomes 'my own affair,' it grows larger..

6.

I'm afraid. Honestly. Meeting any new person itself is frightening. I'm afraid of growing close and then breaking apart again. It's such a frightening thing...