Dystopia

Dystopia
By Paul Kim

0
I could have never reached the shiniest star.
It was a lock with a key.
For what reason I struggled so long shall always be a stigma I could only hope to solve
Yet, the heavens have bestowed me the answer in the end.
To just reach out and jump.

1
Roy Kim.
John Park.
It was with sheer irony that I was born into this world with the most absurd of names joining those two before me. Heil* Kim, 김하일, was my name.
Yes I’m Korean, the only flaw in my Mother’s perfect scheme to make me succeed in life.
The least she could was make me name bearable on print.
To blame my mother was always an arduous task for me.
Gratefulness is what she expected exchange for her so called “labors” that included carrying me to and from academies and signing me up for more and tests.
More likely is that she has traded her happiness to control my life. In doing that she has gained every control over my life.
It is found in both western and eastern philosophy, that names had a role in deciding the individual’s destiny.
If that were true, the last traces of my existence wouldn’t have lasted now.
Hence these traces only show that I lived a quite different life from what my name suggests.
This was only the beginning.
*Heil (n. neu.) Glück, Seligkeit, Wohl
2
Yes, I’m Korean. I say it again because even I forget it sometimes.
In that sense, to my despair, my mother has done her job quite well. Proof would be this document written in English.
The first mumbles that tip toed out of my mouth were mommy not 엄마, both terms which I swore never to use the term again in my latter years.
The renowned brainwashing stupid box has left quite a mark in my adolescence, which was weapon-ized by mother. The last faintest voices I remember hearing out of it were of course identical to the language I use now, proof that my mother has turned this modern contraption to her liking.
She has sent me, as I remember, to ABC Kindergarten, at the heart of Gangnam.
I knew my mom was a sole believer in Psy’s cult from the beginning.
The kindergarten, itself was at the heart of its rhythm, and those inside were children of the other believers.
To use this word when describing my life is awkward. Yet, I’m pretty sure that I was still happy at this time.
Perhaps ignorant, but still happy.
The only difference, after all, was the use of English and the abundance of luxury.
Little did I know that these were all simply foreshadowing my dark future and my inevitable doom.
Like I said before, I could have never caught the brightest star.
It was a matter of fate so long as I was born into this world.
So long as I lived in this Dystopia.
I still wanted to keep this part of my memory untainted by all the others.
Throughout life, it was an oasis of reassurance in the desert of sorrows.
Having this is in mind, I feel nostalgia towards this part of my life.
I know, however, that this sweet scent of the past was only a lure of this dystopian paradigm capturing the innocent into a fate of eternal pain and suffering.
To miss and love the scent was to miss dystopia once again.

3
Even that narcotic scent did not last long as it turned into a vulgar odor.
Having gone through ABC kindergarten, at times my Korean felt unnatural.
With her false vision, my mother has made a rule that forbade me to speak, ironically, my mother tongue.
And kindergarten ended and what came was a flood of sheets that commanded me to solve equations, memorize Chinese letters, Japanese, which were to be filled every week.
To be incorrect came with a pain staking price-the mark of a bloody slash came with a strike upon my hands with a heavy ruler that forced my neck to omit a shrill sound that echoed throughout the barren house.
Avoiding pain was my goal in life. I wanted nothing more.
The sheets weren’t the end of it.
In whatever book of the unofficial bible of parenting presumably mentions that all Korean children have to learn how to play the piano and taekwondo.
My evasive tasks became more arduous as my mother followed those word by word.
Had I was given the choice to decide myself; I would not have felt the resentment that I feel today.
But to be dragged to what felt like a military camp where I repeated the same repetitive movement was agonizing.
To love music is to play what I feel.
Conversely, to learn how to play piano here was a series of painstaking repletion of notes.
My fingers were stretched as taffy and stroke by a stick when they failed to do so.
At times I looked out the window, only to see emptiness in a playground.
I could hear the oxygen simmering into the steel creating rust as the hot sun burned the paint on the surface.
Dust stood daringly on the slides which looked as if it has been an eternity since someone touched it.
As my convoluted mother stoked my fingers or lashed the blood onto the sheets, I looked out the window and found utopia.
And I knew it did not exist.

4
Going to school felt almost natural.
It almost felt as a relief to stray away from home and far from my mother’s clutches.
I was, oddly, perfectly ready.
What most first graders find hard in going to school is staying away from home in an obscene location for so long without their mothers.
For the believers of Gangnam Style, this wasn’t always the case, but public schools were diverse enough for me to see children from all different backgrounds-all living in this dystopian society.
They all had different destinies; maybe one of them was meant to reach the shiniest star.
Probably not. They all would have had the same life as mine.
It was neither their fault, as it was nor mine that led me down this path.
The term problem implies a solution exists.
In that sense there was no problem in this world. The way this reached world flew made it seem like there was a law of its own.
A law, that cannot be broken and cannot be argued with. 
My mother has dragged me into obeying the law up till now, but this was a time of change.
As much hard as try to fight it, as much hard I try against it, I would become the follower of this cult and obey this law.
This world provided the perfect ramp, which I would have to follow, towards a path of darkness.
The ramp started here.
It deceived me into thinking that I was the one who was making all the wrong decisions.
That I was leading my own doom.
Even though I realized it wasn’t my fault, I also realized that I am too late.
Too far had I taken this ramp and too late to change the direction it is.
Now I remember the last days I spent on the ramp.
Misled and misbelieving that I was going on the right path.
Hoping that there was an end.