Misunderstood

I · The Casualty

I am yet to discover a way to accurately convey the contents of my heart. Words have failed me. My actions have failed me. Writing has failed me. These failures land squarely on my shoulders. The ways in which I am misunderstood only have one casualty: my conviction.

There is an attribute that I possess that has plagued me for as long as I can remember. Sadly, that attribute appears to be wired into my DNA. The more I attempt to grapple with that attribute, the more I understand just how royally fucked it is. What is that attribute?

I love television. Television to me is an opportunity to immerse myself in a world oblivious to mine. TV is not my escape from reality — in fact it is not even close. Television is more of an emotional submersion for me than it is a recreational activity – though two things can be true at once. The reason that is true rests on the same attribute that makes me misunderstood. Why?

II · The Reasons We Give

Well, every show has a writer. Every writer is telling a story. Every story has a purpose. While some stories are filled with action or intensity, others are romantic or fantastical. No matter the genre, the writers are all doing the same thing underneath — showing us why a character does what they do. This is the oldest thing we do. The Iliad is nearly three thousand years old, and it is mostly one man's rage and what it costs — and it puts us inside that rage the whole time, so even his cruelest acts make sense. Viewers often give TV writers grace with the details. And this holds no matter the show, famous or obscure — give an audience the reasons and even a shocking act becomes understandable. Think of Jon Snow sliding his dagger into Dany at the end of Game of Thrones. Millions of people understood why the murder took place. They had the context to understand the conundrum Jon Snow found himself in.

IV · The Room

When Kyung-sook finds her at her home after her release, she hasn't come to demand a recantation or to relitigate the lie; she has come to plead with Hwa-soo and help her understand what was in her heart — that the bond between them was never conditional on the statement, that she sees not a traitor but the same woman who stood with her — that Hwa-soo is not the thing she was pressured to become. And that is exactly what fails to reach her: the care is genuine, but it is not received. Hwa-soo cannot accept or believe in her own heart that she is still held as worthy of it, nothing arrives to dissolve the guilt — it is that unrelieved guilt that carries Hwa-soo to make an attempt on her own life.

At her bedside in the hospital where Hwa-soo is recovering from the suicide attempt, Kyung-sook grieves not only that Hwa-soo tried to end her own life — but that her own care never reached her in time to prevent it — that if Hwa-soo had truly taken in how she was still held, still seen as more than the lie she was pressured into, the guilt would have had no room to grow. What she carries into that room is the weight of a bond that was real on her side yet failed to cross over, and the knowledge that the failure was one of transmission rather than feeling.

What compounded the grief was the helplessness. There was nothing Oh Kyung-sook could say and nothing she could do to make anyone believe that she had never cared about the embezzlement story or the fallout it brought down on her — that the only thing she had ever wanted was for her friend to be safe and loved.

V · Both Sides of the Room

I deeply empathize with Oh Kyung-sook. She carries into every room the thing she carries into that hospital: a care that is real on one side and keeps failing to cross over. And Hwa-soo is almost everyone in my life — every person who couldn't receive what I was holding for them. I've been Hwa-soo too. I know the guilt you can't set down because you can't take in that you're still held as worthy. So I know both sides of that room. I know what it is to reach and miss, and to be reached and not feel it land.

What moves me is that Oh Kyung-sook's quality is rare. So rare I don't think the average viewer fully understands what she's trying to give Hwa-soo. They get the surface — a friend visiting a friend. They don't see that she's trying to convey the one thing that has no reliable delivery: that their friendship and bond was never conditional to begin with.

VI · The Arrangement

People genuinely believe something about me that isn't true. I know why. I get it. I'm not fighting it. The people who love me most love me for the way I make them feel — not for what I am. They'll boast about my accomplishments to everyone but me. When they falter, and everyone falters, I make sure they know mistakes happen and everything's going to be okay. When I falter, the attacks come with no remorse. That's the arrangement. I've stopped needing it to be different.