This Winter Day

The first snow of the year came the day he left Korea for good. And though they are not in any way related, the snow being a fluke of nature, his leaving being his plan all along, I kind of look at this day, with the first fall of wispy light flakes as a metaphor for something, what it is I’m not quite sure yet. Maybe it’s the beginning of thinking more maturely. Maybe, it’s finally the start of a friendship without our baggages of past hurts.

He said sorry the day before he left. And I realize that for all that went wrong between us, it was all that I was waiting for. An aknowledgement that he intended all that he did, and that he knew how wrong it was.

So there’s snow over Seoul, the chill permeating even through the concrete, winter’s first aim at reclaiming this city at least for a few months while his plane lands into the tropics of his new life elsewhere. And yes, there is a bit of sadness, as it always goes with something so seemingly final, an ending to a chapter of our individual lives. But there is always something to look forward to, there’s christmas and the tropics, there’s laughter, and the pleasure of a cup of hot chocolate or tea on a winter day. And how the anger and resentment of past mistakes are finally depleted. It is so hard to live in the moment, when all you remember is the past, it is difficult to go back to being nice and sunshiney when to your mind you’re broken, no, shattered. But one day it comes, silent as the snow, short as a sorry, how we move towards something, and learn to believe, like really believe that there is something, a surprise waiting just around the bend.