The last three years have been exhausting, draining, extraordinary enough to wilt the resolve of ten hearty souls.  I’m tired.

Today I’ve nothing to say about Korea, society, adoption, race, culture, or feminism. I’ve nothing to comment on other people’s blogs, or foreign community boards, or adoption support boards, to anyone in person,  in emails, on camera, in print. or  lecture.

I’m tired of it all.  I want to chuck it (not me) all over a cliff, send a burning arrow its direction, watch it engulf in flames, and watch its delicate charred ash float away on the prevailing winds.

I want my  memory erased.

I sat at the feet of my great grandfather Strong and watched as he slipped in and out of the past.  He was over 90 at the time.  Tears would roll down his face as he remembered the death of his daughter, who died of diptheria.  And then he would be in another time, having conversations with someone invisible but long gone, and then he’d remember they too had passed, and then he couldn’t remember who I was.

Memories are like that.  We remember the pain.   We remember the joys lost that cause us pain.  I want all my premature great grandpa Strong times erased.  I’m only 45.  Or 44.  Whatever.

Every new job, (40 of them) every new place, (26 of them) every new interest – has been an attempt to be reborn.  To be in the here and now and not dwell on the past or get overly preoccupied with future ambitions.  All very noble and yet all very lame, because they were really a running away from this thing I want to burn; culminating in being here where I started, which is the past, the present, and the future – all pressing in from all sides with centrifugal force.

I want to wake with the sun, have a rhythm to my days, sing out loud, have a day where no cloud crosses my brow.  But I’m stuck.  I’m stuck here in abandoned/adopted/abused land.  And I can’t get out.

I want the hell out.

I want at least a moment of sunshine and a spotless mind.

Please.  Before I no longer recognize the present.  Before all I am is a string of disordered painful memories.