Work Text:
K-dramas are such an interesting concept. Romance movies, romance novels, coming of age teen shows that have dramatic relationships are such odd concepts to me. They set up your expectations, they show you that you should never settle for less than what you want. Everyone tells you your love should be a fairy-tale in one way or another, but what about mine?
He came into my life on a platform where people use the faces of idols to run away from their reality. “I’m here to write” but most of the time they’re there because they need friends, are a loser behind the screen, or they’re horny. I don’t think any k-drama or fairy-tale starts like that. No fairy-tale showcases two people, 5 years apart, on two different continents, loving each other behind a screen and never meeting. No fairy-tale showcases the protagonist lying about her age to the love interest. However, Belle was 17 and Prince Adam was 21. Snow White was 14 and her prince was 31. No one talks about that in those fairy-tales though, so it still doesn’t count.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like had I not messaged him, lying about how I was two years older than what I actually was. I wonder if I would still laugh the same, still use social media the same, still think the same. I want to say he walked into my life and turned my world upside down, but he didn’t. I did, I entered his life being underage and stupid. I entered his life with trust issues, commitment issues, and daddy issues. I entered his life when he hated me, saw me as a fuckboy, when in reality I was a fifteen year old girl who was incredibly intimidated by the supposed nineteen year old. I wanted a friend, not a first love. I thought I had met my first love at the time, and he stood there to watch that one break me. He watched me break other people, including him. He stood and listened, he stood and he stayed.
He stayed as I lied about what classes I was taking as a “senior”, he stayed when I used the three words that would usually make him uncomfortable, he stayed when I was being grumpy and jealous, he stayed when he caught onto the mess of lies I was spewing to him, he stayed while he got to know the sixteen year old he never met. He stayed while I was hurting over a past relationship, he stayed during my mood swings, during my sensitive headspaces, during the nights I spent crying over my family. He stayed as I pushed him away, he stayed while I tried moving onto new things. He stayed while I was an immature teenager.
He stayed while my home stopped feeling like home. He stayed and slowly replaced my physical house. My physical house which holds me, my narcissistic mother, trauma, home-cooked Vietnamese food, memories, ripped up photos of my parents’ wedding, lies, and mascara stained pillow cases. In a home, you must feel protected. Instead of protection, I felt fear. I felt fear treading around the eggshells my mom had laid out on my dark hardwood floors. The amount of cement walls wrapped around me made me heavier, made it harder not to break the eggshells I was stepping on. It was no longer safe at home, for which the layers of protection I had wrapped around my skin everyday for many years after the divorce forever stayed on. I never took them off until my mother went to sleep and my phone was fully charged, awaiting the conversations I stayed up for.
Our different time zones were the reason I lost sleep, but he was also the reason I was able to wake up with only two hours of sleep in my system. Waking up has always been hard for me, but he made it all worth it. He made all seven alarms that went off in five minute intervals after 6:00 AM when the skies were still dark so worth it.
He slowly became my safe space. He was my comfort person. He is my comfort person. He saved me when I was suffering from the cold harsh snow storms of Utah. When the knife was nearing my five years worth of bare wrists, he was the one I turned to.
Our story is far from a K-drama. I wonder who would watch it if the storyline went like ours. If it had an OST written by BTS, would anyone find our story romantic? Lovely? Unique?
We’re not a romance novel, no matter how hard we try to be. We can write a story on paper a million times, acting like that would change our past and how we met. However, I would redo everything all over again in every life. I would go through all the jealousy, all the pining, all the tugging at my hair at 3:00 AM in the morning, just to love him for longer, just to love him in every universe that exists. Because loving him is so refreshing. Loving him feels like a breath of fresh air while you’re drowning in choppy water that feels like it’s out to get you.
Getting loved by him is another story of its own. He loves me in a way that makes everything bad feel soothing. From vegetables to seasonal depression, he makes everything so worth it. He loves so beautiful, how has he never loved before?
He makes me feel like a princess, even though we aren’t a fairy-tale.