I read somewhere that people are afraid of heights because they don’t trust anything but themselves. They don’t trust the edge of the cliff to hold their weight, they don’t trust the elevator cable not to snap, they don’t trust the rollercoaster to keep them onto the rails.  If they’re with other people, they don’t trust the people around them not to push them off the edge. 

In that moment, I was completely alone. It was just me, the ledge, and the ground fifty feet below me.  

And in that moment, I wanted to jump.

I wasn’t suicidal. I was curious.

“How long would it take for people to notice I was gone?” I silently wondered. “How long would it take for people to forget that I’m gone?”

Too soon, I decided, as I stepped away from the edge.

Much too soon. 

He skipped home from school, swinging his metal lunchpail, thrilled to be out of the confines of school, every once in a while stopping to greet people he knew. 

A truckload of American soldiers rumbled past, and one of them tossed the little boy a chocolate bar. He unwrapped it happily, his steps slowing to a walk as he savored the sweet taste, remembering the last time he had chocolate.

One of his older sisters had given it to him as a gift on his last birthday. As the youngest of thirteen in a once-rich, but now destitute family, he tended to be forgotten by his family. She was the only one to remember it was his birthday, and when he had gotten back from school, he had found the chocolate on top of his books, wrapped in a bright red bow. Jjang Unnii, he would call her, or Best Sister.

She was the only one of the siblings to not go to school or work. When he asked his mother why, she told him to shut up, he would understand when he got older. He knew that she acted strangely sometimes, talking to herself often, making up wild accusations at people for things she claimed she saw them do, but these episodes didn’t bother him. He had overheard his brothers talking in hushed voices about something called “jungshinboonyuljung.” He would find out, many years later what it was in English - schizophrenia.

His father was an alcoholic. There were few times in his life when he had seen his father completely sober. The man had seen too much, done too much, and lost too much in the war. Before the boy had been born, he had been the owner of a successful business, one of the richest men in town. He had thrown himself into his work, his way of forgetting his past troubles. But when his business went bankrupt, he fell into drinking, at first only on weekends. When he was too proud to take orders from his new boss, he got fired, and started to drink all day, every day. It was a common occurrence for the entire household to be looking for his passed out body in a street gutter at three or four in the morning. He was occasionally abusive, an impatient man, cursing his children and his wife. He was especially harsh towards his Jjang Unnii, almost never letting her be in his presence, calling her a shame, a black mark on the family’s honor.

He loved his Jjang Unnii even more because of it. Both of them were the neglected children of the family. He had someone who would listen to him and play with him when he came back from school. When the family had had a cat, they would tease it together. When their father had stepped on the cat’s leg and snapped it, it was his Jjang Unnii who had carefully bandaged it back. He looked up to her, and when she did or said weird things, he would make up wild excuses for her. 

“She accidentally ate a cricket today,” he told his brother once, when she accused him of plotting behind her back to steal her hair. “That’s the cricket talking, not her. “

Even when he was whipped repeatedly for lying, they could not get him to stop fabricating stories to try and clear her from blame. She was his closest friend, and when he drew pictures of his family in class, he drew his Jjang Unnii the biggest, because she was most important to him.

“Today,” he thought to himself, still happily eating his chocolate, “I’ll tell Jjang Unnii about how my teacher accidentally sat on his own lunch.” He laughed aloud at the memory.

As the boy turned the corner into his own street, he stopped, confused, alarmed. He could hear someone screaming. He starts walking faster towards the noise, counting down the houses as he got closer and closer. The noise couldn’t be coming from his home, could it? He broke out into a run, dropping his lunchpail and his chocolate, running as fast as he can, through his gate, and there, he saw it.

His father lay limp on the stairs, his Jjang Unnii holding a kitchen knife, stabbing him over and over again. Blood splashed everywhere, dripping off of his clothes. The concrete steps were covered in little lakes of it. He could smell the odd, bitter metallic taste. Her eyes were wild, solely concentrated on the task of butchering the man. The little boy just stood there, shocked, mouth agape. 

“Jjang Unnii…,” he breathed, not knowing, not comprehending what was going on.

It’s weird.

Because of my FAP application, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks thinking about writing.

In middle school and high school, I’d write for fun. My brother and I would sit on the bed, notebooks in hand, and just write. When an idea struck me, I’d stop whatever I was doing and scribble it down, thinking that I’d have the time to expand on it. When my mom cleared out my huge desk after I moved out, she found sheaths of papers with just one or two sentences on them.

“What a terrible waste,” she told me in Korean over the phone.

Did senior year of high school kill it? After so many college essays, did I just lose interest? Now, when I write, I take pride in how little time it takes me to write 10 pages, 15 pages, full of big words and ideas that are nothing original, just easy to talk about and make it sound good for my TAs.

Well, I’m going to try it out again. And put them up on tumblr. The idea of it scares me, putting up little windows into my soul on the internet… But we’ll see how it turns out. whoscribbles.tumblr.com hopefully won’t die.