I never felt like I belonged home, or anywhere else, so I try not to think about it. Home brings mostly depressing memories, and the few sweet moments are snapshots laden with a bitter aftertaste. I don’t like to talk about it because I feel like I have no right to complain—I grew up with both of my parents, we were comfortably middle class, and we even lived well after immigrating to Canada—there are people that faced much worse.

Back in Korea, I was a fat kid, so fat that I had stretch marks when I was only four years old. In kindergarten and elementary, no one came close to how big I was, so I stuck out like a fat, sore thumb. They called me dwaeji (pig), and wangdda (roughly translates to king-loser). Having no friends and self-esteem made me introverted and awkward, making the situation worse. I still remember how it felt when one of my classmates, who also happened to live in my apartment, threw a pizza party and invited everyone in the class except for me. Nobody told me about it until the Monday after. The entire class of first graders had kept the secret from me, even the ones that I didn’t think were mean. I was heartbroken and angry, very, very angry. At times I got so angry that I turned to violence, being too awkward to know how to defend myself with words, I used my body, where I had the size advantage. This resulted in even the teachers turning against me, they saw me as a mean kid with anger issues. My loneliness was deserved.

I hated myself for being fat until I realized something recently. How does a child that young, who has little to no control of their own diet, get so fat, especially with a stay-at-home mom? Well, the reason for it happened to be quite complicated.

To fully understand it, you have to know a bit about my father’s side of the family. When my father was born, his family was in a lot of financial trouble. His father had recently fallen asleep while on shift, which tends to have large consequences if you are a bus driver. Thankfully, having driven the bus into a ditch, the only thing damaged was the bus—damages that he had to compensate for. Being fresh out of a job, under huge debt, and already with three children to take care of, they decided to send their newborn fourth to be taken care of by his aunt. There, my father was neglected and mistreated by his aunt and her two children, until finally returning “home” at the age of eight. His own brother and sisters were strangers to him, and his parents, still working multiple jobs, had little time for him. The neglect, I believe, had damaged him permanently, and he had been a manipulating, apathetic, short-tempered person ever since.

It was my jealous paternal grandmother who manipulated my mother into intentionally overfeeding me. Every single time grandmother visited or called, she would criticize my mother about her awful parenting, about how ugly I was, and that I was too skinny because of her neglect. Bombarded by continuous insults, my mother bent to the words, and to silence it, fed me until I was plump, and when that didn’t stop my grandmother, she continued overfeeding me. At times my mother took out her frustrations on me, making fun of how fat I was, calling me embarrassing for not being able to put on my socks without sitting on my ass, and that she couldn’t find any pants to fit me.

My home was full of screams, either due to my parents fighting, or them disciplining me. Physical punishment was common, and one time, my butt was bruised so bad that I couldn’t sit on the toilet. There, I learned to deal with my problems with screaming and violence.

I feel that my entire family story is of a long, overdrawn divorce. When I was eight, my parents had a fight over something that I was too young to understand. I was hiding in my bedroom with my little brother as we always did, but it felt like the screaming went on forever that night. We heard things being smashed and thrown around, and my mother begging for my father to stop. Eventually, my dad left the apartment, and all that was left was the lonely sound of my mother crying. I found her sitting on the floor of the master bedroom, surrounded by broken glass and a shattered picture frame, trying to tape back together their shredded wedding photo that had always hung on their wall. Before I could say anything, she told me to go back to my room. After that fight, my father didn’t speak a word to my mother for a year and a half while living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed. Can you imagine? That takes some twisted dedication and discipline to maintain something so cruel, but my mother somehow endured it all until my father forgave her.

The situation didn’t change much though. Even after moving to Canada my father continued to be abusive. When I was in tenth grade, he was beating me up so bad I had to run out of home to get away from him, into the Calgarian snowstorm with nothing but shorts, t-shirt, and sneakers. Not thinking straight, I feared he was going to come after me, so I kept running from the house, until, thankfully, a passerby in a warm van picked me up and called the cops. I had to stay at a friend’s place for a little while. Unsurprisingly to me, my mother blamed me for overreacting and betraying my own family. She convinced me to tell the detective nothing was wrong and that it was just a big misunderstanding. Then I was old enough to realize that I couldn’t stay home for much longer, and I moved out as soon as I started university.

Now, I don’t want you to think too badly of my mother. Experiencing domestic abuse first-hand, I can tell you how much people are brainwashed in these situations, and my mother honestly didn’t think anything was wrong. It took her until a few years ago to understand what kind of person my father was when he ran away, transferring their savings in an off-shore account and leaving my mother with nothing. This is when I finally managed to convince her to divorce him—a legal battle that we’re still fighting after two years. Currently, there is no end in sight as my father refuses to cooperate and the majority of their money is still hidden away.

Sorry for not sharing with you any stories that connect me with my home, as there is nothing like that for me, but I suppose my own personal story could be considered a work of non-fiction. I understand “home” can mean more than just your family and dwelling, but having been bullied in Korea and only (relatively) recently gaining enough English skills to properly understand the stories of Canada, I don’t feel connected to either place. Hopefully one day, I will lead my life to someplace I could think of home with a sense of belonging.

(Here are a couple of links to give you an insight into how bullying is like in Korea)

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