A widower groping his way

남은 것은 나 하나. 아내는 먼저 갔다. 이렇게 있다가 언젠가는 아내를 보러 갈 수 있다. 문제는 도대체 얼마나 여기에, 이 칙칙한 세상에 묶여 있어야 하는가다. 죽음보다 더 두려운 것은 죽음을 기다려야 하는 비루한 인생이다. 희망이 없는 인생. 환멸 밖에 남지 않은 인생. 무의미.

My life is like a movie that I watched too many times. It got boring. I wish I could erase my existence. I wish I could wipe away my existence like a dirt on a window glass. Of course, I can't do it. I have no joy in my life. I have nothing to expect except my death. If everything is already decided, there is no point in trying things. All I can do is to shut up and watch the boring movie again and again till my eyes pop out because of boredom.  I have been to Heesun's cemetery during the lunch time. I took a photo of my hand on the stone that covers her urn.  Taking things too seriously always make things really serious. That is what happened when I panicked about my wife's cancer. If I had taken a different view of things happening at that time, maybe I could have had a chance of saving her, although that was also very unlikely.  It is still valid for the rest of my life. If I took my life too seriously, it will become an unpleasant mess. If I took it just as a ga...

Heesun died on 2nd of May, 2012. Four years have passed. Nothing changed. I am still living in confusion and disillusionment. I still have not made peace with the world. I will not do it until I die and see her again, I guess.  I cannot shake away the feeling that I was left alone in this empty world. It would be better if I could leave this world right now, which I cannot do because of my sons.  What is there for me to do until I die? What needs to be done? Nothing really. Nothing at all.  When it is almost sunset, I can go up to a hill, sit on a chair and wait for the sun to set slowly and the night to come. Just like that, I can sit here in the office, lie down in the bed at home and wait for the sunset of my own life. And when that finally happens, I won't have to think about my boring and pathetic and unpleasant life after Heesun's death anymore. Just like I turn on a timer and see the time flows, I can wait and see until the time flows from my fingers like gra...

I smoke. I neglect my health. I say things stupid to people sometimes. My life is boring or maybe I am a boring person. Not much difference in that. I am sitting in the office. It is Friday. If I were still in the past, this would be a nice spring day. I would come home, hug my wife, have dinner with kids and wife, and I will make love to my wife. There is none of that in my life anymore. This evening, I will meet a woman of my age, a woman who is lonely and separated from her messy husband. We will have dinner and will go our separate ways.  This life is getting more and more like a boring movie that I watched too many times. Even my pattern of deteriorating life style is getting similar to such movie. I almost died of smoking too much and now I am doing it again.  Where am I headed living like this? What is going to happen? 

What is so special about one festive day that distinguishes it from other mundane days? Nothing. They are just human inventions. In the vast universe, there is no Sunday and no Christmas day. They are just silly convention made up by inhabitants of this tiny mole hill called the earth.  But such so-called special days make me feel more depressed and lost and lonelier than other days. That is just the way it goes for me.  That is why I resumed smoking after staying away from cigarettes for three days and why I am going to a karaoke to appease my emptiness. 

I smoke. I drink. I try to get a woman. But nothing quenches my restless soul.  Three years have passed since my wife died. However, I am still caught in the past. I do not take care of my health properly. I live like a man with no future. Maybe I am exactly that. A man without future and hope.  I am always hungry for the touch of another human being. More correctly, a presence of a woman in my life who loves me like my wife did. And that is something that cannot happen,  I am lost in this messed-up lifestyle. I need to do something to change myself. I need to find ways to have the peace of mind. I just need to change the direction of my life. If I go on like this, it is matter of time when I will collapse and make my kids orphans.  Life fucked me. I should accept it. If I keep living like this, it will me and life that fuck me. I need to change everything in my life. I need to reinvent myself as a wholesome widower. 

I have been buried in my despair and disorganized life for too long. My health and morale is at the lowest level ever. I was not like this even during the months after my wife died.  I smoked for more than two years now after successfully quitting for one year. I am chronically tired and my mind is not clear. A few days ago, I made a stupid and shameless advance to a woman that I hardly know. It can be explained as a symptom of desperate loneliness but it also reflects the status of my mental balance verging on the lack of common sense.  I was gloomy and sad in the winter of 2012 and spring of 2013. But at that time, I still had a dignity and a good level of self-restraint. However, now, all I see when I look in the mirror is a loser with no self-respect who walks deeper and deeper into a mud of self-hatred and self-contempt every single day.  I cannot live like this forever. Sooner or later, I will have a lung cancer or make more stupid mistakes than asking a strang...