Tae Yoon: Life from 2006-2021

i just came back from a long weekend trip to the countryside in the southern tip of korea. my younger cousin and his girlfriend invited me to go along with them since they both had vacation time and while i usually hate third-wheeling, i decided to go along. the trip turned out to be a lot of fun. we arrived saturday morning after a five-hour car ride and the weather up until monday night was just amazing. the daytime was always nice and sunny with the hot warmth from the sun on my skin, and the nights were always cloudless with a perfect view of all the stars and constellations. i got to swim in a river, see shooting stars, go to the beach and immerse my body in the natural mud made possible by the low tide, bike on small paths through fields of green that lead me to nowhere, ate lots of great food, got a tan, put my feet into streams while watching tiny fish swim by me and oh yes, drank until i blacked-out on the first night.

everyone has their drunken blackout tendencies, right? these are our uncontrollable (i guess they're actually somewhat controllable since we do have control over them by not drinking until we blackout, but i digress) tendencies that happen when we've consumed way too much alcohol and we no longer act appropriately nor in a correct state of mind and have no memory of doing so the next day.

i have a few blackout tendencies, but the most common is kicking off all my clothes. i have no idea when or how i do this, but whenever i wake up the next morning completely butt-ass-naked, i know i blacked out the previous night. i usually wake up completely sober and fine, then immediately get some clothes on and then try to remember what the fuck happened. i can't even remember the number of times this has happened to me, especially in awkward situations. the story never involves sleeping or messing around with another person, but more of just shame and humiliation due to the fact that on many occasions i've woken up this way in a place that is not my bed or home.

we stayed at my younger cousin's distant relative's house in the country which was spacious with lots of great personality. the home has been in their family for generations so there were a lot of personal and historical items showing the many generations that have lived there at one point. the house has a rooftop with an amazing view of fields and mountains. on our first night there, my younger cousin and his girlfriend decided that we should have dinner and grill up there since the weather was great. when we went food shopping earlier, i was sure to buy lots of beer and soju because i planned to get my drink on and have a good time on the trip. my younger cousin does not drink, so it was mostly his girlfriend and me clinking glasses throughout the meal. actually, while we did cheers and clink glasses with each gulp of beer and soju, it was me who did most of the drinking and initiated the clinking each time. so we're drinking and i remember at one point going downstairs into the house to get more beer and soju, even though i knew no one else but me was going to drink most of it. i go back upstairs and we're talking and i'm getting all wasted, and that's the last i remember from the night.

i woke up the next morning completely butt ass naked and the first thought in my head was, "oh shit." i went and found my cousin and his girlfriend who were together in the house and immediately asked, "what happened last night??" this question is usually a reaction to my whole waking-up-naked, and sometimes i get responses like "nothing happened," or sometimes i hear "um, you need to sit down for this."---that day's answer was the latter.

the first thing my cousin's girlfriend asked me that morning was "is your hand bruised?" then my cousin told me that it was apparent i was wasted the previous night when we were still on the rooftop. he had purchased this new picnic-mattress/spread/blanket sort of thing for the trip and we were using it to sit on for dinner. i was smoking cigarettes and apparently putting the butt out directly into the mattress, even though they told me numerously to stop (there are several burn marks that went straight through it). when we get downstairs, i knock out in one of the rooms and everyone goes to bed. soon after, they hear a loud pounding coming from my room and it wakes everyone up. the thing is, it wasn't just the three of us staying at the house, the relative who lives there was also sleeping in his room. he's a farmer in his fifties who tends to all the fields and properties and owns the house. the pounding was so loud that even he woke up from his sleep on the other side and he was pissed as hell about it. so everyone wakes up startled from the noise and my cousin tells me that i was blackout drunk and wasted with my eyes closed, laying on the floor and for some reason just pounding my fist against the large ceiling-to-floor-wooden-armoire... butt ass naked.

my blackout tendency of pounding on things surfaces every now and then, but it's been a while. this is not me in a fit of rage where i'm pissed off and pounding my fist or leg out of anger, but it's just a physical and repetitious motion---really, with no explanation. i'm sure there's something happening in my brain at the moment that makes me want to do it, but i really don't understand why. i think i get my whole kicking-off-all-my-clothes part because i get hot very easily and i think i unknowingly do it to cool off my body, but i still don't get the whole pounding reflex.

suffice it to say, i was embarrassed/ashamed the next morning and didn't have a drop of alcohol for the rest of the trip.

beside driving back up to seoul through a typhoon, everything else went throughout the trip went smoothly. now i'm back to reality and have to continue my ever-frustrating job search. yay for life.