My father's Sins.

It's a sunny and bright morning, I woke up in my lone apartment. It has been fourteen years since my father's crimes. Seven years since I packed everything I could fit in a backpack and bought a bus ticket from California to Pennsylvania on my eighteenth birthday. I needed a new beginning. I even changed my last name from Loone to Lee. I needed to try and be happy away from my mother and my sister like our. My sister, Dana, and I still talk occasionally. My cell phone rings, and I begrudgingly roll over to answer it.

I do not even look at the caller id before I click the answer button and bring it to my ear.

"Happy Birthday!" Dana yells at me through the phone. "Thank you, thank you," I grumble at her. I hear her exhale of smoke, followed by a long drag. "what's the plan today little brother?" She askes casually. I hadn't really thought about it. Birthdays stopped being important to me when my mother stopped celebrating it. "I'm working tonight," I lied. "

"That's too bad." "Yea," I agreed. Its not the first time I lied to Dana. No sense in worrying her needlessly if I can help it. "How's Mom?" I ask, quick to change the subject. If Dana notices, she does not acknowledge it. "You know mom, "She says gently. "She's gotten big into painting. She made the basement into a art studio." "

"She any good?" "No, not at all. Its god awful but it keeps her happy," Dana says. I can't really imagine it, mom was never creative. "I got to go Dana, "I say, eager to end the conversation.

"Okay Eric. Happy 25th birthday," She said. "Thanks. Bye Dana"

"Bye. Don't be a stranger." I hung up feeling drained. As much as I loved Dana, there felt like there was a disconnect between us. She was still trying to hold on to me even though I didn't want to be held on to. I moved away without even saying goodbye. It's been seven years and I have never reached out to her or our mother. I only speak when she reaches out to me, and I'm cold to her. I don't have to be, but when she backed our mom in her defense of our father, she treated me like an outsider. She fell in step to the new pecking order. Of course, I knew it was an act, but still. Now that I'm gone, she calls me in secret while pretending with our mother that I no longer exist.

I wish she would stop calling me. I wish I had the balls to b lock her, but I guess some small part of me clings to the attachment that is family. I sit up in my bed and notice the time. 7:45. I should get up. I should do something. Not sleep until noon again. I get out of my bed and head to the kitchen. Its basically bare. I own one pot, one bowl, one spoon, one fork and one cup. I don't entertain and I spend most of my time alone. I open my fridge and there's a carton of eggs and half a gallon of milk. I need to go shopping. I grab two of the five eggs out of the carton and put them in the pot with water and place it on the stove top.

The burner comes on with a loud click followed by a blue flame. I called off work for today and tomorrow off. I needed time to get things together. I went into the bathroom and quickly took a hot shower. After drying off, I opened my medicine cabinet. There are two medicine bottles with my name on it. Thirty 100MG of Trazadone, and twenty-two 10MG of Ambien. Tomorrow night, I will take them all and end this life.

I've known that this is what I wanted to do for the last year. I've tired. Tired of trying. Tired of being purposely. I've been slowly getting rid of things in the last three months. Living a minimalist life. I still have so many things left, but I'm sure the landlord will take care of it and make sure it goes where its needed. Tomorrow I'll have my final supper. All the things that I love to eat. Steak, roasted potatoes, shrimp fried rice, kimchi stu, Blue moon ice cream, and two bottles of Soju. If death row inmates can have a last meal then so can I. But then all of a sudden like as though I got into a different realm, for once in many years I thought thoroughly of all that has happened. I sat on the edge of my bed and recalled my whole life Story bit by bit, as though my soul was intending to give my body a recap of my unfortunate and wretched life history. This maybe my soul's way of giving me a deep insight of my life before I take the ultimate planned decision, of taking my exit from this world which I now detest so much, of course my planned suicide. I sat there and my imagination brought to life all that has happened in my life, how I grew up in Korea, with my parents and elder siblings, a brother and sister. The events that unfolded in the course of living with my pedophile father, the atrocities he'd committed all of which led to me being regarded as the villain. I viewed from my imagination my whole life story.

My father Jung loone is a Korean American. He was from Seoul, in the North Western part of South Korea. He was born and brought up there, where he lived with his poor parents. My father was the only surviving child of my grandparents, as they had lost two daughters in infancy to blood cancer. His father was a basic school teacher, while his mom was a house wife. As a school teacher, his father received little salary, with which he catered for his family and relatives. This of course was much of a burden for a typical Korean resident. This situation resulted in my father dropping out of college, when financial burdens hiked. His father, my grandfather as of when my father was in college suffered from kidney failures and lung cancer due to his smoking habit. He had to be placed on dialysis therapies to manage his condition. With such expenses, it was now difficult to bear my father's educational expenses, so he dropped out. Shortly after that, my grandfather died, and my father was left to cater for his mother. He toiled in engaging in all sorts of little jobs.