I Have a Cancer

Hate. Such a strong word. Such a dark word. Only under the utmost circumstances should the word hate be used. Not hate as in "I hate that color of that shirt." That's bullshit hate. I'm talking about the dark use of hate.

I hate myself. Truly, I despise myself. Always leaning towards one side, then the other, not being able to make concrete decisions, not being able to keep promises to myself and to others, not being able to stand on two feet and say proudly "Hi! I'm Philip Cho. Nice to meet you." I despise my own name.

Every time I see my name on a paper, I wince a little. I know that with my name on it, the standards are lower, the expectations are lower, the work input is lower.

But what I hate the most about myself is that I'm lazy. Such a trivial thing, why should I hate myself over that?

Laziness is a plague in my life. It is a cancer that I can't get rid of. I lived too long with it not knowing how painful it would be to be stuck with it. "Oh, I'll get myself straight when I get older. Oh, I can fix my habits easily, so I can wait. Oh, I'll just do that tomorrow."

Oh how I despise myself for that trait. It's disgusting. The tumor has grown to a cancer, the small disease has come to control my life.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

To be continued....

-Phil

Young Nak

A month huh? Crazy.....

Anyways, I'm back from whatever I was doing. I actually think I tried to avoid my blog. Don't know how, don't know why, I just did. Another entry for another day, I guess.

Lets recap on my life for the past month: I'm scared.

Yes, this is about college again. Actually, scratch that. It's about church. It's about Young Nak. It's about the whole experience.

I don't want to leave. I'm scared of moving away from LA solely for the fact that I'm scared to leave Young Nak. I mean, this is where I found God, this is where I found genuine love (other than family), and this is where I found my second home. I don't want to leave.

Thinking about where I am going to apply to college, I seem to have narrowed it down to two locations: LA or New York City. The big cities. The messy cities. The cities where everything is alive and moving.

If you know me, I love noise, movement, and anything messy. In fact, I don't even clean my room because I prefer messy over clean (sometimes I say that to my mom to get her off my back too). It makes me feel at home. If everything is neat and tidy, I feel out of place. A big clumsy person living in a geometrically symmetrical room just doesnt fit.

So that's why I chose these two cities. I love LA just because it's my home. It is familiar to me. And I chose New York City because the first time I went there, I fell in love. With the atmosphere, with a constant city-like sound, with the dirty sidewalks, with everybody going their own direction not noticing each other.

But now, even NYC scares me. I want to stay in LA.

Why? Because I don't want to loose the relationships I gained at YN, the brotherly and sisterly love that flows throughout the buildings and people. I don't want to leave that place. I don't want to leave those relationships behind and dive into something completely new. A blank canvas, if you will.

But who knows? God will throw me into something new, something unexpected like he did with me countless times. But I'll try not to be scared. Because every time I got plunged into something, He was always there to help me out. He was there to replenish my strength when it was all gone. He helped me fill that blank canvas once before, and he can do it again.

Of course, it's hard trying not to be scared. In fact, its impossible to not be scared. With such a huge bridge to cross, there is always a sense of hesitance. What God does is he takes that hesitance and replaces it with faith.

So lead me where you want me to go. Anywhere, any time, every day.

Phil