I felt determined coming into college to expand my social network outside of the Korean American Christian community. I succeeded at orientation, but as soon as the fall 2014 semester started, I didn’t interact with any of the acquaintances I made there.

 

My instinct was to join a Korean American church, and I followed it. The Korean American Christian community in Michigan is so small that I already knew a lot of people at LGM before I even started attending. Growing up, my church life was fairly separated from my school life, but in college, I found that I was praying, studying, and partying with the same people.

 

Because of all the overlap, my first friend group of college turned out to be a mix of LGM people and other East Asians that went to other APIA churches. Because I knew a lot of upperclassmen, my friends joked that I was the shepherd that led the sheep to the house parties. It was strange going from a church leader to a party leader, but that also didn’t mean I wasn’t still faithfully attending Sunday worships and praying before my meals. Having been brought up in a conservative church, I struggled through feeling shame and guilt for this lifestyle change, but through the next few years I would re-conceptualize my faith to see that my compartmentalization of different parts of my life was perhaps more harmful for my relationship with God than some alcohol. While there were some who looked down on us as partying freshmen, the reason I fell in love with LGM that year was because of the ministry’s emphasis on God’s grace and love rather than on my sin.

 

By second semester, I had started dating an upperclassman from LGM. I’d had a crush on him since before coming to college, so it felt like a dream come true. He was my small group leader and very serious about his faith, so I stopped going to parties and instead played board games and watched movies in the Alice Lloyd dorm classrooms on weekend nights with him and other people from the ministry. I dove deep into the LGM community, so it was a lonely summer in Ann Arbor after he broke up with me.

 

Thankfully, I had Jamie and Kanghoon. Kanghoon was one of my closest friends from high school--a Korean American boy who didn’t go to my church but did start attending LGM when he came to U of M a year before me. We went through a lot of fun, conflicts, and growth together, and while we’re not as close as we were back then, I still value him as one of the most important people in my life. He stayed in Ann Arbor that summer, so he kept me company during my darkest hours.

 

I met Jamie the very first week of college because she lived in my dorm and went to LGM. She’s very pretty, easy to get along with, and a fierce friend. At the parties we went to together, guys would come talk to me asking about who she is and whether she’s single. We both tried out for different dance groups, and although I didn’t make any, she joined one of the K-pop girl groups and taught me all the dances in our free time. We quickly became best friends that first year through dancing, hanging out, and working through social justice questions together, but through these four years of being friends and three years of being roommates, she’s helped me through all kinds of hardships and conflicts.

 

Jamie and Kanghoon were also there for me when I entered my second relationship sophomore year. Josh had graduated that May and was going to take a gap year before applying for medical schools. He was also a part of LGM, but spent more time with the post-grads rather than the undergrads, which meant I started to spend more time with the post-grads rather than the undergrads. However, we weren’t sure whether we wanted to pursue a long distance relationship, so we dated unofficially for that first semester as a trial before making any serious commitments.

 

Josh and Jamie worked at Tomukun Barbecue together. They were good friends because of how often he came over to our apartment. When I told another friend who worked there about my relationship with Josh, they were shocked.

 

“Wait, really? I thought he and Jamie were dating,” they said.

Something twitched in my neck. “Wait, what? Why?”

“Well, they’re always talking and it sort of looked like flirting.”

I felt another twitch near my temple. For some reason, I felt a little bit embarrassed and didn’t want my friend to think that I didn’t have a good grasp on my relationship and friendship. “That’s sort of weird to hear, but I think they just both come off that way. Jamie’s just really smiley and Josh loves to tease people,” I said.

 

But my friend’s words stuck with me, and I started getting really paranoid. If Josh had gotten to know Jamie before me, would they have ended up together? After all, she was the one everyone used to ask me about at parties. It didn’t help that I tried out for Jamie’s dance group that year and got rejected. I didn’t blame her, but this only worsened the insidious inferiority complex that was growing within me. And I took it out by being an awful friend.

 

There must be something about sophomore year that ruins me. That year, I hated what I was studying, I didn’t feel welcome in my friend groups from freshman year, I was getting rejected from student organizations and internships, and I avoided my best friend in order to feel less shitty about myself. I dug myself into my relationship to escape and avoid the suppressed and unaddressed thoughts of inadequacy and ugliness that were rising back up from my middle and high school years.

 

This bit me in the butt when Josh moved away after his gap year. It was a lonely summer that bred these latent, lasting problems within me and brought them to the surface.

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