On Losing a Reader

An essay

I broke up with my girlfriend. If the English grammar allows such a phrase, I will rather say I was broken up since I did not want to. We were together for more than five years. I am naturally sad, frustrated, and devastated, but all these emotions keep themselves in a relative silence to my surprise. It seems I have discovered for the first time in my heart a vast ocean of night. The giant body of black water is, above all, incomprehensible, in that I honestly do not understand what my life is as of now, just as random sets of words with broken-up syntax do not make any sense. I am realizing in real time how much my life has revolved around her so far, and how much I wanted to build my future life revolving around her. It turns out that five years is enough time to make me forget how I lived without her before.

I am well aware that this newsletter is mostly about my writing life in a foreign tongue, though I sometimes send out my fictional works too, and do not wish to expand on my personal mess that I am facing. However, I am genuinely afraid of how this is going to affect my writing, and on this I may write here.

I have repeated many times that I am a non-native English writer living in a non-English-speaking country. My works in English have been published, or are being published in the US, India, the UK, and Spain. There obviously are people out there who read my works, and you are reading my essay right now. I know it and I am grateful that I have readers, that I have you. However, knowing it and experiencing it are different matters. I sometimes receive emails or read comments on my work, but it does not make it obvious enough that people who read and enjoy my works exist.

I acknowledge that it must feel the same quite often even for those who write in English and live in an English-speaking country. Still, this sense of lacking connections gets worse when you are living where there is no wide English readership. There often is no friends or family members to whom you can send your work and ask what they think; there is no local bookstore where you can buy a magazine with your own work in it; there is no writing group or event that you can physically attend and meet real people.

Writing in English and submitting my works to the Anglosphere was my choice, and it is I who should bear its consequences. Nevertheless, until a few days ago, I could become less lonely thanks to a reader, now my ex-girlfriend. Now I find it astonishing that I could stay with a Korean in Korea who could read literature in English for years. The possibility is rather small: you need to like reading, care to read what your significant other writes, and at the same time be good enough in the foreign language to read literature to fall in that cohort.

Even back when I was writing in Korean only, she was always the first reader to read whatever I wrote, and it continued well into my English-writing phase. Not only did she read my first drafts, but she would also tell me what she thought, make editorial suggestions, and most importantly, cheer me on. She was also the first person to whom I would convey the news when my work was accepted or published somewhere.

In other words, she was the only perceptible reader in my life, the only reader in flesh and blood, and I was happy that a real reader of mine in front of me liked what I wrote and liked me as a writer.

I thought this relationship with my personal, physical reader would go on and on.

I do not want to devalue you by any means. Again, I am grateful that you are reading what I wrote at this moment. The shortcoming is on my side. No matter how much you like what I write and with how much fervor you want to express your enthusiasm, you end up a few lines of text from my point of view. Robinson Crusoe will always welcome a message in a bottle washed ashore, but it cannot substitute someone he can see, touch, and get excited with together.

My ex-girlfriend said that she could still read what I may write in the future. I also believe it is possible that she will continue to be a part of my readership. Nonetheless, maybe readership is too abstract a concept for a writer in flesh and blood. In real life, a writer may need a reader by his or her side more than a readership.

It seems I have now lost a reader, the only real reader I have ever had.