xoxosms

My name is Jiyun Kim.

I am 20 years old.

[Chuckles] I was born in South Korea.

My brother got cancer so my mom went to the U.S.

I hated it here.

Couldn't speak English.

Hated the suburbs.

GUS: I'm a Christian so I believe in God.

I guess I'm not too ambitious.

I'm more like conservative.

Right now I'm living in Joliet, Illinois.

I'm a full-time student at a community college.

My dad is an electrician at a nuclear power plant.

There's my mom who's, I really love her a lot.

She's real nice.

She takes care of my sister and I. JIYUN: I like fleeting around.

But at the same time, I want to settle down.

That's a weird contradiction.

GUS: I think I would describe meeting Jiyun online as, really providence.

JIYUN: I started to fall for him when I saw his tagged videos on Facebook.

And that was my first time actually seeing his face up to date, I guess.

And I was like, oh hey, he's really cute.

I like his voice.

GUS: Jeff and I have been talking in the college for about a good fifty minutes to an hour.

JIYUN: I was attracted to his innocence, I guess.

Yeah.

And he was really fascinated by my life in New York, and I was really fascinated by his secluded life in the suburbs in Illinois.

Ever since we actually had a serious conversation on AIM, it just became this natural thing to talk every Friday from 12 o'clock in the morning until 6.

I hate talking on the phone because I can't observe the other person's mannerisms.

With chatting you're actually taking your time, creating what you want to create through words.

So it's everything except the voice part.

GUS: We'd get into the point with just the chat where we could really read each other.

JIYUN: You never met that person before.

You're talking to a stranger basically, but you're in love with a stranger, so it's almost poetic in a sense.

GUS: It was, I'd call that one of the, probably, the peak of my life so far.

GUS: A couple of days before actually meeting her, I was very I guess moody, really is the best word to describe it.

Because I'd been talking with this girl for, you know, months and finally about to get to meet her, and you know, tons of questions like, what is it going to be like?

What is she going to be like?

Am I going to be enough for her?

JIYUN: Jeez, I hope I won't disappoint you.

I must be some sort of a goddess or something in your own world.

I'm neither a goddess nor a mermaid.

I wish I were both.

GUS: Here she is, taking the train from New York to meet this guy who she's known online.

JIYUN: I don't know where I'm going with this, but now I realize that I can't stay inside forever, and as I'm typing this out, I can't help but to feel vulnerable.

[Bell clanging] JIYUN: It's 9:50.

He's here.

Oops.

Ah, so corny!

Hi.

GUS: How are you?

JIYUN: Great.

GUS: Good.

JIYUN: You know, I'm not a huge rosemary fan.

GUS: It's not rosemary.

JIYUN: What is it called again?

GUS: Baby's breath.

JIYUN: Baby's breath?

JIYUN, CHUCKLING: Yeah.

GUS: I'll buy you a cactus next time.

JIYUN: Ooh, I've been wanting one for a while.

GUS: I don't think I'll ever understand you fully.

Tell you what, you do the baby's breath... JIYUN: No, I want to do this.

No, no.

When a lady says no, it means no.

And these leaves are dirty looking, anyway.

This one's longer than this one.

I guess I decided to give my heart to Gus, which equals to being vulnerable, when I realized I loved him.

Yeah.

I mean, moving to a state where you've never been before is a pretty big thing, and if it weren't real, I wouldn't have done that.

GUS: I've had like crushes and stuff but never really any girlfriends.

So Jiyun is a first with a lot of things for me.

Where are we going, by the way?

JIYUN: I don't know.

GUS: All right.

GUS: When I think about leaving home, I get that little bit of sadness because, you know, no matter how good and big the world out there is, it's still the world out there.

Jiyun's really been kind of like a breath of fresh air, like an old library.

That's always how I describe her to herself.

I had all these random bits and pieces of plans that involved staying in Joliet basically for the rest of my life.

And she just kind of opened the door and just said there's a fairly big world out there, you might want to look at it before you settle on something.

JIYUN: I'm not a virgin, and I had sex with a guy that I didn't love.

And it was really empty.

I didn't like it at all.

Sex without love is pretty pointless.

At least to me.

GUS: I think both of us are pretty set on saving all of that for marriage.

Which is something I actually really value and respect about Jiyun, that she would be willing to save that.

JIYUN: Being able to know what someone else is feeling even though you've never met that person and that person is so far away from you.

I felt this intense affection for him.

I don't know why, though.

GUS: All I really need is just one really solid, constant connection to somebody.

I guess we'll see where life takes us and hopefully we can walk the rest of life on the same road.