Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness

by Catherine Cho

I was so preoccupied with the idea of losing my body, it had never occurred to me that I might lose my mind.

To me, romantic love seemed essential. I didn’t understand how it could be destructive, and I dismissed the warnings as a sign of a repressed culture. I preferred the Western belief in a happy ending.

Romantic love did not feature in these stories; they were an afterthought or a deficiency. Love, instead, was a sacrifice. It meant loss, it meant sorrow. Sacrifice, the giving of oneself completely, that was what was required, that was what was expected. And suffering. As a Korean, I was meant to expect to suffer.

So for Koreans, to love means to mourn, to know loss. The sweetness of love is tempered by the knowledge that life will return with a bitterness to create balance to the story.

I feel like my memories are floating around me, distracting me from the present. I am still trying to contain myself, to bring myself back to the moment, to bring myself back to this space, to this page. I want to be sure I haven’t lost myself, because if I have, then maybe I won’t be able to find my way back.

I never knew why so many people had to qualify that Drew was a good guy to me. If I had been paying attention, I should have realized that it was a warning.

How do you live without knowing? With a life interrupted and no resolution? How do you live in a suspended moment? How do you live as a ghost?

When I found out I was having a boy, I thought of Drew. Actually, I thought of Thea, and for the first time, instead of anger, I felt sympathy. How would it feel, to watch my son sit on a balcony ledge and threaten to throw himself off, even if I thought maybe, just maybe the world would be a better place if he did. Something of my own creation, a beautiful thing, having become twisted and dirty and abusive.

How were we meant to exit the loops of the past if we were destined to face them again and again?

All I feel is blankness, no longing, no sadness, just the awareness that there is an absence. Maybe it’s the medication, I think. In a way, it makes me feel grateful. Because even though I feel numb, I can sense that it’s a wound, and I have no idea how deep it goes.

It was a warning against the triumph of love, because something so beautiful, so raw can only end. To bare one’s heart is to know suffering, vulnerability. It is a destructive force. That’s what makes it beautiful, to know mortality and failure, but to step off the edge anyway.

It is that quiet hope that if they hurl themselves fast enough, they will come out on top. And then they realize. That that is the top. To reach that pinnacle of not caring about the end; to know that the end doesn’t matter. This is the happiness of the ending, to have reached the point when the moment is enough, when to love is enough.