Chapter 6: So Young from Panache: An Autobiography
2005, So-Rim Lee

And so is my story. I have spent my teenage years trying to fit into this ideal, framed model of a person my mother could accept, and it took me three years at KMLA, three more at Columbia to realize I should get over my mother, my past, my emotional billows and mental disorders to discover my Lolita, myself, my inner callings and beauties that I have nurtured all these years I have lived unknowingly. I am still weak. I am still afraid of the ghosts in the corridors. I am frightened of the future. I still occasionally feel the urge to burn my wrist with cigarettes when I get attacked by intense anxiety. But most of the time, I live my life with gratefulness that god did not let me perish the night I had committed suicide a year ago.

I have a lot to learn, a myriad of books to read, a trillion words to write. I am majoring in film studies. I am an aspiring writer and a starting poet, an elementary filmmaker and a sprouting, burgeoning artist. I am Lolita, beautiful and wondrous, tragic and dark, mysterious and cacophonous, fragile and strong, burning and taunting, haunting and stunning, running and drowning, prowling and growling, snarling and roaring, roaring, roaring into the void, the void, the void so that everyone can hear that this is me, me, me, So-Rim Lee.