Ten years ago, on January 8, 2013, Greg and I met at Los Angeles International Airport. We were both flying into LAX, from North Carolina and Virginia, to intern for Liberty in North Korea as Nomads. Greg was 23. I was 24.
My friend Menekşe picked us up from the airport — she and I had interned at LiNK together the previous fall semester, and she had arrived earlier than all the other interns, so she was in charge of airport pick-ups that day. Greg and I both landed around the same time — sometime around 10 or 11 am — and I remember Menekşe texting me that she would be picking up Greg first.
She picked us up in Judy the LiNK van, a Ford E-350 Econoline with “Liberty in North Korea: The North Korea Crisis” printed in giant letters across both sides of the van. When I opened the door to the backseat, Greg was the first person I saw. I tripped into the van — I was tired from my early-morning flight, and I was wearing my big, clunky L.L Bean boots. I remember seeing him and knowing that my plans of being a single, independent woman that year were likely to be thwarted.
He was shy and quiet. He was tall and skinny. He had nice eyes. He was subtly handsome. He was kind. I asked him a million questions. He told me he was from North Carolina, his last name was Meyer, he had taught English in South Korea for a year, and he was planning on going into the Peace Corps that year — he was waiting for his specific country assignment, but he was going to be placed in Africa. I remember thinking, “Meyer is an unfortunate last name. I don’t want to be Chi Meyer. I don’t like that he’s from the South. I really like that he cares about people. It's cool that he’s going into the Peace Corps. It’s also unfortunate because that means he’ll be gone for two years.” He bought me a bottle of water from the gas station. We met up with my ex-boyfriend and his friend, took photos in the 6th Street Viaduct, and went to a cafe in Downtown LA for lunch. Three days later, he told me he was no longer going to go into the Peace Corps, and he was now going to move to California to be with me. This is where our relationship began.
Ten years later, we are still here.
Over the last ten years, we've built an imperfect, honest, brutal, and beautiful life together. We’ve lived in two cities and two states. We’ve lived in seven apartments. We started a band. We built a business. We pursued a dream. We became Christians. We went on four cross-country tours. We survived my traumatic vocal injury. We started going to therapy. We grieved the deaths of several family members. We grieved the deaths of several friends. We went to Korea. We got engaged. We got married. We got our dog, Harrie. We survived the loss of our family dog, Sadie. We survived a global pandemic. We survived the diagnosis of my dad’s lung cancer, and all that has come with his diagnosis. We survived the diagnosis of my Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We survived the diagnosis of Greg’s Borderline Personality Disorder. We’ve supported each other through depression, anxiety, family estrangement, racial violence, and so much trauma. We are still surviving through many of these things. Ten years later, we are still here.
Our relationship has never been glamorous, and it has never been perfect. But our relationship is held together by a God, a strength, and a love, fiercer than I have ever known. And despite all the mistakes we have both made over the last ten years, I am incredibly proud of us.
I'm proud of us for never giving up. I’m proud of us for fiercely committing ourselves to growing together. I'm proud of us for persistently committing ourselves to becoming our best, most whole and healed selves, no matter how excruciating that process has been. I’m proud of us for building our relationship on the foundation of communication, honesty, and vulnerability. I’m proud of us for fighting to build a healthy relationship, even though healthy relationships were not modeled for us. I'm proud of us for believing that we could build something beautiful, against all the odds. I'm proud of us for being courageous enough to believe in an enduring love that always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.
Greg and I started a new tradition on our 8th anniversary, January 8, 2021. Every anniversary prior to that one, I always felt this societal pressure to fit in with all the other couples of the world and do the typical anniversary things — get each other gifts, write each other cards, go on a weekend trip, dress up, go out to a fancy dinner, and have hearts in our eyes or some Hollywood movie bullshit. And every year, I felt incredibly disappointed.
For our 8-year anniversary, after enduring a year of the pandemic, cancer, racial violence, and too much bullshit, we decided FUCK THE NORM! We’re going to do what we want to do. We’re going to celebrate our anniversary in our very own Jieun-and-Greg way. So we did!
That year, we came up with the brilliant idea to go to 8 special places (mostly food!), to represent the 8 years we’d been together — and we would hit all our spots by doing an epic walking tour of New York City! It was basically a food crawl, a walking tour, and a marathon, all in one! It felt very us — exciting, active, whimsical, chaotic, nomadic, and fun! We had so much fun that day, despite eating too much pizza and being completely exhausted by the time we got home.
This year was, hands down, the best anniversary we’ve ever had. It wasn’t a perfect day, but it was a fantastic day. We walked 35,246 steps and 14.27 miles. We laughed a lot, we got cranky, and we definitely ate too much. It felt like a dream.
It was nice to have a day all to ourselves — something we haven’t had in a really long time. I felt really grateful to have one day, in the midst of many chaotic days, that could just be ours.
Here’s what we did on our epic 10-year anniversary food-crawl-walking-tour-marathon:
1. From Here to Sunday — 요구르트 yogurt drink pins! 📍
2. Maman — nutty chocolate chip cookie 🍪
3. Puregreen — mixed berry açaí bowl 🍓
4. The Brooklyn Bridge! 🌁
5. Momofuku Ssam Bar — fish sandwich, chicken sandwich, and fries 🍔🍗🍟
6. Yu & Me Books — Causing a Scene by Constance Wu
7. Levain Bakery — chocolate chip walnut cookie 🍪
8. Petee’s Pie — wild Maine blueberry pie 🥧
9. The Manhattan Bridge! 🌉
10. Sushi Lin — 10-piece sushi omakase 🍣
I’ll end with a letter to Greg:
Dear Greg,
WE DID IT! We always looked at the ten-year mark and thought, “That’s gonna be crazy when we hit that!” And here we are. Ten years, chicken!!!
Thanks for loving me so well all these years. I have never been loved by someone the way I’ve been loved by you. Thanks for making me laugh until I pee. Thanks for understanding my love for all things over the top. Thanks for cooking me so many meals! Thanks for always walking me to the door, hugging me, and saying bye every time I leave our home. Thanks for always saying “조심” when I leave.
Thanks for loving my parents so well. Thanks for learning Korean — although you definitely need to learn more! — so you could better communicate with them. Thanks for eating so much food every time we eat with them because you know it makes them happy. Thanks for flying to Korea with me when my 할머니 was dying.
Thanks for carrying us through my dad’s cancer. Thanks for driving us back and forth, from New York to Virginia, every week during that first year. Thanks for driving us to all of his appointments. Thanks for filling out all of his forms. Thanks for sitting with him through every chemo treatment. Thanks for being at every appointment.
Thanks for teaching guitar lessons at night so we can pay our rent. Thanks for going to CITPD, five days a week, for an entire year.
Thanks for believing in the strong, brilliant, beautiful woman you’ve always known me to be. Thanks for honoring my anger. Thanks for honoring my idealism. Thanks for creating space for all of me. Thanks for believing in my big dreams. Thanks for taking the risk to make our big dreams come true.
Thanks for speaking the truth into me when my mind is full of lies. Thanks for sleeping on the floor with me. Thanks for holding me when I need to cry. Thanks for letting me blow my nose into your shirt. Thanks for holding us together when I feel like our lives are falling apart. Thanks for looking at me the same way for the last ten years.
You are my safe place. You are my home. You are my best friend. You are my partner for life.
You’re still the guy I met in that van ten years ago, but you are so much more. To the next ten years, Gregory Ko.
Love,
Jieun