I find Highway with Green Apples intriguing, mysterious, deeply-woven, and confusing – exactly an unapologetic mastery of my twenty-something life. It is a hauntingly real read. It’s like a zombie – walking across, limping aimlessly, wandering suddenly in my mind, all while checking my twitter feed and emails in between the daily routine that has become of a life.
The typical socially-active twenty-something would have, perhaps, rather dismiss these thoughts and continue staring off the computer screen at work or mindlessly gulp that nth cup of coffee. I thought I would too. Yet I couldn't. Thoughts like: “what the hell! Did she? Did the BFF? Oh no? That other friend was surely unhappy with her in-real-life Dr. McDreamy?!? Woah and now she works as a customer service rep like me? Whoa I feel like eating green apples now under the dawn light? Shall I get a new haircut too? What was her name?! O.o ” I couldn't shake it away.
It’s just that in the story, I felt I was represented and that someone knows how it feels to be in my skin and head. I somehow feel that Bae Suah is freakishly like me or at least the character in her story is; only she likes green apples too much. Perhaps it’s just got something to do with being in this phase of my life. However, honestly, I could easily leave a letter to my parents saying that “I've fallen in love” and would run away in a heartbeat. I would go seek that place by the highway and sell green apples all my life. If that means knowing what I want, getting it, being contented, and be happy with it; despite and amidst all the restrictions society has to place. Yet it’s not all that.
The setting and cultural context may be different from what and where I am living in now but it is mostly still the same struggles somehow. Reading the story felt like there is an acknowledgment of what I feel, like there is hand that reached out to mine. There may not be a solution to the core problem. But it’s enough, it is okay.
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