Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Kim was a meme to me until today. Like he was the epitome of “there is always a better Asian than you” or “the Asian kid you don’t want your Asian parents to meet.” He is a Navy SEAL (sniper and medic), medical doctor, and now an astronaut before the age of 40. Without knowing his story, I assumed that he just went to become an overachiever because his parents were the typical Asian Americans who aren’t satisfied with their children just being mediocre, because they need validation to be accepted in white American society (well, I have half of family living in the US so I know their stories).
I was so wrong.
Jonny Kim is a survivor. His parents were first-generation Korean-American immigrants who brought so much emotional baggage with them to the US. His maleducated father (he didn’t know if his father even finished high school back in Seoul) was an alcoholic who was battling so many demons. At 18 years old, two months before high school graduation, Kim had to physically wrestle with his father to get the gun away from the latter because he was intent on killing his mother during one very bad drunken rage. The father managed to bludgeon Jonny with a dumbbell and as his head bled, the father probably woke up from his rage and fled. The mom called 911 and there was an altercation with the police and his father was killed.
He loved his father but he was deathly afraid of him. It’s a confusing emotion, which I guess some kids of alcoholic fathers bear (I do). Kim said he was a very angry man at that point but was weak and couldn’t stand up against the person he feared the most. He wanted to protect his mother and younger brother from his abusive father but he knew he couldn’t until he gets stronger and braver. As early as 16 years old, he knew college wasn’t for him, even though he was an A-level student, because he wanted to become a Navy SEAL to get rid of his weakness. So when his father died, what he felt was mostly relief. He didn’t have to protect his mother and brother from his father anymore but at that point he was just months away from going to Navy bootcamp.
He joined the most elite team of soldiers the US military has because of selfish reasons, as he put it. For others the reason was 9-11, for him it was his desire to be stronger to protect the ones he loved. Later he became a combat medic once he passed BUD/S because he looked for an easiest way in to join the special warfare team (“become a medic corpsman” was the advice). After he formally joined his team, Kim felt—for the first time—that he belonged, which he said something he didn’t feel while growing up. He said he didn’t belong anywhere.
His decision to become a physician (Harvard) stemmed from his desire to help his brothers in combat, so he can keep them alive. This came from his experience in Iraq where his buddy was hit in the face and as the medic, he was the one responsible for assisting the military physician (Army) on camp. Because he was just 21 years old at that time, he couldn’t overpower the Army doctor (something about the decision of the Army doctor that was wrong and it wasn’t the right treatment for someone with facial fractures and later realized the situation was way above his head), so they wasted precious time and they could have sent the casualty to the base camp for surgery much earlier. Kim’s buddy became blind and went through so many surgeries thereafter and died. Kim’s biggest regret was that he wasn’t able to do so much for his buddy, and while he was attending to him, another friend from his platoon was also killed in combat and he wasn’t there for him. He said he could have saved him (as a medic).
He said he doesn’t know if he would die for his country, but without a doubt, he would die for his brothers in combat. The brotherhood in SEALs pushed him to become a physician.
According to Kim, he didn’t really set out to become a doctor and astronaut—everything was “an accident.”
I’m not sure if Jocko Willink (the interviewer) was the platoon leader of Team 3 at that time but it seems like that. He said that during that fateful August when they lost many of SEALs (same with the Army) in Ramadi, Iraq, Jocko saw the very bloodied Kim kneeling, washing the blood off his friend’s helmet. It was a poignant image that stuck with him. Jocko was the one who wrote the letter of recommendation endorsing Kim to Harvard Medical School.
The point I’m driving at is, Kim’s motivation for achieving what he has achieved and trying to achieve is mainly his need to cope with/from trauma. It’s trauma response. His abusive childhood could have turned him into a bad egg but kudos to his mom for raising an upright man. I think him being raised in the church also helped a lot because his language (“the light”) was very Christian. He said he had so much anger in his youth but he didn’t hate his father. He understood why his father was like that. I don’t know if that understanding came with forgiveness but I think Kim already made peace with that.
And OMG, he is so humble. I think guys in the SEALs special warfare ops were taught to keep their head low all the time. Jocko, to his credit, could look as tough and egocentric as Joe Rogan but he is very respectful as an interviewer. He never cuts off his interviewees.
The first I read about Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Kim was on LinkedIn. I thought, is this guy for real???
Yes, he is very real. With so many traumas to bear.
I know how it is growing up with an alcoholic father. I told my mother, not too long ago, that I think we his descendants have inherited his mental issues or whatnot. I told her my father has an undiagnosed clinical depression (at the minimum) or he was bipolar. He had so many demons, and his wild mood swings were scary. He admitted to me one time, towards the end of his life, that he was always drunk because it was the only time he was happy. That hurt my mother so much because it seemed like he was never happy with her.
But I think I get what he said. He used alcohol to numb his pain, he was chemically treating his depression with alcohol. He was trying to chase serotonin when he was drunk. Because you know, going to a psychiatrist wasn’t a thing then.
Speaking of doctors, I just saw my gynecologist last Friday and we talked about me getting off my meds and had been “clean” for two years. It sprung from my comment about being on the pill still despite having no partner because it regulates my hormones that go wild due to PCOS (so I can have a more regular menstrual cycle), I have less dysmenorrhea, and my mental state is much better than when I’m off it. My doctor agreed that it’s all part of having PCOS and she wants me to continue with the pills so my transition to perimenopause until menopause is smoother in the years to come. The conversation touched on the time I suffered from post-partum depression (PPD) that I didn’t tell her about because I didn’t know I should tell her at that time. She told me that those who had PPD are prone to having depression later in life. Just like when one had gestational diabetes is more prone to having full-blown diabetes later in life (like my younger sister).
For now she diagnosed me with impaired glucose intolerance (based on the labs I’ve shown her from the last time I saw her) and I would be going through a battery of tests this week while I’m on leave. She ordered me to have the whole abdominal ultrasound just to see if my pancreas and liver are still enlarged as my CT scan during my hospitalization in December showed. However, I will see a new gastroenterologist tomorrow so I would hold off with that ultrasound and see what she will say.
So anyway, about having a manic-depressive father who chemically treated himself by getting drunk and going into rage, I know the feeling of being so scared of a loved one that you could only cower in fear in your bed as he goes into his rage-filled drunken rants that could be heard around the neighborhood. I remember that one time that my brother had to shield my mother from my drunk father and my father almost punched bro but he caught himself in time. I remember another time I was thrown by him across the floor for being a difficult teenager (I threw a stapler against a mirror that broke into pieces).
I never knew what having a “normal” father was like. I harbored complicated feelings about him up to this day. I loved him and grieved when he died, but at the same time I was relieved that we no longer had to walk on eggshells around him. He mellowed during the last 5 years of his life, well because he only had 30% of his heart muscles working at that time after his massive heart attack. It was as if God had given him a few years to mend fences.
Along with it is the co-dependency relationship that enables this alcoholism. That’s the one I grew up with and as my first psychiatrist said, I learned co-dependency from my mom. My father’s narcissistic personality disorder is also the reason why I have this low self-esteem growing up. I always had to prove myself that I am worthy of love, that I always had to win him over, so at least he would love me. But no, it was always about him and my mother enabled that. We always had to adjust to him. This caused me to always seeking validation from the opposite sex. It is also the reason why I allowed myself to sleep on the floor in that tiny bit of space at the foot of the bed while the ex slept on the real bed because I thought lowering myself to that level, sacrificing my comfort, would make him stay.
That was so wrong on so many levels.
