Foreign and Alone

I'm in Seoul, Korea.  No, there is no war.  We are not being bombed by the communist cousins up north.  Yet I'm miserable.  Today is my 30th birthday and I am hit with the realization that I chose wrong.  I had the choice of staying at my low-paying South-Georgia coastal government job with the state prosecuting office and barely eking out my existence (and keeping my fingers crossed that the 10-year public service loan forgiveness program would still be real law when I reach my 10th year of gov't service), OR to move to Seoul to take a job doing international dispute resolution w/ a top private firm that will pay me a salary that will enable me to actually pay off my law school loans in much less than 10 years.  I chose the "adventurous" option, the one that everyone raved, and I agreed, was the "opportunity of a lifetime," the one that my family and friends found to be glamorous and glitzy and lucrative and prestigious.  I took the bait and now I'm in Seoul.  And I may have made the wrong choice.
You see, I left behind a boy, no, a man.  I haven't spoke of him on this blog yet b/c the last time I wrote an entry here was before I had met him.  He stuck w/ me even after I moved to Savannah for 10 months, and while it was getting weary on us both, we still cared for each other.  Or at least I cared for him still and he said he still cared for me.  When my friend Donna and I talked about this new job offer initially, she mentioned that maybe if I feel that this is a viable relationship I could be happy in long-term, then it's worth giving up the job.  She later recanted this opinion and said that the job is going to be great for me.  No doubt, in the way of money and prestige and socially, the job is going to be the ticket to "a better life," as my mom would say.  Even he said he couldn't let me turn this job down.  But you see, my heart is breaking and my head hurts and I feel like I've made the wrong choice.  And I'm suffering alone, in silence b/c no one will understand.
I have always gone for the opportunity in the past, the thing that will get me to a better place in life to allow me to make choices.  Towards independence, towards more education, more job opportunities and more financial stability.  This is my life.  While my spirit is whispy like the wind and my personality childlike like a giggle ricocheting across a backyard pond and filled with awe and touched by the little moments of life as if I haven't been jaded enough, the decision making in my life has always been for the higher ground, logical and predictable.  And it's been a fight to preserve my whimsical nature in me, and I've fought at the cost of things like law school grades and more monetary compensation.  But this time, it hurts and I can't help but think that this logical choice is closing the door to everything good I see in my friends' lives.  Something softer and lighter and profound, family and love and affection and a repose from the battle ground that is my present career choice.
My mom finally told me he's too young for me and that he'll eventually leave me even if I ask him to stay.  But even so, I wish that we could have had the time to allow what we had to take a natural course, be it lasting or terminal.  You see, I've whispered countless prayers to God asking if I could keep him, please.  He told me he loved me a mere month and a half into our courtship, something I wasn't ready for at the time.  Yet I knew he was a good man, mature beyond his years and more mature than guys a decade his senior that I have dealt with, and I kept growing fonder of him until I believe I came to match his feelings for me.  He was the closest thing to a gentleman to me, and now there is a rift of 2 years time, maybe more, to be overcome.  Every male friend and acquaintance I have had in the past 11 months have told me it's doomed and I hope they are wrong.  I hope they are all wrong, but to have a deeper assurance that they are wrong and I am right, I should have chosen to stay closer to my beau.  And thus my heart breaks and I cry alone on my 30th birthday without even my puppy friend Cody to comfort me, friendless and alone in this city that is to bring me "a better life" and closer to that non-descript "success."