I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

by Baek Se-hee

allow yourself to be angry. I think you tend to focus too much on your ideals and pressure yourself by thinking, I have to be this kind of person! Even when those ideals are, in fact, taken from someone else and not from your own thoughts and experiences.

you can start perceiving your personal experiences in a more positive manner. From ‘How sad they didn’t realise this’ to ‘How lucky it is that I realise this.’

people who appear arrogant tend to have low self-esteem.

But if someone has high self-esteem, they don’t really care what other people think about them.

The only thing to do here is to keep trying different things, little by little, trying to understand how much change is comfortable for you and what it is you really want. Once you understand what you like and how to reduce your anxiety, you’ll feel satisfaction. You’ll be able to accept or reject what others say about you.

The important question is not whether this is the right or wrong way to live, but whether it’s healthy for me to live like this.

So, complain. Let others know how hard things are for you.

‘When you’re having a hard time, it’s natural to feel like you’re having the hardest time in the world. And it’s not selfish to feel that way.’

Being at home alone makes me feel depressed again. I thought about why, and I realised it was because I would look at Instagram posts of people I’m envious of. I think that makes me more depressed.

The fairy tales we read as children are very one-dimensional. There are good people and bad people in those stories. But in the books adults read, it becomes harder to divide up characters into absolutely good and absolutely bad people. I hope you learn to look at a person as a whole before judging them. And to look upon yourself as a whole individual as well.

Focus on yourself more. Specifically, write down what you really enjoy, and also write about the differences in how you see yourself and how others see you. It would also be a good idea to take stock of things that you would do under the imagined gaze of others.

That human beings are three-dimensional is perhaps my favourite thing to say. But it is also likely the last thing I will remember in a bad moment. Everyone has multiple sides to them, happiness and unhappiness coexist, and everything is relative.

Even if I were fat or ugly, I want to acknowledge and love myself. But society teaches us to judge each other’s weight,