I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

by Baek Se-hee

I would go in and out of a funk that was as inevitable as bad weather. I might go to bed happy and wake up sad and sullen.

To right every wrong you come across in the world would be an impossible endeavour for any one person. You’re just one person, and you’re putting too much of the weight of the world on yourself.

The contradictory state of longing for intimacy but also wanting to keep others at arm’s length is called the hedgehog’s dilemma.

There is no absolute good when it comes to relationships. And it’s perfectly healthy to have disagreements with friends and lovers from time to time. I just hope you learn to differentiate the parts from the whole. Just because you like one thing about a person, you don’t need to like everything about them. And just because you don’t like one thing about a person, it doesn’t mean the person as a whole isn’t worth your time. I think you should get in the habit of thinking differently.

So true!

‘To tell the truth, no one was looking down on me except myself.’

‘The important thing here isn’t whether you are being loved, it’s how you will accept the love that comes your way.’

That goddamn self-esteem.

I don’t want any more twisted relationships, and I’m tired of not being able to find satisfaction in the present and being obsessed with the past or having high expectations of new relationships.

Sometimes, when someone tells me to ‘Cheer up’ when I’m going through a tough time, I just want to wring their neck. Just be there to hold my hand, be sad or angry with me, or if you’ve gone through something similar, tell me about it and say it will all pass eventually. That’s empathy and communication and a kind of consolation that enriches relationships.