I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

by Baek Se-hee

Art has given me faith: faith that today may not have been perfect but was still a pretty good day, or faith that even after a long day of being depressed, I can still burst into laughter over something very small. I’ve also realised that revealing my darkness is just as natural a thing to do as revealing my light.

It’s like you’re running inside a hamster wheel. You try to get out of your depression through your efforts but fail, and this continuing cycle of trying and failing feeds back into the original depression.

Sometimes the best thing to do with people who would never listen to you in the first place is to avoid them altogether. 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.

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 put them on a pedestal and end up being disappointed by them. Instead of being disappointed, try thinking this way: They’re living and breathing human beings too. This will make you more generous towards yourself.

In the past, you didn’t know how to label your symptoms, but now you know. That’s a reason for relief, not for more suffering.

Just because certain conditions in your life are relatively better, it doesn’t mean you’re better off in general. Take jobs or schools. It’s great when you get into a good company or university, but once you settle in, the complaints begin. Do you think it would be possible to think, This place is perfect! from the beginning of any experience to the end? Other people might envy you, but that doesn’t mean you yourself will automatically be satisfied with your lot. Which is why you shouldn’t torture yourself with questions like, Why can’t I be happy with what I have?

Wouldn’t it be more fun to think of things like, I wonder what we’ll do after the movie? What should we eat for dinner? Who will I chat to?

‘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.’

There’s no need to be too negative about envying others. It could be motivation for you to better yourself.

But the you of the present is looking at your life and past as if you’re a failure. When in truth, from the perspective of a younger you, you’re the very picture of success.

What I’m saying is, don’t compare yourself to other people. Compare yourself to your past self.

She said, ‘I love art, but I also love trashy TV.’

Different perspectives create different reactions.

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.

‘Emotions have something like passageways, and if you keep blocking your bad emotions, you end up blocking your good emotions as well.’

how you feel about yourself is much more important than what your friends think of you.

I liked myself this week.

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.

‘What’s wrong with rationalising? It’s a perfectly reasonable defence mechanism. It’s you trying to find reasons behind your hurt or your decisions.’

I keep thinking that if I reveal a vulnerable part of myself, people will see that and hate it and leave me. But I know so many aspects of the lives of the people I love. Their bad parts, their good parts, their sensitive parts . . . Even if they have negative parts, I like that they have them because it makes them human. But when it comes to myself, I think the tiniest flaw will make people leave me.

These are all behaviours you had no awareness of until recently, and to realise that you make the same choices time and time again is, in itself, proof you’re getting better.

And another strange thing is, if I’m ever with a new group of people, I feel like I’ll bounce off a wall if no one pays any attention to me. Instead of me waiting to see whether the men are any good, I feel like I’m waiting for them to make their judgements on my appearance. The funnier thing is that often I have no interest in the men but I’m hoping they’re interested in me.

this is so relatable

Fear increases when it’s something that you keep to yourself.

I took a self-esteem quiz on the Internet and scored a -22.

damn girl

you should enjoy the freedom of your own thoughts.

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

As if there can be any true winning or losing in this game of life.

What do I wish for? I want to love and be loved. Without suspicion, and with ease. That’s it.

But as I had that thought, I had another: light and darkness are part of the same thing. Happiness and unhappiness alternate throughout life, as in a dance. So as long as I keep going and don’t give up, surely I will keep having moments of tears and laughter.

This book, therefore, ends not with answers but with a wish. I want to love and be loved. I want to find a way where I don’t hurt myself. I want to live a life where I say things are good more than things are bad. I want to keep failing and discovering new and better directions. I want to enjoy the tides of feeling in me as the rhythms of life. I want to be the kind of person who can walk inside the vast darkness and find the one fragment of sunlight I can linger in for a long time. Some day, I will.

Being imperfect is all right and being awkward is okay.

the low points of life can be filled with countless realisations.

I want to always be motivated by love.

These memories made me think how the words ‘That person has changed’ are completely useless in some cases; it finally occurred to me that to expect someone to always be a certain way or consistently do a certain thing can be a huge burden on them.

a better way to live is to live among others,

Togetherness means altruism, and altruism is what saves us from selfishness. Because it begins with me and ends with everyone.

Being together, misunderstanding each other, sharing with each other, growing further apart from each other, all these things help us live out our present moment. I wonder if this is our way of comforting ourselves through the darkness that is our world.

these beautiful coincidences are also responsible for most of our life’s relationships.