I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

by Baek Se-hee

My desire to speak freely of my mental suffering was matched by my desire to hide myself from it all.

Why are we so bad at being honest about our feelings?

But what’s an ‘acceptable’ form of depression?

It almost sounds like you want to become a perfect robot. Someone with absolute standards.

They may seem perfect on the outside, but they could be doing terrible things in the dark. You can put them on a pedestal and end up being disappointed by them.

If you shift your perspective from their past to your present, 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.’

You keep failing to meet that ideal in the real world, and then you punish yourself.

because you’ve often behaved not how you wanted to, but rather out of a sense of obligation, or according to standards you’d invented.

Nothing frightens me more than the thought of someone mocking me while I suffer in pain.

Forgetfulness can be liberating, you know.

You tend to apply those standards when you’re at a disadvantage, not when you’re at an advantage.

It’s a question of whether ‘everything you ever wanted’ was ever what you really wanted in the first place.

why did I torture myself by comparing myself to someone else? If twenty-year-old me met me today, she would cry with joy. And that’s enough for me.

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.

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

To me, sadness is the path of least resistance, the most familiar and close-at-hand emotion I have.

If I’m sad today I’ll be happy tomorrow, and if I’m happy today I’ll be sad tomorrow – that’s fine. As long as I keep loving myself.

I also didn’t know how to not blame myself for weaknesses or faults.

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.

Life is all about getting better and getting worse and getting better again, so getting worse is a natural part of life and I just have to learn to deal with it.

I was told that my accumulated mistakes will create a stronger sense of self, that I was doing just fine, that I was perfectly capable of looking at the other side of the coin, but the coin just happens to be a little heavy, that’s all.

I want to love and be loved. Without suspicion, and with ease.

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.

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.

You don’t have to cheer up. I can do well today, or not. It’ll be an experience either way. And that’s fine.

I read them over and over again until the pages are tattered, underlining everything, and still the book will have something to give me.

Because the past is past. Because we exist in a space only briefly, and then we disappear.

to expect someone to always be a certain way or consistently do a certain thing can be a huge burden on them.

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 pour out my heart to them and answer questions they ask me. Every word becomes a question, and every word becomes an answer.

Where do the questions we’ve swallowed end up? Do they scatter somewhere or sink deep inside of us?

It’s all just timing. A moment where I happen to look special and you happen to look special – just a coincidence. But these beautiful coincidences are also responsible for most of our life’s relationships. Which is also why there’s no need to be cynical about them.