I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

by Baek Se-hee

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.

She once told me that she hated spending time with other people and that I was the one she felt most comfortable with. That annoyed me so much that for the first time, I said something to her. I said: ‘I’m not comfortable at all with you. In fact, you make me very uncomfortable.’

think of a person you admire and imagine what they would do in such a situation. Wouldn’t they be angry as well? They’d find this situation intolerable, too, wouldn’t they? If the answer is yes, then allow yourself to be angry.

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.

Forgetfulness can be liberating, you know. It must be exhausting doing what you do.

but I really don’t know how to tell the difference – between what I really want and what others want for me.

If twenty-year-old me met me today, she would cry with joy. And that’s enough for me.

Anyone and everyone can feel annoyed by and enjoy attention at the same time. Just think of it as your smallest way of guarding your self-esteem, that’s all there is to it. Me: So I’m fine? Psychiatrist: You are.

It’s like I know everything is fine, but I can’t stop myself from endlessly checking to make sure it really is fine, and in the process I make myself miserable.

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

Fear increases when it’s something that you keep to yourself. Instead of suffering alone, it can often be good to share it with someone else, like you’re doing now. And if you don’t want to see your partner’s friends, you don’t have to see them.

What do I wish for? I want to love and be loved. Without suspicion, and with ease. That’s it. I don’t know how to love or be loved properly, and that’s what pains me.

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.

Books never tire of me. And in time they present a solution, quietly waiting until I am fully healed. That’s one of the nicest things about books.