I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

by Baek Se-hee

Even in my most unbearably depressed moments I could be laughing at a friend’s joke but still feel an emptiness in my heart, and then feel an emptiness in my stomach,

I wonder about others like me, who seem totally fine on the outside but are rotting on the inside, where the rot is this vague state of being not-fine and not-devastated at the same time.

I became expert at acting like all was well.

I have this obsessive worry about not inconveniencing others,

people are complicated. They may seem perfect on the outside, but they could be doing terrible things in the dark.

if life gives one more suffering than death, shouldn’t we respect their right to end life?

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.