I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

I often look for books that are like medicine, that fit my situation and my thoughts, and I read them over and over again until the pages are tattered, underlining everything, and still the book will have something to give me. Books never tire of me.

Criticising myself isn’t going to make me a cleverer person suddenly.

I can’t suddenly become like the people I envy. That would be truly impossible. The only way for me to become a better person is to go my way little by little, as tedious as that can be.

But nothing comes from scolding myself or hating myself for these feelings.

That’s empathy and communication and a kind of consolation that enriches relationships.

Because the human heart, even when it wants to die, quite often wants at the same time to eat some tteokbokki, too.

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.

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.

But just as a person who is dropped into a dark well must make a circle in order to determine they are inside a well,

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.