*sigh* I did it again.
Listen & Read:
“Warm on a Cold Night” by Honne
“Igloo” by Clubeskimo
“love” by Dean, Syd
A Part II to a post I wrote about with a similar issue in 2016.
So my blog has been a cobweb hotel of 30+ save drafts… until this afternoon.
I downloaded the tumblr app to look at my old fashion page that sort of turned into my main Tumblr blog. I typed “the boy scout diary” tag to see if I had received any activity on these posts via my tumblr (that I haven’t been active on since… 2015? so I don’t know why I thought there would be anything). And what I saw… surprised me.
In December of 2017, as I sat in my Swiss dorm room on the seventeenth floor, texting my friend eight hours ahead in Japan, I decided to confront my Instagram explore page. Lately I had been recommended K-pop boy groups smiling at award shows and dancing in practice rooms. Although I couldn’t tell who they were, and would later find out there were videos beside each other with people that weren’t even in the same group, they all reminded me of that one guy from K-pop I read an article about the month before who drove people insane. Didn’t remember his name but… ya know maybe I can roll with him. I told my friend that we should get into a group again. We had been into Pretty Much, but not enough to really commit as fans. I wanted to do this because it always feels nice to like a celebrity, I thought. They are the right distance away that you won’t get too attached if you control yourself (which… I hardly ever do), and close enough so that you get excited when you see their face. She agreed, and I finally decided to look through all the recommended posts of young east-Asian men in expensive suits and skin….. that can bring a tear to my very eye. I didn’t forget about the boy I saw in that American Music Awards article with the silver Gucci jacket (who, spoiler alert, would end up being my background right now on my phone). Within a few days, right before I left Switzerland to be back home for Christmas break, I told my friend that I found the group that we are gonna stan. Their name– BTS.
The first time I got into K-pop was when I was twelve years old. I was a peculiar mix of wearing dark makeup with Hayley Williams from Paramore haircuts, and blasting Epik High on my lavender iPod shuffle and practicing Girls Generation dance moves behind closed doors. I liked NeverShoutNever… and 2NE1. Again, an intriguing taste. Once I turned thirteen, I took a sharp left towards Ke$ha and Cody Simpson, ditching the blunt diagonal bangs for “beach waves” and leaving the faux emo and K-pop world behind me for many years; until I was gifted a Paramore CD my first year of college. That, subsequently, reminded me why I was destined to find Paramore again, just like how I was supposed to find them in my scene stage years before, because the CD I had in my car played on repeat wherever I went, and it was all about moving on after graduating, which I had just graduated from high school months before. Anyway, like alternative rock, maybe I was destined to find K-pop, another music genre that helped shape a very… hormonal, yet important, stage of my life.
So back to Christmas break of 2017-18. I wouldn’t see my friend for another four months on a spontaneous trip to Japan (which I can’t wait to write about), but we frequently communicated. And this time, it was all about BTS. Conveniently, they had just been in America two or three times, so I had plenty of recent videos to watch and feel them out. Not including the several years of various eras and hairstyles that I had to also catch up on. So, I went to work. As if it was a fun project to work on, I took in hours of information: Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube fan accounts, Vlive, their own Twitter and YouTube… I even went to Google just to memorize whose face went to whose name. I would report back to my friend, not for her to tell me if I was right or wrong, she actually didn’t know much about them either (although they are very popular in Japan). I went to her to quiz her on their names and give her a watered down version of all of the stuff that I was researching. More importantly, I took all this information to her so we can decide who was our favorite. Now, I never ever ever stayed with one member of any boy band that I ever liked in my entire life. And I started liking boy bands very young (I was technically too young for B2K so let’s say I started with B5), so you can imagine all the groups I fawned over. But this time, I found one. One solid… one. He was cute, tall, and for a little bit I kept getting him confused with another member of the group. Namjoon, or RM, always had a goofy smile, and that’s one of the reasons I told my friend that I think I will choose him, like the one stuffed animal at the Build-A-Bear Workshop. In fact, I added,
And so it was. I had decided to jump in the water, knowing I can’t swim but tricking myself into thinking it’s worth the shot. I knew I would get too attached, and that I would end up getting upset sooner or later, acting like I know him when I literally do not. But, fuck it. I thought that feeling of infatuation out weighs the ~mood I could potentially get in for a short time when my fangirl lifestyle hits a valley. So for the first half of the new year, I was all in– or as all in as I could be.
There was just this thing. This thinnngggg. That bugged me. It was like a new sci-fi treasure chest, on the inside containing three million various heart emojis, with an almost impenetrable lock. Also note, I created the lock. It was such an annoying internal struggle of me wanting to be all in with them. And yet, I don’t want to get hurt. I know myself too well now to know that I will treat the relationship as if… there is a glimmer of hope. Ew! I just said that. And it’s true. I’m 21, a senior in college, a whole grown ass legally drinking ass, and there is a part of me that refuses to deny that maybe, perhaps, hopefully, kinda, sorta, I could maybe-perhaps-hopefully-kinda-sorta meet Namjoon in this lifetime and start a friendship. What? Yes. That’s my truth. So there were these two conflicting sides of me that were constantly fighting with one another– one wanting to give up on this fangirl stuff and one wanting to crack open that treasure chest and live among the millions of hearts. Now that hindsight is 20/20, I am not surprised that this created a bodily imbalance.
*sigh*
So, I would start crying. Sometimes a single dramatic tear. Sometimes completely full on. At the sight of Namjoon, at the thought of Namjoon. I couldn’t help myself. And don’t be fooled, I had no idea why I would cry at the time, but they were not happy tears. Like I said, I’ve liked plenty of boybands, but none of them evoked such a strong physical emotion. I never felt truly happy, like my stomach could get butterflies, but my heart would stay at it’s normal pace when I saw them or they made me laugh. My heart was quite literally on lockdown as my mind kept having fights with itself upstairs. I could not let myself be upset again for men that I don’t know. In the beginning, I thought being happy would outweigh being sad. But the anxiety of going online and seeing something I don’t like… was haunting. That was really dramatic. In fact, this whole thing is dramatic, but trust me, it’s all completely true.
I know the clear decision is, well get offline. Love them without knowing everything about them at every second. Not only will it limit the chances of me finding out they are problematic (or even worse, aren’t single virgin symbols of purity), but maybe my love for them will slowly deplete to a manageable level to where I can literally control whether I cry or not…? However, I have a sad answer to that. By the time I thought about this option, like really thought about it honestly after multiple emotional imbalance tears, it was late April/early May of 2018– Love Yourself: Tear comeback season. I didn’t know what “comeback” meant until this ring around the K-pop rosy. Basically it just encompasses the lead up to, and promotion for, the new album. There was no WAY I was gonna get off social media now of all times! Like that is not happening. And it was my first comeback. And they had all dark brown hair?! I’m staying *stomps* here. The whole time my heart was asleep, I’m sure I cried, but the idea of missing out on this would not work for me. The previous sentence really made me pull away from the keyboard just now and think, why do I do this to myself?
By late June, it was… I was… done. Nothing happened to make me upset, so in that way it was different from Part I, but the amount of times I clicked and exited and then clicked the Instagram and Twitter app was… unholy. The fan fights, all of the images and videos I had to make sure that I kept up on because I didn’t wanna miss anything, the hard decision on if I should turn @BTS_twt notifications on or not, it was all a lot. I obviously knew it was coming, but I finally deleted the apps that I allowed to dump out my entire Christmas break, spring semester, and the beginning of summer and fill it will seven people from South Korea. I go back on if I need to search someone, and when I go out I still cannot resist getting it back to show people hey! I’m doing things! Anxiety sometimes arises when I think too deep about how I’m missing so many airport photos, tweets in Korean, and fan-made hashtags where we all post selfies and make friends with one another. I’m missing all of that, but the trade off is choosing myself. I still use YouTube, so I see them sometimes. I get on Vlive if I get a notification that they posted a new video (which they rarely do), so I see them sometimes. I’ve been really using Pintrest nowadays, so I see them sometimes. And that’s the thing–sometimes. Going from all the time to sometimes is me giving myself a time out facing the corner so I can chill the fuck out. I’m not even sure if this method will work, but it’s better than… crying.
So I got Tumblr back this afternoon, I searched “The Boy Scout Diary” tag, and that sometimes of seeing them… was this time. If you aren’t familiar with, or aren’t really into BTS, in Korean it means bullet-proof boy scouts. Suddenly, since creating my blog The Boy Scout Diary in 2015, my once unique (in my mind) blog tag/blog name crashed worlds with global superstars like a weird Venn diagram… at the worst time. So, it looks like, whenever a fan has an opinion about BTS or posts pictures of BTS living their life, they’ll tag it on tumblr with “boy scout diary”. I am–
Annoyed is kind of a strong word. I think to sum up how I feel about BTS completely and officially taking over my entire life even when I’m casually avoiding them… is like when you bust out laughing after you see your pizza slice had just fallen on the floor. It’s not actually funny, you’re quite peeved, but it’s not a big enough deal to be fully annoyed. So… I guess I should change my tag now? It’s as if they literally want me to find out something I don’t want to and get riled up, which is the precise reason why I’m currently winning in this game of dodge ball–for now.
It may seem like I cut the rope before it actually reached the dynamite. Like an odd prelude to Part I, or even, an alternate universe of what I should have done the first go around. So, my fan girl’s guide to greif this time is one simple step– stop before your ahead, or your body will stop you (those innate survival instincts, man). I go in too deep, and this time, my body said… “yeah, no”.
So back off, BTS (for now ♥)* and let me breathe, please.
When will I ever learn,
P.S. can you fuckin believe they literally took over my tag like two years ago this was not the case. I slick feel defensive.
P.P.S. how WEIRD is it that I named my blog this and then ended up finding out about BTS, becoming enthralled with them, going to Japan right when their Japanese mini-album was released and seeing images of them EVERY WHERE, buying so much BTS merch, countless photoshopping me into pictures of them… it was as if one way or another I was gonna find out about them. literally. what is the world SAYING!
*just give me time, I love you
Kennedy 
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