(no subject)
Wow.
It's been a really long time since I last opened up LJ with the intentions of making a post. Five years? Maybe six? I've signed on to answer comments people have left on my fic, look for certain memories, poke around, but that entry button hasn't been something I've clicked on in much too long.
I'm mourning and lost and confused, and thought... Maybe I'd find some closure, coming back to where SHINee came to mean so much to me.
I'll admit, I've lost a lot of focus when it comes to SHINee the last few years. New boybands, rough patches, life experiences, growing up. I'd actually only gotten back into kpop this past summer, a new boyband on my walls, but I'd bought Taemin's album, had every intention of working my way through everything I've missed.
It hurts too much now, just thinking about opening up YouTube, a backlog of videos I've skipped for years, never fully being able to convince myself to unsubscribe from SMTown's channel, even though EXO and Red Velvet were things I grew to despise every time they clogged up my feed.
I don't really remember leaving SHINee fandom, don't remember slowly replacing them with someone else. When people ask, I've always listed them first or second as my favourite band, even when I had no idea what their latest was called, what colour Key's hair was or how many times Onew had fallen this cycle. I was coming back though, looking at pictures of Roo on Instagram and at Taemin smooshing with celebrities in foreign lands and every gif that posted to Tumblr of a time that I remembered.
Jonghyun's suicide hit me hard.
It hit me a lot harder that I even thought it had. That single Facebook post that caught my eye as I was scrolling in bed before work sent me into shock and I've not been the same since.
SHINee meant a lot to me at a time when I thought they didn't. They debuted at a time when I was giving up at something I didn't want at all, but was still conflicted and lost about not wanting, a time when I didn't know who I had become or what I wanted.
They said that was okay, that I would never truly know myself because we are all works in progress.
We are never finished products.
We are always changing, always searching for something, always yearning and hoping and learning and loving.
They made it okay that I'd just dropped out of my final semester of college because I didn't really want what I'd been told I wanted at sixteen when my real dream had just ended and I was looking for back ups. Shinee told me not to settle. They told me to work hard and I could have the world.
It worked for me. I did everything they said. I've loved and I've lived and I've tried my best and I've been so happy about who I've become. I still may not have my dream job, but I do something I enjoy with people I like and it allows me time to do all the things I want, something I didn't expect to ever have when I was 21, slogging through classes I hated.
It worked for me.
So why didn't it work for Jonghyun? How could everything he told me for so long be so true for me but lead him to nothing but loneliness and bitterness and darkness?
It really hurts that I'll never be able to tell him what an impact he's made on my life, on my happiness, my bravery, my courage, all my Gryffindor traits. It hurts that I never realized it until it was too late.
I wrote a lot of fic seven or eight years ago, had a lot of fun with it, poured my own desperation and bitterness into it, worked my way through a lot of things (You guys remember the angst party I was?) but I always wrote Jonghyun as being above that. He was always golden, happy. He was always satisfied with being himself.
How did we all miss that for so long? When did that happy boy stop being that happy boy? I worry, like even if I had been more involved in fandom, even if I had noticed something, ultimately it still would have meant nothing. I still couldn't have changed a single thing that's happened. I still wouldn't have mattered in the end. I would still just be another brokenhearted fan girl, just. I'd be able to say "I told you so." Does that help anyone?
Does this "what if" game we've all fallen into help any of us, or are we all just cycling through each other's discarded emotions, feeding each other's dispair?
I haven't been on Tumblr since it happened, but I did join a semi-local memorial page on Facebook, and it seems like every time I think that maybe I'll sleep through the coming night, someone posts about what a hard day they've had with their bottled up emotions and it takes me back to that cold morning, the shock, the icy fear, the senseless hope we were all wrong, that those fans standing outside a hospital somehow knew more than SM's announcement.
I can't get over it, but it seems like a lot of people are still with me, tearing up in the bathroom on my lunch break because I suddenly thought back to my favourite interview where Onew was making fun of Jonghyun's ridiculous range, but they'd all been smiling, and I probably saved that interview in three different places because of the sparkle in Key's eye and how Taemin had poked at Jonghyun and they were so perfect and bright and golden, and it had made me feel so alive at one point.
(No? No one else? Is that just me?)
I wish I could stop remembering all those quirks, all those habits of SHINee's that I used to wrap myself in.
I once wrote a needlessly angst fiction when I was going through some things myself about Taemin growing up from such a young age in the industry, and everyone pretty much had the same favourite scene.
In it, Taemin was scraping off parts of other people's personalities and gluing them to himself to hide all of his own cracks. It's vivid. Stark and powerful, one of my favorite scenes I've written to this day, because it was real to me. I wanted to borrow Onew's optimism, and I needed a bit of Key's bravery, and when I was writing it, Taemin took Jonghyun's anger because we all wanted to protect Jonghyun, even then.
I don't know if this is helping, if it will help, or if it will be something I keep looking at when my clock is flashing 3 AM and I need to get up in two hours for work. Nine years ago, being up that late meant I was streaming some shitty fancam, watching Minho go through the motions and Taemin shine. Now, I'm laying here, worried about Onew blaming himself for being out of reach, how Key's probably closed up from everyone, how Minho's not smiled for real in months.
Jonghyun was never my bias, and I'm not trying to say he apparently was and I just never realised. (I didn't even have a Jonghyun-specific tag and I mostly made fun of his nose on LJ.) But he was important. To me. To SHINee. To fans all over the world. Maybe he was more important than any of us thought.
The 10 year anniversary is hitting me hard. On one hand, SHINee music has always filled a void, always lifted me out of dark days. On the other, I'm definitely not ready for it, and part of my reluctance has to do with me being concerned that they haven't had time to grieve themselves. This is their first album without him. How will they carry themselves? How will they cope with that hole on the stage that we all know should be filled with brightness?
How do they do it, smile at cameras like nothing has changee, when I haven't slept right in the past 6 months? A friend watched Replay the other day for the 10th anniversary, and I think she's brave for it, because I'm still skipping their songs when they come on randomly.
I know all this is just part of grieving, part of moving on and continuing to live your life, but it's harder than I expected. In a lot of ways, it's harder than deaths of people that I've known personally, because it's easier to gain closure when there's a funeral and a body and a community of tears and sorrow.
Without all that ritual, I've been feeling messy, a bit unachored to my bones.
It'll get better someday and I'm trying, honestly, to be more true to myself. I think that would be a pretty good legacy to him if we would all just try to be a little bit more authentic.
It's been a really long time since I last opened up LJ with the intentions of making a post. Five years? Maybe six? I've signed on to answer comments people have left on my fic, look for certain memories, poke around, but that entry button hasn't been something I've clicked on in much too long.
I'm mourning and lost and confused, and thought... Maybe I'd find some closure, coming back to where SHINee came to mean so much to me.
I'll admit, I've lost a lot of focus when it comes to SHINee the last few years. New boybands, rough patches, life experiences, growing up. I'd actually only gotten back into kpop this past summer, a new boyband on my walls, but I'd bought Taemin's album, had every intention of working my way through everything I've missed.
It hurts too much now, just thinking about opening up YouTube, a backlog of videos I've skipped for years, never fully being able to convince myself to unsubscribe from SMTown's channel, even though EXO and Red Velvet were things I grew to despise every time they clogged up my feed.
I don't really remember leaving SHINee fandom, don't remember slowly replacing them with someone else. When people ask, I've always listed them first or second as my favourite band, even when I had no idea what their latest was called, what colour Key's hair was or how many times Onew had fallen this cycle. I was coming back though, looking at pictures of Roo on Instagram and at Taemin smooshing with celebrities in foreign lands and every gif that posted to Tumblr of a time that I remembered.
Jonghyun's suicide hit me hard.
It hit me a lot harder that I even thought it had. That single Facebook post that caught my eye as I was scrolling in bed before work sent me into shock and I've not been the same since.
SHINee meant a lot to me at a time when I thought they didn't. They debuted at a time when I was giving up at something I didn't want at all, but was still conflicted and lost about not wanting, a time when I didn't know who I had become or what I wanted.
They said that was okay, that I would never truly know myself because we are all works in progress.
We are never finished products.
We are always changing, always searching for something, always yearning and hoping and learning and loving.
They made it okay that I'd just dropped out of my final semester of college because I didn't really want what I'd been told I wanted at sixteen when my real dream had just ended and I was looking for back ups. Shinee told me not to settle. They told me to work hard and I could have the world.
It worked for me. I did everything they said. I've loved and I've lived and I've tried my best and I've been so happy about who I've become. I still may not have my dream job, but I do something I enjoy with people I like and it allows me time to do all the things I want, something I didn't expect to ever have when I was 21, slogging through classes I hated.
It worked for me.
So why didn't it work for Jonghyun? How could everything he told me for so long be so true for me but lead him to nothing but loneliness and bitterness and darkness?
It really hurts that I'll never be able to tell him what an impact he's made on my life, on my happiness, my bravery, my courage, all my Gryffindor traits. It hurts that I never realized it until it was too late.
I wrote a lot of fic seven or eight years ago, had a lot of fun with it, poured my own desperation and bitterness into it, worked my way through a lot of things (You guys remember the angst party I was?) but I always wrote Jonghyun as being above that. He was always golden, happy. He was always satisfied with being himself.
How did we all miss that for so long? When did that happy boy stop being that happy boy? I worry, like even if I had been more involved in fandom, even if I had noticed something, ultimately it still would have meant nothing. I still couldn't have changed a single thing that's happened. I still wouldn't have mattered in the end. I would still just be another brokenhearted fan girl, just. I'd be able to say "I told you so." Does that help anyone?
Does this "what if" game we've all fallen into help any of us, or are we all just cycling through each other's discarded emotions, feeding each other's dispair?
I haven't been on Tumblr since it happened, but I did join a semi-local memorial page on Facebook, and it seems like every time I think that maybe I'll sleep through the coming night, someone posts about what a hard day they've had with their bottled up emotions and it takes me back to that cold morning, the shock, the icy fear, the senseless hope we were all wrong, that those fans standing outside a hospital somehow knew more than SM's announcement.
I can't get over it, but it seems like a lot of people are still with me, tearing up in the bathroom on my lunch break because I suddenly thought back to my favourite interview where Onew was making fun of Jonghyun's ridiculous range, but they'd all been smiling, and I probably saved that interview in three different places because of the sparkle in Key's eye and how Taemin had poked at Jonghyun and they were so perfect and bright and golden, and it had made me feel so alive at one point.
(No? No one else? Is that just me?)
I wish I could stop remembering all those quirks, all those habits of SHINee's that I used to wrap myself in.
I once wrote a needlessly angst fiction when I was going through some things myself about Taemin growing up from such a young age in the industry, and everyone pretty much had the same favourite scene.
In it, Taemin was scraping off parts of other people's personalities and gluing them to himself to hide all of his own cracks. It's vivid. Stark and powerful, one of my favorite scenes I've written to this day, because it was real to me. I wanted to borrow Onew's optimism, and I needed a bit of Key's bravery, and when I was writing it, Taemin took Jonghyun's anger because we all wanted to protect Jonghyun, even then.
I don't know if this is helping, if it will help, or if it will be something I keep looking at when my clock is flashing 3 AM and I need to get up in two hours for work. Nine years ago, being up that late meant I was streaming some shitty fancam, watching Minho go through the motions and Taemin shine. Now, I'm laying here, worried about Onew blaming himself for being out of reach, how Key's probably closed up from everyone, how Minho's not smiled for real in months.
Jonghyun was never my bias, and I'm not trying to say he apparently was and I just never realised. (I didn't even have a Jonghyun-specific tag and I mostly made fun of his nose on LJ.) But he was important. To me. To SHINee. To fans all over the world. Maybe he was more important than any of us thought.
The 10 year anniversary is hitting me hard. On one hand, SHINee music has always filled a void, always lifted me out of dark days. On the other, I'm definitely not ready for it, and part of my reluctance has to do with me being concerned that they haven't had time to grieve themselves. This is their first album without him. How will they carry themselves? How will they cope with that hole on the stage that we all know should be filled with brightness?
How do they do it, smile at cameras like nothing has changee, when I haven't slept right in the past 6 months? A friend watched Replay the other day for the 10th anniversary, and I think she's brave for it, because I'm still skipping their songs when they come on randomly.
I know all this is just part of grieving, part of moving on and continuing to live your life, but it's harder than I expected. In a lot of ways, it's harder than deaths of people that I've known personally, because it's easier to gain closure when there's a funeral and a body and a community of tears and sorrow.
Without all that ritual, I've been feeling messy, a bit unachored to my bones.
It'll get better someday and I'm trying, honestly, to be more true to myself. I think that would be a pretty good legacy to him if we would all just try to be a little bit more authentic.