nitilia

 

it was mostly thanks to my roommate. she played bts songs in the shower and in every spare moment, and they'd settled in the back of my mind even though i had no names or faces to put to them yet. three months later, when she'd stopped following them, the songs were still stuck somewhere inside me, and i ended up looking them up since no one was playing them for me anymore.

 

the first time i remember seeing yoongi - like, really seeing him, was in Not Today. i saw him, and my only thought was - 

 

wow. 

 

shit. 

 

he said 'not today', and i was like, 'well. okay then. i guess i have to make it till tomorrow after all, since this person i don't know has said so and he's making my heart stop.'

 

i found out his name was min yoongi. 

 

suga.

 

the aura he had was incredible. i rewatched the beginning of that mv over and over just to watch him say that again. and again. and again.

 

'no, not today'.

 

it's somehow very fitting, because the strength he gave me in those three words when i didn't even know who he was, is essentially the summary of how he gets me to wake up in the morning till date.

 

i fell in love with bts too fast. it was so easy to love them once i'd seen them - it took me just days. lonely days, when i had maybe two friends and none i could call up, and i spent them watching compilations of these kids just having fun. i fell in love with them over and over again. i watched them laugh and it was enough to keep me going all day. i couldn't watch them cry because it broke my heart.

 

it was another month before i discovered agust d. 

 

i didn't follow bts on social media, and i wasn't deep in the fandom, but in the small spaces that i heard of them - comment sections, fanfic, lyrics descriptions - there was a repeated mention of 'agust d'. when i finally realized i should be figuring out what the heck it was all about, it was some absurd hour of night and i was in the middle of being crushed by a degree that i didn't want to work towards and realising that nothing made me happy anymore, and i found -

 

- and it hit me in the face like a shit ton of bricks.

 

i talk about so far away a lot, about how much the song means to me. it struck me right in the soul, the very first time i heard it, and it still hits just as hard. (i live because i can't die. i live because i can't die. i live because i can't die.)

 

 

the song haunted me. for the first time since I'd started college, i felt seen. i felt real. i felt the anger and defeat i carried inside me each day, threatening to explode - suddenly, it was all in words.

 

i listened to the last. agust d. give it to me. 140503 at dawn. i watched yoongi himself, the colours of fire and burned remains of chaos. there was nothing about that first mixtape that soothed me. it set me on edge, it terrified me, it was -

 

 

- too terrifyingly human.

 

i watched the same compilations of funny videos, of run bts, of interviews that turned into chaos in a bts typical way, and i couldn't understand how someone who had - so much fire inside him, so much hurt, could be so kind. so soft. 

 

so aware of what the world was and yet somehow unwilling to hurt it.

 

it sounds messed up to put it like that, but that was how it felt.

 

i had too many feelings and no where to put them, and there was the slightest hint of envy. that he could put these things into words. that he could make himself understood. i scrolled under the comments on his songs, and over and over again i saw -

 

'i have depression too.'

 

'this song saved my life.'

 

'i found this at the right time in my life.'

 

so many people who felt these things, and one person who's managed to put it into music. how many people felt seen, just because of min yoongi.

 

how many lives had been saved.

 

at 2AM, i was huddled in the cold in my balcony. my roommate had a friend over and i was too afraid to talk to them. i was freezing and i hated myself and over and over i listened to (i live because i can't die.)

 

 

that night i wrote the first chapter of so far away. when i woke up, sleep deprived and miserable - i had actual comments on the fic. that was the first interaction i had with a community that would later turn out to be home.

 

after 2017, i remember most of my life in terms of what BTS was doing. i didn't make real friends till much later, so these seven guys were all I had. i'd wake up in the morning and want to die but i'd think of them and push myself up. i listened to tear and cried forever. i stayed up late for concerts and listened to yoongi review albums to bring myself down from panic attacks. i played 'never mind' from the roof, up on the fourteenth floor, in some kind of act of defiance - not today. not today.

 

every morning i woke up, i remembered yoongi existed. it gave me what i needed to keep going. there was someone, 5354 kilometres away, who'd had the same sort of demons in his head.

 

who was the most beautiful person I knew.

 

who I loved with all my heart.

 

i had a bit of a falling out with bts at one point. everything was overwhelming. i couldn't sleep, i couldn't eat. i couldn't write. i couldn't get out of bed.

 

i couldn't bring myself to remember that min yoongi had saved my life.

 

it was a shitty time, and it went on for months together. the months that followed the release of persona. it seemed to go on forever and ever, and i didn't think it would ever stop.

 

i tried to hold on, though. i forced myself to check in on them, even when pressing the play button was harder than anything. they were the only constants i had and i couldn't bear to let that go. i felt things for brief periods of time, when i watched them smile, but then it went away too fast.

 

i made friends and lost them. every moment i was happy i crashed down ten times harder.

 

when shadow dropped, i didn't immediately notice.

 

i was outside with people having a terrible time, and i came back to my room with shaking hands and a splitting headache intending to just pass out on the spot. i checked my phone to set an alarm and there it was.

 

shadow.

 

i'd thought agust d had carved my heart out and destroyed me - i hadn't seen anything yet.

 

 

i watched it without breathing. yoongi is - i can never look away from him when he's performing. he's magic. he's fire. 

 

he's beautiful.

 

it was the only thought i had when i watched it, my heart freezing more ever second. all the atoms that had collided for me to come across him - i would always be grateful for them.

 

then -

 

the music changed. everything turned darker. the song had been terrifying already, too many thoughts bared open to see, the essence of what i'd been afraid of all year - the higher you go the harder you'll fall.

 

and then - 

 

 

i lost it.

 

i totally lost it. i cried so much i couldn't breathe. it was every terrible feeling I'd had, that had been building up for days and days, all crashing down at once. 

 

 

i felt doomed.

 

when I think about it, even now, i still feel doomed.

 

i watched the mv over and over, and again - i couldn't get over it. how he could rap about something so haunting and brutal, and then - still keep going.

 

still be freaking min yoongi.

 

i saw someone once compare yoongi to a dragon, and I've never been able to stop thinking about that. he's power and fire and warmth. 

 

he's safe.

 

in the middle of the pandemic, things were harder than ever. everything had come to a standstill. i lost track of time. there were no more highs followed by lows - there was just the monotonous edge of a world that had been insane for too long. i didn't see the point of doing anything, since everything could only ever hurt. everything could only be lost.

 

and in the middle of it all, there was D2. 

 

 

in the middle of it all - he made things okay again.

 

yoongi's words are - so easy to trust. so easy to believe. when he says it's alright - everything is alright. anything he says means the world, because they come from someone who knows what all this is like.

 

and who still believes we could make it through.

 

it's incredible, how gentle and warm his words are in contrast to the fires that he burns. someone 5354 kilometres away, who fights the same demons, and is -

 

the most beautiful person i know.

 

who i love with all my heart.

 

who loves, in his own world, with all his heart and soul.

 

who's been through hell and can tell us, with the most gentle voice, that we don't have to run when we don't want to. who can, in the same breath, tell us to accelerate if we feel like we're going to crash.

 

who feels like a hand reaching out to you when you're on the ground saying -

 

 

when i can't get out of bed - I think of yoongi.

 

when I run around in thunder storms and scream at the sky, drenched to the bone - i think of yoongi.