Crying to K-Pop
Me and crying. Not something I’m comfortable doing to be perfectly honest. I think it comes from my childhood and forever being told not to let people see me cry, so now I don’t. For the sake of bullies not getting what they want, I’m now some sort of emotional cripple — so yeah, thanks bullies, and thanks adults for not allowing me to understand my feelings and allowing me to experience them in a safe way. Emotional stuff is VERY difficult for me but sometimes, I need to really get myself to break out of that space and have a properly good cry. Sometimes you got to do this — it feels cleansing, then you sleep and wake up just a bit better than you were before.
I’m currently withdrawing from Escitalopram (Lexapro) and holy fucking hell I HATE IT HERE! I’ve even been smart about it and weaned off slowly and still got the whole run of side effects — I suppose there is no easy way to come off a drug you’ve been on for years but it is time, even if the next few weeks are going to suck. This may, however, explain my sudden ability to actually feel things…including crying, and specifically one song that will do it every time I hear it.
I’m looking at you SHINee!
But what is it about this song? It absolutely is sad (read the lyrics) but in a way that usually wouldn’t really register with me — I don’t have a huge amount of emotional experience to relate to, it doesn’t trigger any specific memories for me that I can attach it to — it just is, and yet every single time I hear it, it will either flood me with tears, or I can just shed one tear; it really depends on mood and where I am as to how I’ll react. At the moment I’m in the office on my own and today was proper crying, not quite ugly crying, but not far off it! Enough to make it look like I had been — which is plenty thank you (see? still not keen on the showing emotional vulnerability thing am I?).
I think what makes this song effect me is knowing this was the last ‘official’ release SHINee did before Taemin went to Military service. It won’t be the last thing they ever do, he will be back, but this was the first experience I had as a K-Pop fan where I experienced the major interruption that military service is and I was a little overwhelmed by it all. Weird considering I’m a Monbebe and not a Shawol (I love SHINee as a multistan I guess I’d be called, but my devotion lies with Monsta X). Currently experiencing the first impact of Military service with my favourite men and this definitely hurts — but could K-Pop be the safe space I need to go through all these emotions that I was not allowed to experience before?
I’ve said before I didn’t relate to pop music as a teenager and I think that was because I wasn’t allowed the emotions to do it, now I’m allowing myself to experience them after years of therapy has given me understanding that my emotional reactions aren’t a bad thing. Allowing myself to feel sad over something that does not impact my every day life seems pretty safe and healthy to me? At least I will have this as a test run so that when something big happens in my life I’ll cope just fine — by fine, I mean it will suck, but it will be less as I’ll know what to do with all the emotions. When emotional stuff happened in the past, it all felt like it was too much to deal with and I lockdown — I still do that to others when they overshare, or if they overshare and there is literally nothing I can do to help them (I had to leave Facebook for this reason), it reminds me of being powerless — a feeling I do not like in the slightest, and that returns to the crying thing. It makes me feel powerless to do it in my waking life, so to be able to do it whilst experiencing music is absolutely a lot more healthy that locking myself down and running from it.
I probably should thank Onew for making me cry….seems a bit backward but hell, I’ll take feeling all of the things, over not feeling anything at all.
