Happy Birthday, Daehyun
This is something I’m sure everyone and their mother is doing as long as they are a BABY and love B.A.P as much as I do, but I feel like I need to put out my own birthday wishes for Daehyun today, because he’s impacted not only my life but the lives of so many in such a positive way. I don’t want to just write some fanfiction or something unrealistic, I don’t want to joke around, I just want to get out my raw feelings for the man I call my ultimate bias, because whether he’d be my bro, my boyfriend, or just another strange face on the street, he’s the most beautiful person I’m happy to say I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet.
How do I really start this? I’m not sure, but I feel like I’ll end up just rambling if I’m not careful, not that I would ever mind rambling about someone I have come to love more and more as every day passes.
When I first got into B.A.P I didn’t know I’d end up here. He was my bias at first because I simply didn’t know the other members, and then as time went on my bias seemingly switched for awhile, because I was getting to know them and for a time all I could focus on was Himchan. Sometimes I do these little self-rps where I just talk to myself and come up with scenarios with idols, and I choose who I’d want to be with romantically. Of course it’s unrealistic, but it’s just for fun and I suppose it’s not harming anyone so why not? But I was so tired one night I just fell asleep instead of doing one of my little self-rps like I usually do, and I kid you not I had a dream about both Himchan and Daehyun.
It’s one of the most memorable dreams I have ever had and I don’t think I could ever forget it. It was so simple but it spoke volumes. When I woke up I broke into a fit of tears due to this dream. Let me explain it to you.
In this dream I was in a black void, nothing was around me, you couldn’t see the floor below my feet, everything was just blackness, and I was simply walking. I was walking towards Himchan, who was quite a bit a ways from me. As I neared him though, he gave me this gentle smile and lifted his finger to point in the direction I was coming from. He wanted me to look behind me, so I stopped walking and turned around. What, or more appropriately, who, I saw behind me was Daehyun. He had his arms open wide, ready for me to run into them and get a hug, and he had a happy, huge smile on his face. I remember looking back at Himchan, and him waving me onward, telling me silently that it was okay to go, just go. Go. And so I did. I ran to Daehyun, I ran into his arms and he hugged me and wouldn’t let go, and as the dream ended there, I was left with one final, silent message. He was waiting for me to come home.
I woke up that morning and realized my Ultimate Bias was no longer Key from SHINee, the first group I’d ever gotten into. It was Daehyun. He had been my B.A.P bias all along and it was like he was just waiting for me to realize it and come back to him, but now I also realized everything I thought about idols was wrong, because I’d never in my six years of K-Pop thought I’d change Ultimate Biases, leaving Key behind as far as that title went seemed unthinkable.
Of course, I’ve come to realize Key in all likelihood wouldn’t mind, and it’s not like he even thinks about it, he’s never met me and doesn’t know I, as an individual, exist, so I don’t have to feel ashamed or upset or like I’m betraying him. At the time though I kind of refused to believe Daehyun had taken his spot, and I didn’t admit it until after their Live on Earth concert in Atlanta in 2016.
That concert set in stone that I couldn’t deny it anymore, and that Daehyun had really shaken my world in a way no one ever had before, and no one has since.
You see, it may sound silly, or maybe you’ll write me off as crazy, I am mentally ill after all, depression and anxiety, what have you, but the truth remains in tact no matter what I do. I am in love with an idol. I am in love with Jung Daehyun.
This might piss a lot of people off, there are a lot of people in the k-pop community who claim that an idol is “theirs” as if they are their property. I don’t mind, I know a lot of that is just a combination of immaturity and an over-abundance of excitement. I don’t mind if people hate me. I don’t mind.
What I mind is that I’m in love with someone I am hopeless to ever really know. And I like to think I do know him. I follow him very closely, I watch his body language, his eyes, his facial features, more than just his words, to really know the emotions behind the smiles he has to wear on camera. I know his tells, I can see when he’s stressed or tired and doesn’t want to show it, yes, I know a lot about Jung Daehyun, but... I don’t actually know him, right? Because no matter how closely I follow him or how much I study every little detail of his being all I can see is what’s on camera, and people change on camera, idols /have/ to change on camera.
The Jung Daehyun I wish I knew is the real one. I want to know the man who is only coming to terms with his own skin tone, I want to know where his thoughts lie and why he’s so ashamed. Why does he feel he’s not beautiful, why does he truly hate himself and worry so much about being overweight? What is the /core/, root problem where such self-esteem issues lie. I yearn to be the person who knows the little details, who he can talk to any time he needs someone. I often find myself just wishing I could be the one who tells him yes, you /are/ loved, and know that he believes me, that he truly trusts my words.
I want to know everything about him from his favorite freckle on his own skin to what he had for dinner three weeks ago on Sunday. I want to meet his family, I want to love and support them, I want to see how he grew up and be a part of his world as it is now. But I can’t.
All I can do is love him, and tell myself that the few seconds I got with him to say thank you, the one picture I have to commemorate the moment is still worth everything. And it is worth everything, I just wish I had more time.
The things I love about Daehyun? It’s everything. He is intelligent, and dedicated to his career, and more than that, to B.A.P. He has talked about how the other five members have become the most important people in his life, how he wishes B.A.P could be forever. He /loves/ them and he wouldn’t give them up for the world.
Beyond his intelligence, dedication, love, and loyalty for B.A.P and everything he does and what it all means to him, he still knows how to have fun. He likes to joke around, he wants everyone to be happy and jump around and have a good time. He hates the idea of other people being sad and upset so he works even harder to make those around him happy. He does everything for us, for his fans. BABYz mean the world to him. I don’t even have to mention his tattoos, do I? One for the other members of B.A.P, and one for us, for his BABYz. If you want further explanation on them I can tell you all about them, just ask, but for now let’s just continue.
Something that actually bothers me is that people seem to only see the part of an idol that is their on-camera presence. What I mean by this is that when you are an idol you are given, by your company, an image that you have to show on the camera. This would be for some, the “happy virus” of the group. This is Daehyun. That’s all fine and dandy, but what’s not okay is what this means.
See, Happy Virus types like Daehyun, Chanyeol, Baekhyun, Taehyung, and others like to jump around and have fun. They have way too much energy so they’re constantly bouncing off the walls and raising the mood of the group and the fans around them. But how fans perceive them is that if they are having so much fun, it must mean they’re idiots.
Chanyeol and Taehyung are prime examples of this, where people think they are simply stupid, just because they like to laugh and have fun. It doesn’t make any sense to me that anyone would assume ANY idol is stupid. Every idol you see is not only dedicated and hard-working, because really how far have you gotten compared to them, but they are extremely intelligent and I know each one of them could sit down and have a serious conversation, and this includes Daehyun.
Watching his stage presence, when he is singing he is extremely focused. In fact he’s so focused that at their Party Baby Tour in Atlanta this year, he was looking right at me and didn’t even see me because he was /so/ concentrated on singing and doing his very best. Most of the concert I actually noticed his rather serious expressions, because as much as he likes to joke around and jump wildly across the stage, his career is no joke to him. His passion is what makes him who he is.
He is so dedicated to singing and has come so far that he is the only idol who makes me literally emotional every single time he sings. I have never known anyone who could make me emotional at every note they hit. Even my mother, who often complains about me playing “that Korean music,” stopped and told me one day that he has a beautiful, powerful voice. He is so dedicated to his singing that even for his current musical, Napoleon, when others have joked about him being an actor he has /adamantly/ denied them. He has said multiple times, no, I’m not an actor, because acting is not what he wants to do, acting is not why he is in this musical. Singing is what he wants to do. Singing is why he’s in this musical.
He’s not in it for fame, he’s not in it for money, he wants people to remember him by his voice, not his face, and he wants people to remember him by his voice because the more people that remember him, the farther it means he’s come. Each new person that says, “Oh yeah I remember him, wow his voice is amazing,” is a marker of how far he’s come and each new fan is a marker of his furthering success, and that’s all he wants. To be successful at the one thing he loves more than B.A.P, more than BABYz, more than life itself. Singing.
No matter who he ever ends up with in a relationship, if anyone, the one thing I want to see is that that person supports him in his career 100% and more. I want to know that the person who stands with him for life stands with his voice and talents as well, with his passion. I want them to support every tour he goes on, every musical he stars in, and I want them to remind him every day that beyond just his amazing talent and passion, he as a person is so, so loved.
It’s weird to me to think that I could write so much, that I could be so in love with this one man, and yet there are so many out there who hate him. And why? At the root of it, they hate him because he hates himself. Most people who don’t like him assume he fat shames, but as an overweight person myself, I’ve done the research and that’s..really not it at all. Any time Daehyun points out weight, it’s not because he cares about your weight, or mine, or anyone else’s. It’s because he cares about his own, and he’s terrified of being overweight himself.
Because of his lack of self-confidence and his troubles with people who hate him for having dark skin, he hates himself for his dark skin, and to be overweight on top of that, in his mind, would just make him even uglier than he already thinks he is. He is just starting to learn to accept that he has dark skin, not because he likes it, but because he’s realizing it’s not something you can change. I really hope people remind him daily that his darker skin tone is beautiful, because in person, let me tell you, it looks like he’s been kissed by the sun, like he’s absorbed a ray of light and he’s shining brilliantly. He is gorgeous, absolutely, magnificently stunning. And yet..he thinks he’s ugly. So he worries about his skin tone, and he worries about his weight, even though he has nothing to worry about. And looping back to something I said earlier, I guess all of this is why I wish I could be the person he talks to about these issues, the person who tells him that he’s beautiful and lovely just the way he is, inside and out, and that he would truly, honestly believe me.
But as of now..that can’t happen. So a birthday wish will have to do. And to the idol, to the /man/ who stole my heart, who I love more than anyone or anything else in the world, thank you. You’ve saved me from suicide attempts and you’ve done so much for me and so many around the world. Thank you for everything you are and everything you’ve done. Thank you for filling my life with so much love and hope. You are beautiful, and wonderful, and even in your imperfections, you are perfect to me.
I love you so much, and I hope your 25th birthday is absolutely amazing and so-filled with love.
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