pockypino

[pockypino]

i’m gonna eat him.

SEOK MATTHEW EN MNET PLUS CHAT

[pockypino]

i deserve a love greater than i thought could ever be possible

______________________________________________________________

i read the journal entries i made leading up to, during, and after my first breakup. i was eighteen years old. reading them back, i realize how smart i was. i had that intelligence, that foresight within me the entire time. however, the problem that interfered with my intelligence was how deeply i felt. how intensely i felt my emotions, how i felt my pain, my sadness, my anger, my confusion.

at that point in time, i knew what should have been done and what the right thing to do was. i felt so strongly and i naively thought that love was enough. i did not recognize my worth, i did not recognize when to leave a situation, i did not see it. but i also did.

i believe that when we become adults, some of us downplay the emotions we had as teenagers. some of us forget how these problems we had were once our entire world, our reason for living or collapse. i downplay my past emotions all the time. however, that means i am no better than those who put me down all those years ago- who made me the way i was and partially still am. they filled me with self-doubt and insecurity. i no longer want to be just like them.

i am 20 now, turning 21 in 23 days. i no longer want to have to beg for love from someone, to plead for time spent, or attention paid. instead, i will give myself all of the wonderous and beautiful things anyone on this planet has dared given me- an unconditional love. a love free of grudges, judgement, of hatred. of jealousy, of pity.

i am whole and i always have been. my future partner will be an addition to my life, not the entire half of me that i have been missing the whole time. i am happy, healthy, and successful without a partner. if i thought that the love i had before was the greatest i could ever receive, boy was i wrong. a partner cannot acheive my dreams for me. a partner cannot heal me entirely. a partner cannot heal my body when i experience ailments. the love wqas inside of me this entire time. i am gentle, kind, and i radiate love. no one can break me. i will not allow someone to break me again. if i'm knocked down, i will look at them and stand up again with a smile.

[pockypino]

[pockypino]

A 44 year old man goes to a K-Pop Concert

I promised you a report on the K-pop concert that I, a 44-year-old accountant, went to a couple of weeks ago with my wife and daughter in Toronto. So here it is.

The band we saw were Ateez. They're my daughter's favourite band and my wife's second favourite. I know most of my mutuals are similarly aged like me and may not be familiar with them so let me give you a brief primer on Ateez.

Imagine the most attractive eight men you can think of, just unfathomably beautiful specimens of aesthetic perfection, and make them sing songs that somehow combine the subjects of 'dancing like nobody is watching' with 'we live in a dystopian hellscape that we must all work together to overthrow'. Give them an ongoing music video story lore that literally nobody - not even the band themselves - understand, so that online discussion of their visual motifs looks more like the fevered rantings of a conspiracy theorist, complete with speculation about alternate realities and time being a Moebius strip. There is also a giant sand timer, for some reason.

That's Ateez. That's what you need to know.

Now, K-pop concerts are very different to the gigs I've been going to for the last 28 (!) years. There's no support act, for a start. Also the band perform for like, three hours, with breaks for costume changes and interpretive dance. Furthermore, hanging above everything is the constant looming threat of mandatory military service.

So this being my first such concert, I wasn't sure what to expect. What happened was difficult to explain, but I will try as I am already six paragraphs into this write-up and I'm too invested to stop now. Here goes:

In his Wicked + Divine comics series, Kieron Gillen places modern pop icons as deities, feeding upon and gaining strength from the worship of their fans at the altar of musical performance. I thought I understood that metaphor. I thought I understood it AS a metaphor. I was wrong, because that night Ateez WERE Gods with a capital G and we were their worshippers, a crowd emanating adoration (in the religious and non-religious senses), bestowing strength upon them and gaining their strength in return.

If that sounds weird, it probably is. But as pointed out above, I have lived over four decades and never yet experienced anything like the overwhelming passion of that crowd, the utter abandon with which they conveyed their love for the band.

"But Fuiru, what of the actual music?" you ask. Thinking back, there was a moment in one of their songs - I can't remember which - where I watched the stage, and the people around me, taking it in, and I thought, "Man, I just love Music". But that doesn't answer your question, sorry.

Ateez's music is bloody great. As a tiresome indie/rock/metal kid I'm resisting the urge to add the usual tiresome indie/rock/metal caveat of "...for pop music" because honestly that does it a disservice. They have some genuinely amazing songs. Halazia is an absolute fucking masterpiece that descends into furious hardcore breakbeat. Bouncy is a big, brash racket that somehow is also a perfect pop song. Utopia, Wonderland, and Guerrilla are similarly superb. The obligatory boy band slow number is represented by Dancing Like Butterfly Wings which will make you cry because you will forever associate it with your twelve year old daughter being pointed to and waved at by her favourite Ateez member (Seonghwa) because of her Seonghwa-branded lightstick.

That might just be me, though.

So in summary: being a 44 year old dad at his first K-pop concert rules and you should endeavour to partake in the experience if the opportunity arises.

Finally, for any Atiny reading this: my bias would be San or Seonghwa but my wife and daughter said they were taken so it’s Mingi. My concert outfit (designed and created by my offspring) reflects this.

[pockypino]

losing the feeling of feeling unique

[pockypino]

how do you never stop dreaming?

[pockypino]

i look back at all the things i say to my loved ones and best friend, all the things i say with the utmost love that is channeled from deep within the depths of my soul and think about if they’ll feel the same tenderness i felt

[pockypino]

fourth of july

july 4, 2023

a year ago, i was watching fireworks with someone i loved deeply. i was at a park full of people who i didnt know, but some of them were my friends. a year later, i no longer am in love with anyone. that person has fallen out of love with me, and i no longer see them anymore. the people i was once friends with are complete strangers to me, but to be fair i didn’t really like them anyways. would i rather be surrounded by people who pretend they care or be alone without people who don’t care?

[pockypino]

i read my old posts back

i read my old posts back, and there is much i have to say. life takes you weird places. not that i have done anything of extravagance since i graduated high school almost two years ago, but that i have revisted people i thought i left behind, left behind people i thought would be forever, and visited places new and old.

i do not want to be a victim. i am not a victim of anything anymore. my life last year is not my life now. who i was when i was 17 and 18 was not me at 19, and me (still at 19) is not me at 19 at the same time.

no one is ever the same. people who did you wrong before can realize they've done wrong and are choosing to become better. people who were 'good' can do wrong, but not change a thing. everything is different.

i moved into the old house near my ex best friends who i had despised- one who was a debbie downer and the other who had SA'd me. they were right there. in front of me.

i ended up meeting with my ex friend, who SA'd me, and we had a closure talk. it was bittersweet, and i did miss him as a friend. i apologized on my end for being a shit friend. he wanted to be friends again, but i was opposed to the idea. we ended up being friends again for about a month, and he was even there for me during a friend break up.

we spent summer nights getting mcdonalds ice cream, and we spent the days driving to seattle to get boba and laughing about vute guys we saw. i gave him advice and how he deserves to treat himself better, and how proud i was of him for changing.

in the end, he left me too.

girls from high school who i never really interacted with are now people who see my spam posts, and we send each other memes.

on my community college campus i had ran into an old high school friend, but neither of us had said hi to each other. i still have pictures of us on my phone. i won't delete them.

life circumstances are not forever. i have gone through hard things before, and i've made it through. while the past two years have been the strangest and hardest by far, it has already happened. i am trying to choose where to go now, because the world has so much to offer. things were good before, but i'm still so young. that only means that life can also be so much better. there is so much room for so much better. i'll hang in there and make it happen, and wait for it to happen.

02/11/2024

[pockypino]

who can i trust? it hurts not to be able to confide in anyone, but that is how it must be. i must keep my walls up, and i refuse to tear them down. i must not.

[pockypino]

i’ve been thinking about it a lot, but i think the person i love most on this earth is my mother. i know she really does love me, for all i am. i know she’d go anywhere and do anything for me. and i feel the exact same way. i love my mother. i am her life.

[pockypino]

i wish i could fully trust someone. i wish i could sink into someone feet first until they slowly envelop me, and im gasping for air until im no longer able to reach outside.

but i’m not clawing my way out, scratching the insides of their bodies. it’s like i was meant to be in there.

[pockypino]

i wish that i could go absolutely buckwild sometimes and say what i really want to say without feeling bad and no filter.

i feel like if i was given that opportunity, i would go absolutely stupid. absolutely crazy. i’d be foaming at the point, running out of breath, bouncing off the walls. like a starved, rabid dog fiending for a piece of meat.

i’m tired of hurting people.

i truly never mean to.

why can’t i think?

[pockypino]

i miss having a friend who is present

[pockypino]

if i were to die in my sleep tonight, id be okay.

i will say i love you to everyone who matters to me one more time, i will write one more journal entry. i will look at my kpop photocards one more time and smile at them. i’ll listen to my favorite songs one more time, and i’ll do my skincare routine one more time. i’ll really take my time with it.

i’ve been thinking for a long time how i wish i wasn’t in a body, how i wish i was a ghost watching life pass me by. i thought about how sad i’d be that i wouldnt be able to eat a lot of good food anymore, or how i wouldnt be able to talk to anyone anymore. but in all honesty, i feel this way already. eating doesn’t bring me any joy, and i am alone a majority of my time nowadays.

i find a lot of things in life so beautiful, because everything is beautiful. i’ve spent the past year of my life staying alive only for my trip to japan and korea, but now it’s over. i can just plan for another trip in my distant future, but other than that i don’t see a point in continuing to exist. i’m not suicidal, but i have the desire to not exist.

i don’t want to grow up.

[pockypino]

to be eternally 19

[pockypino]

i think if i were to die in my sleep tonight, id be alright with how my life was lived. it was full of love but very lonely in the end