sometimes I wish I didn’t feel so much

*I wrote this a week ago when I was having a dark day, which I thought was important to share*

Hi loves,

It’s a Sunday today as I’m writing this (Monday when I’m posting), it’s 2:30pm and I’m curled up in bed. I’ve been up at 7:30am every day so far this week and haven’t been getting much sleep at night, so it’s fair to say I was exhausted – today was the first day I didn’t have to be anywhere so I slept in until 11, which was well needed. Today is also the first time we’ve had rain in about 3 weeks here in England and boy am I happy about it. I’m definitely a cold weather type of person, Winter is my favourite season and rain is my favourite type of weather, but it doesn’t half make me feel sad sometimes. It’s true what they say about the weather affecting your mood, the rain clouds and grey skies really make me think a lot and it ends up affecting me more than I’d like to admit.

Sometimes I feel like my heart is too big for my body. I wish I wasn’t so empathetic for lack of better wording, I feel like I take in the whole world’s sadness and let it consume me and swallow me whole. I can’t help it. I wish there was no pain. I wish people didn’t have to feel sad. I feel for them. My heart breaks for them. It aches for them and I wish there was something I could do about it, something I could do for them.

Today is rainy and the sky is grey, it’s also cold, I’ve got all my windows open and I’m loving every second of it, though like I said, the rain doesn’t half have an affect on my mood. I end up getting into these deep spells of thinking and just endlessly spiralling into depressive episodes, but I can’t stop it. I don’t know if you guys remember but a couple of months back I spoke about how I was getting into Kpop (BTS specifically) and how they make me really happy. They just really make me laugh and take my mind off things so when I feel myself getting sad I get on Youtube and start watching videos of them to cheer myself up. I went out yesterday and pretty much kept my headphones in for the whole day because sometimes, I don’t feel like I’m a part of the real world or necessarily like I want to be, so I kind of just keep one headphone in at all times to zone everything out. I played BTS all day and then had a break from them once I got home. Like I said, everything consumes me. I don’t know why, but it does, though I wish it didn’t. I can’t just enjoy something like everyone else, it always ends up taking over me which means I then have to force myself to take a break from it because I know that the place it’s headed isn’t good.

So anyway, I focused my mind on something else once I got home and then when I got into bed which was about 1am, it was raining and the moon was out in full force. I was lying in bed underneath moonlight with my windows wide open and the rain was heavily falling down outside and the only song replaying over and over in my head was Let Go. It’s a sad song and so it didn’t surprise me that it had ended up floating around my mind but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, there’s two lines in it that are part of the chorus and these are “I gotta let you know, that I gotta let you go” and “Hard to say goodbye, but I’m ready to let go” – because this is a BTS song these are some of the only English lines in it but they were just playing over and over again in my mind and making me feel so sad and I’ve no idea why- the whole feel of it was just making me emotional. It then started giving me anxiety like it was attached to some kind of bad memory even though it wasn’t and even as I’m typing this out right now I’m getting anxiety just thinking about it because it makes me feel so sad. It’s a beautifully sad song but those lines just kept sticking in my mind and I couldn’t get rid of them. Here’s the song in case you wanted to listen to it, like I said, it’s really beautiful. You know when something is so breathtakingly sad and beautiful that it just overwhelms you, well this is it.

Something that I like about Kpop is that it doesn’t feel toxic like the western industry does, if that makes sense. Through my own ignorance because I’ve only ever been exposed to English music, I never understood how you could properly enjoy music or fall in love with artists if you could never understand what they were saying – if you didn’t know what the lyrics were and couldn’t sing along to them, what was the point? I was very wrong. It’s not about that. In a way, I enjoy the fact that I can’t understand what they’re saying because it makes it easier for me to enjoy the music and just listen. Let Go, for example – I can only understand about 5% of that song because the other 95% is sang in Japanese, yet it filled me with so many emotions I didn’t know what to do with them all. In a way, I find it weird calling it Kpop because to me that gives off the wrong impression – I remember thinking it was this weird, electronic Korean pop phenomenon that people with no real taste in music would listen to, until I actually took the time to look into it and realised that it couldn’t be more opposite. Kpop, is actually art. The creativity and work that goes into it is way more than can ever be said for the westernised industry that we have, I really believe that.

I don’t know how I got onto this next part, but I started thinking about something else then too. Even if you don’t know specific names and such, you’ll probably still know what I’m talking about here. In December 2017 a Kpop start committed suicide. His name was Kim Jong-hyun, and he was the lead singer of Kpop band SHINee.

Now, like I just said, the only Kpop band I’ve ever looked into (and fallen in love with) was BTS because you know, trying to catch up and keep up to date with one band was enough for me at that point, I was very happy where I was. For some reason that I can’t remember right now though, I decided to look into Jonghyun. I didn’t know who he was before he passed away nor did I know he was in SHINee – I’d never listened to any of their songs before today. I wanted to know what had happened and who he was, because I felt like I owed it to him. I wanted to know who and what he’d left behind and what had made him want to leave this world. I wanted to know why such a seemingly beautiful person inside and out, had felt so hopeless.

Long story short I listened to his music (he was also pursuing a solo career alongside being in SHINee) and I then started concentrating on the band and how they were coping after the tragedy. It was heartbreaking. I didn’t know these people, I didn’t know their music but I sat there and watched every video with tears falling from my eyes. They carried on performing, they carried on with the tour they had scheduled – on stage, they left a microphone stand with a rose tied to it in the place Jonghyun should have stood, they sang their songs and used a backing track to play Jonghyun’s parts so it sounded like he was stood there singing with them. They had pictures of his face fading in and out of every screen, they played videos of him singing the songs at previous tour dates so it looked like he was stood on stage singing along with them. They were sobbing, the fans that were recording the videos I was watching were sobbing, I was sobbing. I didn’t know these people nor have any connection to them, but my heart was breaking.

During one song, SHINee (originally a five piece) now standing as a four piece, looked so small up there on that stage. They were playing to 55,000 people. 55,000. This was merely months after Jonghyun’s death – their lead singer and their best friend. They were up there performing with 55,000 people watching; fifty five thousand individuals that loved and supported them no matter what. Fifty five thousand people that said hey, here’s my heart, take it, I want you to have it. You need it more than I do.

The song I’m talking about is called Replay, and halfway through when the lights went up, 55,000 people held up coloured paper that spelled out “Forever Shinee” across the arena for the whole world to see. I’ll insert the video here so you can watch it – take note of 3:05 especially. Look at their faces. I was bawling my eyes out at this point. There are a lot of things in this world that make me lose faith in humanity, but there are a lot of things that restore it again too. This is one of them.

I’m tearing up again just writing this and in no way is this about me, but it doesn’t change the fact it still broke my heart. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I feel everything so much, I’m so empathetic, I felt like I took on 55,000 people’s pain and let it consume my whole body until I couldn’t see for crying. I wanted to take away all of their sadness and all of the hurt, but I couldn’t. No one has that ability, though I wish they did. I wish it more than anything.

A beautiful, beautiful person was taken away from this world because they couldn’t cope with it anymore, and this happens every day. I always wish I could be that person that grabs them by the shoulders and says no, you don’t need to do this, let me help you, I’ll help you every single day and I won’t leave you, I promise. You have me and I’m here forever and I will do whatever it is you need in order for you to stay another day, I promise you. Please just stay for a minute.

Though I’d be foolish to believe that those things prevent tragedies from happening.. in most cases, it just prolongs the inevitable.

Einstein’s therapist once told him that sometimes life isn’t for everyone, and I believe that. I was driving home the other day and thinking about the fact that I just kind of got put here on Earth and now here I am, living and doing all of these things with no choice of getting to do otherwise. I feel like I was given this body but I don’t know what to do with it, it should have been given to someone else. Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m cut out to be a person because I don’t know how to handle it and I don’t know what to do, I kind of just want to have it all in the palm of my hands and say please, will someone else take this from me?

I’m not going to say that suicide isn’t the answer because even though that’s true, it would be very hypocritical for me to say so – I’m not going to preach something that I myself don’t practice. Do I still think about jumping in front of a train most days? Yes. Throwing myself out of a window? Yes. Driving my car off the road at high speeds? Yes. Yes I do. Do I ever admit or tell anyone that? No. Does it scare the hell out of me how often I think about ending my own life sometimes? Yes. Is it the answer? Yes and no. The rational part of me knows it isn’t, and the personal part of me understands that sometimes you have to let people go because I know what it feels like to be there and to feel like going down that route is the only answer. Life isn’t for everyone. Life is not for everyone.

I received a lovely message last week from somebody who had found and read my blog (hi if you’re reading this) and they asked me how I have the ability to be so vulnerable, they said “How can you have the ability to be vulnerable? To me, you’re not afraid to be vulnerable and you’re simply writing down your thoughts and emotions. Do you get scared, nervous? How do you feel when you post it?”

And the answer is simple. I feel like this. I feel exactly how I’m writing to you right now and telling you everything that’s going on inside my mind. I’m vulnerable because of all of the things I’ve just written. People hurt. People are lonely. People end their lives. People have their hearts broken. They ache. They’re lost. They feel hopeless. I allow myself to be vulnerable for you. Because of you. People hide a lot of things. A lot of feelings and a lot of emotions, I allow myself to be open because I want people to know they’re not alone. I want people to know that it’s okay. And I love you. I’m here for you. Whether I know you or not, I’m here. I will be here for you forever and I will wait with you and I promise you that I will do all it takes to make you feel okay again. People end their lives and it’s always too late. I want you to know it’s not too late and I am here right now telling you that you have my heart and I will let you have it in the palm of your hands if it means you’ll let yourself feel okay again.

Life is so fabricated these days, it’s so toxic and strange and weird and people don’t connect. They judge you for everything. They’re not honest. People lie and they hurt you and they pretend to feel things they don’t. Am I crazy for being the way I am and letting sadness consume me so much that it feels like I can’t breathe? No. Am I still living a perfectly normal and functioning daily life? Yes. Do I still enjoy things and laugh with people? Yes. Does that change the fact that I still want to throw myself out of a skyscraper window sometimes? No. But it’s okay. We’re all okay. I’m here and you’re here reading this – how did you get here? Do you know? I don’t.

I don’t have a best friend or a love interest or any kind of connection with someone to the point I could pour all of this out to them and say please hold me for a second because I feel like I can’t breathe. That’s how I feel. Like these feelings and this sadness fills my lungs to a point where there’s no room left for any air. That’s okay though and it’s okay for me to want that connection with people in the first place, because it’s human nature. We need it sometimes. We need it because it’s part of who we are. It’s okay that I need it but it’s also okay that I don’t have it, because I have words instead. I have this. This is my gift and these are my feelings. This is how I’m choosing to use them.

What do you do about it though? What do you do when you feel like your heart’s too big for your body and you can’t contain everything? I don’t think it’s something that can be fixed because it’s part of who you are. Being this way is part of who I am as a person, no medication or therapy could fix that, and in some ways I don’t want it to, because it’s not something that needs to be fixed. Just controlled. I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know how to experience something without taking on every single emotion that goes with it because then I don’t know where to put it all down.

Today was a sad day and I knew that from the moment I woke up and saw the rainclouds outside. I thought about Jonghyun’s suicide and ended up zoning out in the shower and burning my skin. I then got into bed and wrote this blog post and I cried and cried and cried. For the people I was writing about and for the people I was writing to. That’s you. I write for you, I let myself be vulnerable because I want you to know there’s another person out there in the world that feels things people probably shouldn’t speak about yet I do it anyway, because too many people are forced to think they’re crazy for feeling the way they do sometimes. Well, here’s my truth – my feelings are dramatic and overwhelming, I can’t let things go. I cry for people I’ve never met and I spend way too much time thinking about people that don’t even know I exist. I get sad about people who are probably on the other side of the world having the time of their lives. Things affect me and leave me in trances for days. Things that should be safe give me anxiety and I think way more into things than the average person.

“You remember too much, my mother said to me recently. Why hold onto all that? And I said, where can I put it down?”

Am I ill? Crazy? No. I think I’m just human. Maybe just a little more human than the rest of us. If that’s the case, then so be it. Here I am anyway, these are my words for whoever chooses to read them.

Here are some more, for someone who will never read them. But I hope wherever he is now, they will reach him anyway.

I didn’t know you and now I never will, but I do know this. I hope that you found love, I hope that you found what you were looking for and I’m so sorry you couldn’t find it here. I hope you’re at peace and that you know how loved you were and how loved you will always be. I hope you know that you did good, even if you felt like you didn’t. Sometimes life isn’t enough, I’m sorry it wasn’t this time. But it will be one day. There will always be another sunrise, and we will try again. We will try again for you.

Every time I hear this song I feel like all the air has been sucked out of my lungs because I’m filled with so much sadness, my heart literally aches. If you’re going to do one thing today, please listen to this. You owe it to him. We all do. I’d like to think it still counts for something. You deserve to let yourself know about people who are no longer here anymore. Please, press play.

I’m ready to let go.

Chloe .xx