jonghyun, a year on

18/12/18

How do I start this…I don’t know. I feel like I’ve said a million things about it this year yet I still have so much more to say. This post was really difficult to write and I began writing it months ago, actually. I knew I wouldn’t be able to write it all at once. It would have been too much.

2018 was the year I discovered and fell in love with Kpop and therefore, SHINee. After I’d discovered my love for BTS I wanted to start looking into other groups, I remembered the idol who had taken their life in December and wanted to know who that was and which group they came from, I wanted to know about them and their life. I owed it to them.

I discovered something that literally changed me in ways I don’t understand and I discovered people who I didn’t even know I needed but who will now always have the biggest place in my heart.

Music is fucking incredible and artists save lives, thank God we have it because if we didn’t I don’t know if I’d still be around – I don’t know if most of us would. There’s a connection there that’s indescribable and that’s what I’ve experienced with these people, these four people who are carrying on their journey and the one who ended theirs too soon, I love you with my entire heart and I am so proud of you. All of you. All five of you are angels, I know you are.

This whole thing has really changed me, in what way I don’t know, but there’s been a shift. I’m different now. This whole thing has affected me more than anything ever has – more than any other person ‘in the limelight’ who has left us – I literally think about it every day, that’s why I keep talking about it so much, because I can’t get it out of my head. Jonghyun, I don’t know why your death was different to others, but it was and it changed me and it haunts me but I’m okay with that because it means it stays with me, you’re in my mind always.

You’ve shown me so much light and given me so much this year that I can never thank you for. You’ve opened my mind up to so many new things and shown me a whole new way of loving and living and I thank you for bringing that into my life. It breaks my heart that I only knew of you after the fact, but I know that my love and respect for you is still just as much as it would have been if we were there, together. I hope you’re at peace now, I pray that you found what you were looking for and it breaks my heart that you couldn’t find it here, but I hope it’s with you now, wherever you are.

People have demons they don’t deserve and everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about, nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors. I am so sorry that people too wonderful for this world have to go through things they shouldn’t and feel as though their only way to end the pain and suffering is to end their life. My heart aches. To feel so scared and alone, to feel so much sadness that they go through with it…there are no words. It haunts me that Jonghyun felt this way, it makes my heart break. I wish we could rewind time, I wish something could have saved him. I wish I wish I wish, though I know this will never bring him back.

I have spent the last 4 months replaying these things over and over again in my mind, like that was going to achieve anything. I’ve cried and cried and all I can do is pray for a better day. To hope that there are better things coming. Life is so unkind these days, things are so…corrupt, it feels like at some point us humans will actually wipe out our own kind because none of us can bear to live here anymore, I hope this changes. I pray for a better day.

Forever forever forever SHINee.

You will always have my entire heart, always. I love you and I thank you for existing and continuing on in the way you have with such strength and dignity. You are more than we deserve. I hope you find the strength to continue doing what you do because God knows we would all be lost without it. I love you, you’ve changed me. There will always be 5 of you, always always, we will never forget that. SHINee forever and ever and ever.

To you, reading this – please, please, please, don’t suffer in silence. You are never alone. I’m here. I’m here!! You, sat there reading this right now, I’m here for you, I love you. Please don’t do something you can’t take back, please stay with us, with me. I cannot bear the thought of this happening every day even though I know it does, please reach out, please talk to someone, to me.

Jonghyun, you are an angel in the sky. Thank you for all you have done, you were too wonderful for this world that we simply could not handle it. I hope you have found whatever it is you were looking for, it warms me to know that one day you’ll meet everyone all over again, together where you belong. Until then, we will keep fighting, you are in my mind always.

Rest now. I love you.

You will always be the brightest star in the sky.