I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki
Essays by Baek Se-hee, Heun Publisher
Me too, — I picked up the book with that thought.
I'd gone to buy a different book and ended up picking this one up without thinking. That's just how my heart was.
I wanted to keep more passages from it, but because of possible copyright issues, I'll pare it down and share just one partial passage along with my thoughts. I wonder if sharing even this much is a problem? Well — anyway,
Holding quietly the husk of a love that cannot be recovered, there isn't much we can do. Silently continue with daily life, or struggle to cling to feelings that won't come back, or eat away at ourselves. At such times I read. Me too, There's no torture like pouring out an unsolvable feeling to another person endlessly. Yes, that's right — I slapped my knee. It just becomes a meaningless repetition of emotional drain, for me and for them.They're not the one in it... so in the end, comfort from another hovers in the air like a paper plane, never reaching my heart. I politely say thanks, but the other person seems to see right through me. Of course, it's the same when I'm on the other side. I empathize as best I can and throw the paper plane, but it only flies strong for a moment — it flutters, spins, and crashes to the ground instead of the other person's heart. But books are different. I roam looking for a book that matches my thoughts and my situation, as if searching for medicine. What is this — this sense of being alike? There are people like me in the world. Many of them, it turns out. Whenever I have time, I go to bookstores. Personally, I prefer used bookstores or Aladin's secondhand shops over big chains. And if possible I pick books someone has underlined, folded pages, or written notes in. How to put it — like looking at a cheat sheet? Or like getting a custom-tailored counseling session? Like getting my pulse read? I met this book that way too. No matter how much you read until the paper wears out, how many times you underline, the book doesn't turn away from you. It doesn't get tired of you. Your book is the same to me (I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. Baek Se-hee. From the appendix "Pain and Comfort." Large text is my resonance )
I later found out this author published through social funding on Tumblbug. (The link is for the second funding campaign. Unfortunately, it's already ended.)
This is the author's Instagram. She posts scraps from the books she's reading, and many of the excerpts are heart-tightening and chest-heavy. Worth checking in on from time to time.
Now that I notice, the illustrations of the books she reads all have a moist feel. Personally I prefer something a bit more damp? — Egon Schiele-style illustrations or works. Just saying.
From the Tumblbug funding introduction:
"I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki" is
a diary of psychiatric treatment by someone with
dysthymic disorder (mild depression) and anxiety disorder!
It's written in dialogue form, and because it's by a patient not a doctor,
it contains personal and messy stories.
But rather than only unloading dark feelings,
it focuses on finding root causes through concrete situations
and moving in a healthy direction.
Having read it, that's a fair description. But it wasn't messy. And rather than feeling like a diary of psychiatric treatment, it felt more like a monologue. Maybe because my own image was so deeply projected on it? It didn't feel like a patient-doctor therapy transcript — personally, it felt like a conversation with the author.
Honestly, the millennial generation is like the first generation of dual-income parents. Their parents were also parents for the first time. On top of that, because they're the first generation of dual-income parents, it must have felt like walking across an uncharted sea. Their children, the millennials, are sitting down in front of the iron walls of more fierce and exhausting job hunting than ever before, and of marriage, childbirth, and home ownership with even slimmer odds. Our parents' generation — the first generation of dual-income couples — is also the first parent generation raising such children. They've never seen parents in such an environment, nor have they encountered a child generation like this. They're a generation barely scraping by.
At least our generation has something to blame, but they often have no one left to blame. They're lonely. Piercingly lonely — yet too pathetic to admit as loneliness. So they fight inside the home and outside the home, just to preserve the last shred of their authority.
Through this book I got to spend time in conversation with myself. I felt the rare sense of "there's someone else like me" and it stayed warm the whole way through. Usually when I read I underline, fold, and write notes, but this book stays clean. Because if I started underlining or folding, I'd probably have to fold and annotate the whole book. It's a book I just want to say thank you to. And this is something I want to say not only to the author but to myself. Actually, I did ;D
