Eighth of August

Dear primrose,

It’s 1 AM in Brisbane, and 12 AM in Seoul, which means that it is finally your birthday. I wanted to write this letter to express my feelings throughout these three years of knowing you. But apparently, it was hard for me to encapsulate what I feel about you just by typing them down. It took me almost two weeks to figure it out (yes, I am writing the introduction right after I finish the whole letter). I don’t think I have written anything this raw. So I suppose, accept this raw version of me, with all the other versions I have displayed and treat it like an old friend.

I will like to start the letter by saying,

I don’t think I want to remember my life before 2021. 3 years of absolutely ingenuine feelings and expressions I forced myself to display, all the masks I made and all the personas I had to take care of. Let’s be completely honest, high school did nothing good for me. ‘oh, but you’ll feel victorious when you graduate,’ was what they told me. But I didn’t feel that at all when I did. All I felt was that I was just a shell of a person — hollow and empty. I didn’t have expectations of people, nor did I want to. All I knew from there was that people are mean, so it’s better not to put your hopes up if you’ll get disappointed. If you asked me why I was able to hold on for so long, I don’t have an answer to give you. Those memories had turned into defence tactics and just plain-old trauma that clings onto your bones and life like a life-sucking parasite. I don’t know why I held on for so long.

For I have been deprived of love. I have always tried my best to run away as fast as I could from my feelings, resulting in buried memories and unpleasant feelings that would erupt from the back of my brain — a volcano of emotions with no way of stopping. I cry in the middle of the night when no one is looking; I criticize myself too much to the point that it breaks me more than it should. I have been hard on myself because that is all I know; that is all I have ever been taught. I was an even worse version of myself, that I do not know my authentic version. Like sand that keeps pouring inside an hourglass, like how water trickles down endlessly down the waterfall, it felt endless. It felt inevitable. Somehow, I had to go through it, so I hid away from everyone. And soon, my masks turned into a static display I show people—the cover I used to hide my true feelings for the longest time. I don’t know why I held on for so long.

But maybe I held on for so long so that I would be able to meet them instead. The end of the month of January, the 25th of January, to be precise, was when I pinpointed that date as the day I was able to feel warmth and laughter again, genuine happiness. It had been so long since I felt that way; how my heart fuzzed up and warmed itself, how my limbs felt lighter than the stone-hard ones I was used to, how my authentic voice came back, and I was able to laugh with no feelings of fake or posing. I watched the videos like it was the only life source I was able to extract from, repeating every single moving picture with eyes full of observations and a heart full of homeliness. I loved every single connection those quirky 13 men had with each other. How they cared but joked with each other constantly, how they bullied each other but always realize if they went too far, how they were like brothers, and how they loved each other — every single one of them in a very different and distinct way. It made me realize that maybe some people aren’t all that bad; perhaps they were all like them, with so much love and care to offer.

I have told this story many times, and you’ll be entirely bored by it. 25th of February, the day I saw you laugh whilst you were sitting on the righthand corner of the desk, trying hard not to get buzzed by the massager the staff had put you on. I even still remember the clothes you were wearing; a beige coat and pants with a blue shirt underneath paired with sneakers. You had a cup of americano in hand, and you entered the room with a massive smile on your face. Your blonde hair was perfectly fluffy, and the gums of your teeth revealed themselves with every smile and giggle you emitted. I wondered to myself, why was I so enamoured by you? By how you talked? By the way you walked into that room? By the way you radiated with nothing but love and comfort? And before I knew it, I fell deeper into the whirlpool of you.

It was a foreign concept that I fell this deep at first sight. All I knew then was that you felt like a friend I hadn’t seen in ages. You felt like someone I had always been waiting for. You were as though a warm hug awaited me after a long and stressful day. You were as though a nice warm meal that helped me bring me back to my senses. You were as though the pleasant smell of burning campfire wood while drinking a hot cup of tea during a stormy night. Something about you felt familiar to me somehow. Something I knew that I needed but never thought of in all the years I lived through. I know I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you as deeply as I am now, but I can’t just help it. You bring out a part of me that was long forgotten in my mind, the part I tried so hard to bury behind fake smiles and masks to match. Meeting you, seeing you, knowing you, was the best part of it all.

I have prided myself on being able to write books and novels just by the thought of you, but do you want to know what’s funny? My brain just jams up when I think about you. My words don’t flow as I wanted them to, my hands don’t type the way I usually do, and my ink dries up whenever I want to write about you. It seemed as though my heart wanted to keep all these precious feelings inside, with no one to know, even if it was just a leakage of my heart. It was as though my heart wanted to protect these precious feelings like a treasure no one could find. Like a mysterious being hidden beneath the waves. Like a phoenix burning up into ashes. But maybe that’s for the best, and perhaps I was supposed to keep it all in. Maybe, this was so I would have enough love of you to keep me around. To keep me alive. To keep me beating.

With every growing year, I celebrate your birthday. I acted as if it was my own. I always bought you cakes, I always played your favourite tunes, and I always spent time just looking at you and your silly little actions. I waited for the green notification to pop up on my phone just to watch you talk about what you did the other day and how you wanted to spend your birthday with the people around you who genuinely loved you. This was a cycle, of course, a cycle that I hoped to God, would never break, but knew that someday I just wouldn’t be able to save from stopping.

I know that I will never get the chance to know you any more profound than this. I know that I will never be able to hold bonds with you. I know that my love for you is just something I made to keep myself happy, but. But, I will never regret loving you. I will never regret having you in my life. I will never regret knowing you in this lifetime.

Maybe in the lifetimes after this, after this one, maybe, just maybe, we will meet each other and stand by each other’s side — weathering through the seasons, laughing through the time, and holding hands as the year changes. But for now, the sun shines brighter sometimes, knowing that you were the reason I helped myself up in the mornings. The winds feel cooler, knowing that you were always by my side, in my ears. The smell of the grass is stronger sometimes, knowing you would want me to be happy and appreciate the world within my pace. You have influenced my life in ways I didn’t know someone could do, yet you do it anyways. You were my life force for the past three years, and I couldn’t thank you enough for all the things you did for me. Accidental or not, coincidental or not, you saved me from myself that day.

Thank you for everything you have given me, all the love that you have seemingly surrounded me in. Thank you for the people you introduced me to and the ones you helped me keep bonds with. Thank you for teaching me things I didn’t know about myself and ways to help myself. Thank you, that’s all I wanted to say. Thank you for everything. Someday, there will be someone who will love you as much as I do, someone who will take care of you as much as I would, and someone who will make you happy as much as I would try. And when that day comes, I will always stand by your side as I live through this lifetime. I hope we meet in all the lifetimes we get, whether near or far. I hope you are constantly surrounded by love, happiness, and genuine comfort. I hope life will continue to be nicer to you in all the years to come. I hope that joy will always reach you, no matter what hurdles you go through, no matter what storms you have to go through, no matter how long the distance is.

My shining primrose. My heart. Seungcheol, happy birthday. I would have never gotten this far without you. I hope today goes well for you. I hope that every day after today will always be bliss for you. But always remember to cry when you need to, complain when you have to, and sulk when you feel like it. We; I, your fans, and your brothers, would always be there to catch you when you fall. You deserve the world and all its contents: the universe and the sorts.

Happy birthday, Seungcheol.

Thank you for everything.