Sweet Serendipity — A personal essay on becoming ARMY
Becoming ARMY: How BTS re-set my life
My experience becoming an ARMY felt kind of ordinary, but at the same time, it was significant to me. Like most, I’ve known about K-pop, but never really took the time to look into it. I was in high school at the time and was into a pop/rock group. I continued in this other fandom for a few years after. Even when they took a break from making music, I was still there, watching many of the fans choose to listen to K-pop instead. I thought that I would never be a part of another fandom, but I was so wrong.
I was working as a teacher’s assistant between 2017 and 2018 since I had dropped out of university in April of 2017. I worked only two days a week, so my life was uneventful; I had no idea what to do. I felt pretty useless since everyone in my family seemed to have some sort of direction on what they wanted to do and where they wanted to go in life, except me. I thought that dropping out of university would set my life back.
In 2018, I heard Butterfly by BTS for the first time when my younger sister played it. We were just in our room; she had just started her first year at university and was playing music while studying. I was there too, though I can’t remember exactly what I was doing. The only other thing I remember clearly was the fact that I liked the song a lot. I never went to look up the lyrics then, but I loved the melody. I asked her to repeat it one too many times afterwards.
Though I would admit that their music sounded good, I still didn’t plan on joining the fandom. After that, I went on to watching K-dramas. My first drama was Strong Woman Do Bong Soon; I watched it with my sister and thought that watching K-dramas was something I could see myself enjoying. The male lead in the K-drama was what led me to do more research. I wanted to see more of his content and just my luck, I ended up watching Hwarang. Of course, I wasn’t aware that Taehyung had a role in the series then. When I did find out, however, I was impressed that someone who had a full-time job as a musician was also an actor.
BTS constantly, and unintentionally, showing up in my life finally made me want to see what they were all about; that’s how it really began. Like everyone else, I wanted to ‘just learn their names.’ Silly me, thinking that I don’t have a history of putting my all into a fandom.
What solidified becoming an ARMY was when I first listened to Yoongi’s mixtape, Agust D. I didn’t even know it was a song off his mixtape back then, but I was listening to So Far Away while reading the lyrics.
Fans often say that BTS seems to come into their lives when they need them most. It wasn’t any different for me: it was at a time when I was so unsure of myself and what to do with my life. I remember crying as I read through the lyrics of So Far Away, some of which particularly stood out to me:
Nothing is more miserable and lonely than not having something you want to do
I live because I can’t die
When I saw that the mixtape was released on my birthday, two years prior, it felt like it was almost made for me. The coincidences, since then, kept piling up.
Two years later, I still don’t have a specific dream, but I became a lot more content with the thought that I don’t need one. The most important thing to me right now is that I spend my days focusing on myself and things that make me happy. BTS has been especially helpful in that sense.
Ever since they came into my life, I have done things that I wouldn’t have imagined myself doing. I can’t even picture where I would have been right now without BTS: maybe still at home, deep in thought about how my life isn’t going anywhere. I don’t even want to think about what it would’ve been like. All I know is that I’m thankful for them and I hope that more people can see their worth and experience the thrill of being an ARMY.
- Shirihan
