i love love love kpop so much but for the last two years ive sorta pushed it aside and at some points gone months without listening to it at all... ill still listen to new skz but thats it, i havent really listened to anyone else's new music since 2023. now im shuffling my 69-hours-long kpop playlist and every single song is insanely nostalgic to me 😭 a lot of how im feeling right now is probably the nostalgia but GOD I JUST LOVE KPOP SO MUCH. it was my main biggest interest from 2021-2023 it was genuienly all i cared about and it may sound stupid but all my favorite groups, skz, drippin, bts, free pass, twice.. they were there for me back when i had genuinely zero friends and nobody in my life who cared what i had to say. so how could i not feel the strongest emotional connection to them and their music ? sure it sounds parasocial but its what kept me alive back then and thats worth more than you could ever cringe at.
anyway, hearing all these songs that were the only things keeping me going every day now that i am a healed person with lovely friends who i love so much and a genuinely amazing living situation that i used to hope for while crying myself to sleep ... its such a beautiful feeling.
and everything that is beautiful should make you happy, but it is always sad as well. im sad because i love this music and i love the people who made it with my entire heart. and now i feel like a traitor to them. i have spent over a year ignoring anything that happened in the realm of korean music not because i decided to turn on it but because i simply found other interests. so why do i feel selfish and evil for finding new things to love just as much ? maybe because i feel there is no other thing i could feel as emotionally affected by as i do by kpop. and i know i sound stupid saying this because (especially to people who dont like kpop) because "its just some random pop music from a different country", or maybe im making up these voices because im still scarred by what people said to me when i was more open about my love for kpop.
in any case, im just having a lot of big feelings right now. felt the need to get them out in one way or another, so that all these words dont sit in my mind with nowhere to go for too long. i know too well how that ends up making me feel in the end.