Aya

“Even in my most unbearably depressed moments I could be laughing at a friend's joke but still feel an emptiness in my heart.”
― Baek Se-hee, I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki

“I think when you look at as many sides of a person as possible, you stop disliking them.”
― Baek Se-hee, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

“It was also revealed that the reason I am cruel to others is because I have low-self-esteem. Because I don’t love myself, I am unable to understand those who do love me in spite of it all, and so I test them. “You love me even when I do this? Or this? Or this?” Even when the other person forgives me, I am unable to understand their forgiveness, and when they give up on me, I torture and console myself with the “fact” that no one could ever love me. That goddamn self-esteem. [...] Looking more closely at myself, there are parts that I've improved on. I still remain someone who is unable to love herself. But as I had that thought, I had another: light and darkness are part of the same thing. Happiness and unhappiness alternate throughout life, as in a dance. So as long as I keep going and don’t give up, surely I will keep having moments of tears and laughter.

This book, therefore, ends not with answers but with a wish. I want to love and be loved. I want to find a way where I don’t hurt myself. I want to live a life where I say things are good more than things are bad. I want to keep failing and discovering new and better directions. I want to enjoy the tides of feeling in me as the rhythms of life. I want to be the kind of person who can walk inside the vast darkness and find the one fragment of sunlight I can linger in for a long time.
Some day, I will.”
― Baek Se-hee, I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki

“I’ve also realised that revealing my darkness is just as natural a thing to do as revealing my light.”
― Baek Se-hee, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki