tongue technology

hey y'all - I haven't updated this blog in a hot minute because I've been working mostly on other professional projects. 

I probably will continue to update sporadically if at all, but I did want to make sure to post this. I've been working on this for a while, but for obvious reasons it became very difficult for me to continue work on this project and as a result it ended up stored on my hard drive interminably while I did other things and pointedly didn't look at it.

I'm still not really sure I'm in the right frame of mind to fully finish translating the whole book, but I felt I should at least post the first part since it's finished. the PDF version can be viewed and downloaded here at this link.

I don't think I've ever talked publicly about attending Jonghyun's funeral, mostly because at the time, there was such a feeding frenzy of predatory media and fans who wanted to earn some quick clout from "reporting" on who had arrived and who was crying. I could not bring myself to participate in that, even unintentionally. Even now talking about it makes me feel kind of weird, although I guess that's always a side effect of talking about anything when you have a certain number of followers; I can only trust that anyone who does bother to read this will understand.

On the way to the hospital where the service was being held, I remember thinking it was bitterly cold and also almost offensively pleasant out. It made no sense to me that the sun could shine and the sky could be so disgustingly blue on a day like that day. It took me a really long time to be able to cry, even though I was surrounded by literally thousands of other Shawol and most of them were in tears or nearly there. I guess it was something like, I was still too numb, still too... I don't want to say angry, or at least not angry at him, but angry at brain chemistry and angry at the world and at God and fate and whatever. It was a complex emotional moment for me. I stood in line for close to three hours and the entire time I was half in disbelief, holding the hand of the girl who was lined up next to me. 

When we finally got to the funeral hall, though, that was when I cried. Or, specifically, there was a moment where we were given pens and allowed to write in the funeral book, leaving messages to Jonghyun and condolences for his family and loved ones. I remember writing, "I'll never be able to tell you how much you changed my life," and that was when I started to cry, because something about writing those words particularly made it real for me. So I started crying and didn't stop crying, even on the bus on the way home. Nobody asked if I was okay and that was fine because I wasn't really prepared to lie. 

It's now been just over three years since then, and it's still really hard. I know I'm not alone in that. There are people even in my close friend group who had a much deeper relationship with Jonghyun than I did, so I know that it's still hard for all of us. But I was talking to my roommate yesterday about SHINee (she's a new k-pop fan, and she knows basically nothing but is down to learn), and I was telling her about the early stuff, Hello Baby, Yeonhanam, the ridiculous things they did together and how much their music matured over the years, and how they raised Taemin from infancy (okay, not literally), and for the first time in kind of a while I felt like I was able to think about Jonghyun and laugh instead of just being brokenhearted, and that was pretty nice. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is, grief changes you the way that scars change you, but maybe one day the wound stops aching all the time and you just learn to live.