On Healing

No one ever tells you how to grieve for your comfort KPop person.

It’s a complicated relationship because you didn’t know how much you relied on that person so much and yet you personally never knew that person. It’s how you never saw this coming. How to grieve for a person you never had an IRL friendship with. And yet it feels like you’ve lost a best friend.

Moon Bin’s death is the first time I’ve felt grief in a permanent way.

Astro had become my second home, a comfort during challenging times. They gave me hope and something to look forward to when we were locked up in our homes during the pandemic.

They helped me to start dreaming again. And I was excited for 2023 because January started off real strong and I felt like such a lucky girl after seeing all those lucky girl syndrome videos.

And when I saw Moon Bin and Sanha perform during Diffusion in Manila in March, there were many lucky moments too like them seeing my Chup Chup dance challenge and meeting them during the M&G hi-bye session after the show. I had even accepted that Binnie and Eunwoo were now equal biases in my heart after that.

I was looking forward to my first OT6 Astro concert, more comebacks, flying abroad for ASTRO and being able to finally do fangirl activities face-to-face that I missed out on during the pandemic.

And then Binnie died and I felt so lost. I didn’t know how to face it or what to do so I ran away and avoided my grief. I almost quit social media altogether.

But then my heart was yearning for Astro. Ans creating content about what I love.

It was hard to show up but I’m glad Eunwoo gave me a reason to start facing the grief and to really focus on my healing journey.

I prayed a lot to God to help me and heal me because I just simply didn’t know how.

And I have had to learn a lot about faith and letting go and trusting God over the last few months.

Healing isn’t linear but maybe the way to move forward is to keep on facing it. To choose love and trust God.

I wrote a while ago that it’s the little mundane things that remind me of Binnie. I still cry sometimes as my initial reaction to these little things but I’m also reminded that it’s because I love.

And then I’m reminded of how Binnie loved Arohas a lot too.

Now I want to reframe my sadness into love instead.