Letters To Jisung

IRL Chapter - Tina

First off, thank you so much for the 700+ reads, likes, and anyone who found this story worthy enough to add to your reading lists. I know I'm super picky about mine, so that means a bunch.

Originally I wrote this story to help cope with my friend's death, which at the time was still relatively fresh.  Well, it's been a year since she died, and my irl version of Soo Min (who I truly did picture as Lee Know from SKZ family, but as an actual woman) brought up the letter idea. To which I responded "I wrote a whole book about it!" But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this, in a weird way, was my way of coping with her death. I remember writing this book and how I was less haunted by certain things that had hung over me for months after typing and editing the words as much as I did. And so, as I used the different voices to write to Han, so too will I write to Tina, but in my voice. This is not fiction, or a narrative device, or even a cheap way to get more attention to this story. This is my real letter, to my real friend and coworker, and how I really feel.

Hi friend!

I can't believe that this is how I'm doing this, but here we are. I don't know if you're out there or not, if you've been watching over me, but that doesn't matter. You were an important part of my life for the time you were in it, for better or worse.

Let's just get the bad stuff out of the way first. Once you relapsed, you treated me like shit. You took advantage of me, and my trust, and my naive nature, and my mental health problems, and the fact that I was one of the only people to visit you in the hospital while your heart broke over losing your son. I knew you were drinking, and you lied to people in front of me about it, saying you had stopped. The last few months at work were confusing and soul destroying for me. I couldn't manage, but y'all wanted me to be a manager figure (despite the bullshit pay cut), when all I wanted to do was drive. I wanted to do what I did years before, but I guess I was too responsible for that. I was too good at what I did, and you and Jo didn't realize it until I stopped doing it and everyone else was shit at it. You told me as much. I took a pay cut to help out, with no respect in return for my 5-6 years of loyalty to that store. To be fair, that wasn't completely your fault.

I have no doubts Eddie is still an asshole though. Fuck that guy.

But you passed right before I got my new job, I think. They found you in early July, so I can't know for sure. But I know, in your...struggling state that was moving slowly upwards, that you would have responded to my text about getting out of that shit hole I stayed in for so long. I know you would have. So that is why I choose to believe this is the one-year anniversary, instead of next month. It was YOU who moved me towards that direction in the first place. The last day I saw you alive, you told me you knew I was going to get it, as we were driving around getting lost, trying to find the way back to my apartment. I don't remember if you even said bye to me, or gave me a hug. Had I known that was the last day, I would have been more compassionate. But I couldn't have truly known. I don't even know what killed you.

I dyed my hair pink for a while, and then went to blue. Crazy, right? I get to perform at my new job. I get to sing again. I know you would have been at the concerts you could make, cheering for me and saying how proud you were of me. It was almost as if you stayed alive long enough to get me out. That's simultaneously selfish and not giving myself enough credit for selling myself and what I could do. It took me a full month to chill the fuck out, and it took me 9-10 months after that to truly believe I deserve the job I have.

But I didn't believe I could do better than food service. I really didn't. And as we were waiting for the nurses to let us leave, you took my phone and applied to jobs from your hospital bed. Granted, you lied about how many you applied to, but the door was open. That was all the push I needed. You helped me with my resume and getting myself out there as much as I helped you with your unalive attempt. You relied on me that night as much as I relied on you to get my ass in gear and do better for myself. It's a shame it didn't work out for both of us. 

It was rough, being your friend sometimes, but I really did enjoy spending time with you, before the end at least. And it took me a long time to reconcile and believe that 'you were a good friend' and 'you treated me like shit' could both be true at the same time. So that's when I started working on this stupid Stray Kids story inspired by someone else's story about suicide and death. I wrote it in January, so it would have been 6 months after I found out.

By the way, the store called and broke the news to me. They didn't keep the phone number of the coroner, so I had to look it up myself. I at least told Elise before she got back from vacation. I figured it was the right thing to do. I didn't want her walking in to the ignorance and gossip she would have endured, but had to endure anyway to a certain extent. They didn't care you were gone, from what Elise told me later. We hung out and cried over it in the fall. I don't know if she still works there, or has avoided the plague, or if she wants the plague still. But I talked to her briefly a little bit ago, and she's doing okay. She was hurt at the end because of your actions, but I know she still loves you deep down.

Anyways, I didn't think people would see this story, much less read it. It was my way of working through my own pain from the perspective of Chan's first-hand experience of a suicide attempt, or Lee Know's love for a friend, or Seungmin's reflective nature, and giving myself therapy through the group sessions I created. Do you know how scared I was of writing a fucking group therapy session with 9 characters in it, or how mad I was that the story went in that direction? I avoided writing that shit for at least a week, lol.

As I come to the end of this, I just want you to know that whatever happened, however you died, I cared about you until the very last breath you took. I know I was trying to keep my distance, but you really meant something to me. By the end, you really had no one. You were in so much pain, just like Han was. I think that's why I connected with the original story in the first place. He was in so much pain and they didn't know how to help, just like me. And so I wrote my own story of trying to move on. And I have written a bunch of other questionable and cringe-y stories along the way too. I have a whole mini-graveyard behind my computer of handwritten pages. 

So I hope the pain wasn't too bad in the end, and I'll keep on eating fried calamari in your honor whenever I get the chance. I miss you a lot. I wish you could be around to share in the joy of what I've become, and what you knew I was before the plague and work destroyed me. This new job I love so very much, and don't take for granted even one day, could not have happened without you. It's mind blowing how different it is, and how much happier I am now. I hope if there's an afterlife, that you're happier and at peace too.

I love you friend,

-Nicole/Nicole Back/Nikki