YELLOW | yj x bg

☀︎ thirty eight.

—beomgyu

The biggest things in your life start out very nonchalantly, without a care in the world- things that you brush off as if they have little to no significance. That's how it was between my mother and me.

It started off small. Sometimes a slap on the back of my wrist if I didn't score as many goals as I could in a basketball game (which was never my forte), to not letting me have dinner in order to teach me a lesson of discipline. She would give me a lecture here and there to make me practice the best that I could which I took as a sign of verbal encouragement.

But as they say, the best of things happen gradually and subliminally, without you ever taking note of it before it spirals out of control and only then do you realize how much is out of your hands. Because before I realized, things were not as they used to be.

Because one slap across the wrist turned to 3 slaps, one hour of time-out in my room turned to whole days, and I wasn't even allowed to eat whenever I wanted to anymore. Everything was according to her rules, what she saw as best fit. Eventually I came to believe that everything she was doing was for my benefit.

"I'm only doing what's best for you!" She'd shout at me at the rare occurrence where I'd confront her about the feelings I was feeling.

She'd clutch her temples in her hands and cast a disapproving glance my way, one that cut my heart into shards of glass. "Where did I go so wrong that I ended up raising you as an ungrateful brat?" She'd hiss seethingly, reducing me to tears.

I remember some things from my childhood that I wouldn't like to remember anymore. I remember running off to my bedroom and drawing with crayons on sheets of paper to get my feelings off my chest, (all of them included slight hints of, or the centre of a picture: a red-handed monster with crooked teeth) then stuffing them into a red colored binder so my mom could never find them.

I remember soaking my pillow in tears, so as a coping mechanism I'd read bedtime stories to remind myself of the fairytale life that was never mine. I remember finger-painting until my fingers got sore, building magical worlds from my fingertips that I knew I'll only get to live in my imagination.

I did all these things to get the slightest inkling of what the peaceful life in my childhood used to be like: waking up around midday at weekends, playing around with no worry about how fast or slow the time was passing, no concern about the future or the past, fully focused on the present.

I was scared to think that I'll never be happy as I was back then again.

My mother detested the arts, which was all the more reason for me to get further attached to it. She hated anything in which people expressed their true emotions, she called them "the celebrated failures" - the ones who are too vulnerable for their own good.

She used to flick through the channels at a lightning rate everytime something fun like a kid's channel or an arts and crafts show came on. Like... how boring must your life be for the number one thing you watch on TV is the news?

She used to look at other teenagers freaking about going to their favourite boy group's concert, and would wonder out loud about what's so special about them... "Do they even have any talents other than having good looks?"

Don't even get me started on museums and paintings. She never quite saw the sense in them. But I think if she'd have looked further, she'd realize that she'll find herself in those very abstract paintings she pays a blind eye to. Because all of them pay homage to an emotion she so vehemently runs away from.

Growing up baby-faced and innocence-smothered, I naively believed in her foolish lies. In fact, I loved to leech off of them. As a young kid, you think your parents' opinion is ultimately the most correct, right? But my experiences growing up have taught me otherwise.

I wish I could unlearn every piece of her hatred- not just towards me, but towards everyone else in her life too. I'm scared to think that I may have inherited her pessimistic nature, I'm scared to think that her anger-fueled veins are coursing through my body right now. I'm scared of all of this because I've promised myself on multiple occasions that I'll never be like her.

My mom didn't just say things that hurt me, but she said things that made me not want to live anymore.

I can bear her saying she's ashamed to call me her son. I can bear her saying she doesn't like my choice of friends, but on some days her words hit more harder than on the others. Things like: "Are you really gonna wear that outside?" Or "You know there's more people talented than you are, right? What's the point of chasing your dreams?"

Eventually it got to a point where I didn't even want to stay in my own home anymore, in a place where love has been shattered into shards of glass and the mantelpiece of which was broken so ruthlessly.

Hueningkai was the first to notice, what with him being the most emotionally intelligent person I know. (How come it's the intelligent people who say that grades and standardized tests aren't an accurate measure of someone's intelligence)

I should have known every attempt I'd make to hide things from him would end in disaster. I should have practiced my fake smile enough times, to the point where I can polish it to perfection even in my sleep... because it all ended up being futile.

I thought I was doing a good job fooling him, but he looks through my smile as if it's the most transparent thing in the world, and for that all my love for him will never be enough.

He knew something was wrong behind the scenes, but he didn't go out of his way to ask what it was, knowing that I'd come out of my shell should the time come. I didn't need my smile to be erased in order for him to know I'm out of touch.

Until now, he was the only one that knew the secret I'm ashamed of. But now I fear it's going to include Yeonjun, as well as Taehyun and Soobin.

I'm so terribly scared that they'll look at me differently, as if I'm someone to be pitied, that's why I'm aiming to keep this a secret from them for as long as I can.