This one is for the Loners

You are the black girl that sits alone during lunch time every day. You don't speak much, and not at all if you're not addressed. You don't know where you fit in, and don't know how you got to that point. Maybe it was easier that way, because it didn't feel like you were trying so hard to be someone you weren't. Along the way you lost yourself. Socially awkward and perplexed with overwhelming anxiety. You sit outside alone at lunch scribbling song lyrics and drawings in your Moleskine sketchbook hoping that time will pass by faster. You silently hope that your life will get better because at that moment, everything is shrouded in hopelessness. In your eyes is sadness, brown orbs begging for help. No one looks your way, so you translate the desperation in your drawings and written words. Your art and writing speak for you

You want someone to save you.

You want someone to offer to be your friend.

–

Let's take a walk back in time. A little a trip down memory lane.

This one is for the loners.

Part I

Black Kids - Hurricane Jane

It's Friday night and I ain't got nobody

Oh, what's the use of making a bed?

I took something and it feels like karate

It's kicked me down and left me for dead.

In a small town in North Carolina you step off a bus, and the school day has come to an end. Finally, you can let go and be yourself. The bus squeals away as you walk across the yard and traffic resumes it's endless drone. You make your wake to your house, go inside, and greet your dog before going straight to your room. You take off your bookbag and boot up your computer stationed on a desk in the corner of your room.

Your dad got you your first computer in 8th grade. It was the days of Limewire, of Norton blocking suspicious downloads, to opening songs that weren’t at all what the files said they were. 2008 was the days of forums that filled your free time. You also had friends that you spent time chatting with on AIM after school. But you spent most of your time on a forum that was printed on the back of all the Gossip Girl and The It Girl books at the time.

The latter part of 2008, you had to navigate a new world where you were on the bottom of the totem pole. High school. Your friend group had been severed with the news of the one friend that held you all together was moving and going to a different school.

Your forum friend, who turns out went to the same middle school as you, and now you attend the same high school (how random is that?), introduces you to Black Kids. Or maybe you find them randomly. But you like Black Kids and their upbeat music even though you didn't understand anything about the lyrics because you were only fourteen and naïve. You thought they were just funny in some ways, and only yesterday- over ten years later- you realize Hurricane Jane is actually about weed.

Partie Traumatic was literally your everything. On the forums you frequented to LiveJournal you changed username and signature to "traumatic" a lot. When you burned mixed CDs for you and your mom to listen to whenever she drove around, Black Kids songs were on them.

Santigold - L.E.S Artistes

Fit in so good

The hope is that you cannot see me later

You don't know me

I am an introvert an excavator

You stumbled on Santigold while flipping through glossy pages of Teen Vogue in the midst of wishing your life was like the models that graced the pages, or the girls highlighted in the articles. When you listened to Santigold's music, it was the kind of sound that fit your changing music taste. It was also a plus that she was a black woman, which was also inspiring.

Au Revoir Simone - Sad Song

Play me a sad song

'Cause that's what I want to hear

I want you to make me cry

I want to remember the places that we left

Lost to the mists of time

You listened to Au Revoir Simone a lot. You found them after you got your first iPod Nano (4th generation) for Christmas in 2008 and began buying music from the iTunes store. Au Revoir Simone had chill music and they would soon become your favorite group to listen to all the time.

Honorable Mention:

The Go! Team - The Wrath of Marcie

The Go! Team, you found on similar artists through iTunes. You would spend your time alone at home sitting in the living room listening to their music, daydreaming about scenarios that happened to their music, or playing on your Nintendo DS.

Part I Playlist:

Part II

Early 2009 your music taste began to evolve. Your forum friend introduced you to Korean pop. You loved it and fell into an endless rabbit hole that would last for years. Back then there weren't any official music videos uploaded by companies just yet. A lot of music wasn't easily accessible on iTunes and you had to know what you were looking for to get to it. Though for you, Youtube led you to finding many artists and led you to more genres of Korean music than the bubblegum pop you loved as well as communities on LiveJournal. Your mom ended up banning you from listening to Korean music because she didn't understand how someone could listen to music in a language they couldn't understand. She ended up retracting her ban days later.

You found happiness in this whole new world, and the Hallyu Wave engulfed you into its addictive rhythm.

Brown Eyed Girls - How Come (어쩌다)

Sitting in the old swivel chair in front of your computer, you open a MP4 file and Brown Eyed Girl's How Come music video pops up in Windows Media Player. You watch it entranced. It's different. It's cool. It's the first music video you stumbled on of a Korean girl group. You found BEG's music interesting. There was something about How Come that sounded catchy. It was refreshing, the singing, the dancing- everything. Then in July they released Abracadabra and only confirmed that they were indeed badass. The beginning days of Kpop were fun for you.

Epik High - Scenario

Lights, camera, action and go

You’re not a movie star.

Today, as always you wander the dark and the film stops playing.

Don’t fight

You’ve gotta go with the show

Life has no happy endings.

Translation credit

You binge watched Epik High's music videos one weekend during the early morning. You were posting videos links onto the forum you and your forum friends had created for fun. This was new for you and you wanted to share with others. You thought Epik High's videos were too violent (oh how times have changed as with age comes desensitization), but the storylines on the other hand, were captivating. Fan, Fly and One made you feel strange, as if the music connected to your soul and ran like a current through your veins, but Scenario spoke to you- or at least the English lyrics did. You drew "life has no happy ending" on the back of your school ID card. It was how you were beginning to feel. Funny enough, you didn't find this song on the Map The Soul album on your iPod. Instead, you found it after uncovering their Paranoia (피해망상) series part 1 and 3.

Yoon Mirae - Black Happiness

When I hate the world

music comforts me

So you gotta be strong

you gotta hold on and love yourself

You found this video randomly. You didn't know that there were any famous half black, half Korean stars that would sing about such a topic. Even though you're not mixed, the song resonated with you because you never felt comfortable in your own skin. Perhaps it was self-hate, or low self-esteem. Sometimes you wished you could be anything else but what you were. Deep down inside you wanted to love your blackness, but it was a struggle because you were considered that "weird quiet black girl". You got bullied on the bus, people walked up to you sitting alone at lunch and told you to find some friends instead of offering to be a friend. You just popped in your earbuds and became absorbed into your own little world.

JJ Lin - Always Online

This song summed up your love of the internet before you discovered Rina Sawayama's Cyber Stockholm Syndrome many years later ("Happiest whenever I'm with you online"). You stumbled on this song randomly on last.fm (oh the days of getting scrobbles and putting a song on repeat and so you could be the top listener) and you were in an AIM chat with one of your forum friends as you dramatically declared this song was about you as you were "always online". You had an internet addiction. You woke up on the weekends and you wanted to instantly turn on your computer. You had to be on for hours every day to the dismay of your mom and grandma who didn't understand why. You always wanted to be on the computer because your identity and "life" on the internet was more interesting than real life. Plus having a computer at home was new to you, and you discovered so much. The interactions online were more meaningful than in real life where you were always in the background or ignored. You found refuge in online personas, of being your true self that you hid away from the tangible world.

Yuya Matsushita - Lonely Rain

In my heart there’s only lonely rain

Until then there’s only lonely

Translation credit

2010 came, and it was a step up on the totem pole. You reveled in your loneliness after figuring out it was too awkward to try and fit in. It was just easier to sit on the sidelines. It was easier to observe. It was easier to face the loneliness. It taught you how to enjoy and appreciate your own company. Being alone taught you how to stay in tune with yourself, while others struggled. You noticed that many people are uncomfortable in silence. That too many people speak, but never listen.

Lonely Rain was a song about a breakup, but you connected with the words lonely, and rain just made it seem even sadder. Perhaps it was a love song that maybe foreshadowed the future. You were always a sucker for those sad love songs despite never been in a relationship before. You always wondered if break ups hurt, but you wouldn't know that until your teenage years were no longer.

Miyavi - Universe

Break yourself free from your mind

Liberate your feet from the bind

Once you get released, feel the universe

Now open your eyes, you are in nowhere

It’s 2011 and you’re at sweet sixteen. You’ve succumbed to the default nature of high school. Overwhelming anxiety doesn’t plague you anymore as the perpetrators aren’t there anymore. You walk onto your bus in the morning without any worry. Words don’t sting as hard, but due to your sensitive nature, they still hurt.

That summer your grandfather passed away. His death is the first in the immediate family you’re old enough to process. It’s strange and evokes emotions of confusion. It hurts but you get through it with paintbrushes soaked in watercolor against Bristol paper. The trail of colors leave behind permanent marks of abstract lines.

That summer you found Japanese rock. You previously listened to a lot of Japanese pop, having watched a lot of dramas and movies. Miyavi's Universe took a while to grow onto you. What's My Name? is an album that you liked as it was raw and different from the other Miyavi songs you listened to. Initially you were attracted to Torture, Shelter and Survive, but this song was a gem that you began to understand after listening to the album a bit more. This album is one that you bought a physical copy of. You ended up playing it for your mom to listen to as she drove to a nearby town for the day and you sang to it. You weren't sure if your mom liked the music, but she seemed fine that you enjoyed it.

the GazettE - Tomorrow Never Dies

For some reason today you connect this song and Suicide Circus to Logic's 1-800-273-8255 (the phone number for the American National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) being a message of suicide prevention, though the songs are vastly different. Suicide Circus' message isn't literal, but it was something you related to at the time. You were sad, lonely and you had no one to talk to. Your taste in music had shifted from indie rock to a heavier sound. The songs you liked sounded angry, just like how you felt inside. Chaotic yet restrained. The message in Tomorrow Never Dies reminded you that you weren't alone.

Even feelings fade away

How many times did you think

about death? In the broken world

Tomorrow does not disappear

Don't kill yourself

Those lyrics gave you hope as you hit your lowest point. 2012 came with a vengeance, beginning with the horrible event of your uncle's house burning down behind yours. It was the feeling of absolute fear and panic as you weren't sure if your house was going to catch on fire also. You were home alone with your dog, and your grandma who lived across from you didn't have the keys to her car so there was nowhere for you to go. Luckily, your house was spared, only the windows in your mother's bedroom had cracked from the intense heat of the fire.

Still, deep inside you know it’s your year. Slowly the depression unfurls and goes away after a while. It’s easier to smile again. It’s easier to feel proud of your hard work.

The world didn't end that year and you graduated from high school.

You let out a big sigh of relief.

You made it.

Glen Check - French Virgin Party

There she stands and waits

There she stares, afraid

'i'm alone' 'i'm alone'

Stemming from the last of your teenage years at nineteen, you found Glen Check's music. HAUTE COUTURE was a fashionable album of catchy indie music that graced your iPod during the times you went searching for Korean indie music. At this point in life, you were attending a two year fine arts program at the local community college. You had managed to survive high school and you looked like a different person. You gained some confidence to elevate your fashion style, wore makeup, and got a weave- but still inside you were lonely, silently wishing for meaningful connections with others that never came to fruition.

At the end of your two years, you were set to transfer to a university an hour and half away and you had a little hope that things would get better.

Bonus: (Songs not found on Spotify)

The Pony (포니) - Disturbance

I won't go home

no one will be glad

can't stand it

Translation credit

The Pony became your favorite Korean indie band in 2009. Their Little Apartment EP became a strange soundtrack to your life as you sat in the back of your mother's van, earbuds in your ear as you stared out the window. Fields passed by in a blur and you imagined a more interesting life.

Alice Nine - 九龍(Kowloon) -NINE HEADS RODEO SHOW-

You found this song as a senior in high school. It affected you so much that you ended up creating a whole art concentration on the lyrics of the song. You hoped that it would let people know to treat others as they want to be treated. That how you treat others would have a lasting effect on them. You will never forget the feeling when your art teacher went through your project in front of the class and read through the extensive concentration statement you wrote that everyone tuned out because it was too long. You were mortified and it seemed as if no one got it. But it still resonates with you deeply.

Part II Playlist

-

Thank you for taking this trip back in time with me. Despite Part II being a somewhat darker tale and playlist compared to the beginning with the change in music taste, it definitely shows how my life changed. Over the years steering away from my teenage years my life was a bunch of up and downs. A big shift was around nineteen when I began to finally feel comfortable in my own skin, and began to love my blackness while attending university, which eventually led to a big chop in 2016. While I still struggle with making friends and social anxiety today as an adult, I have gained a lot of confidence, and finally found happiness at the age of twenty-four. Now, two years later in 2021, I'm set to get married in a couple of weeks. I never in my life thought that would ever happen.

So, this one is for the loners. For the ones who always sat alone during lunch and the ones that struggled socially and had a hard time making friends. This one is for the people who never felt like they fit in and spent most of their time finding solace on the internet because their life online was more interesting that way. This one is for the people who are always in the background, the ones silently begging for help, the ones who feel hopeless and were bullied. I just want you to know, that no matter how hard it gets, hold on- because life does get better.