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I remember starting 2025 out in a way I have almost every year since I was about nine or ten: in a church, singing and praising the lord, listening to some man tell us everything that was gonna happen in the coming year, convincing us to give tithes of numerical and spiritual significance, and telling myself that this is the last fucking time I’m going to ever do this. I would tell myself that every New Years for at least the last five years, but leaving your family, no matter how insane you know they are, isn’t easy. I still love my mom, even if I know she only thinks she loves me. Or she loves me in the way she can when imprisoned in her own worldview. She thinks she loves me by pushing me away, cutting off all contact as soon as I leave the house, and handing me a print out of every scripture damning my soul for being a lesbian.

New Years this year I let myself do whatever the fuck I wanted. That is to say, I stayed inside my own apartment and binged Anne with an E while building a tiny Christmas themed house model. I played the X-Files episode at the right time so I could see the Mulder and Scully kiss at the same time the fireworks went off outside my balcony. I forget sometimes how much joy cheesy nonsensical moments can bring.

The other day I told my friend that I didn’t realize how much happier I would be after moving out. Objectively, I knew that most of my depression and grief was just from being stuck in a place where every day there were long conversations trying to indoctrinate me to a place of personlessness. But I guess it wasn’t clear until I had done it just how easy the other side would be. It’s not a full cure—I still feel fucked up—but a lighter fucked up version of myself that doesn’t have the existential weight of disappointing my family crushing my life.

I’m trying to learn how to be alone properly.

That’s what it was really when I look back on it: a fourteen year boot camp on how not to be a person for the sake of some fucked up idea of greater good. For the sake of two or three “adults” having complete and total control over every decision I could ever make. That’s the thing about free will that they would never admit: a choice between doing whatever they wanted or being cut off completely from my family, ostracized and berated for my decision, isn’t really free at all. But I’m glad I decided to leave now nonetheless.

The one side effect of not needing to escape from my own head every minute of the day so I don’t have to think about how unhappy I am in a scam thinly veiled like a church (arguably the essence of every church). It was the needing to not think that probably led to that insane word count in 2024. I have a theory that the more miserable I am, the easier it is to write something good. It makes me feel better when it implies that the culprit of my meager number of fics this year was happiness. It would be more accurate to say, that I wanted to be more happier this year, that my want for happiness grew too overwhelming to deny myself anymore.

This year, I left a good job that turned into a nightmare job because of the change in government, and ended up in a great job with some of the best people I have ever met. Sure, my coworkers drive me crazy as coworkers are supposed to, but they care about the students we counsel, and they care about each other. For the first time, I can spend a regular day actually working the full 8 hours and feel like I’ve actually done something or helped someone, and I like it. I love it actually. Incredibly, forcing myself to talk to people and sound like I know what I’m doing has wildly improved my confidence in what I can actually do. I’m a lot less afraid to spend the whole day talking to people, and maybe I have realized I do love to talk and that I just spent too long in a place where speaking my mind was a sin and my voice never had any weight to it in the face of the Group.

I think this job helped me get the courage to leave. It was a little bit of everything, in fact, but mostly the people I have around me. Every conversation I’ve had with my best friend, with all my dear friends, everyone I have blathered to jokingly about “being stuck in a cult” and ended up not-so-jokingly telling them my whole life story. Though, I will admit I take some pleasure in getting to talk about it, to shock people with how insane and baffling my family has been. I still want to thank everyone who ever talked to me about it.

What the fuck is this? An award acceptance speech?

The point is, that at some point during the back and forths about me moving out, the exhausting “family meetings” every night talking about how I was throwing away my life and soul, my mom asked me “Who will you call when you’re in trouble, when you don't have us?” And the funniest part is that I knew in that moment at least five people who I could call if I needed help at any time of night or day and they would come. I knew people who would be there for me no matter what.

I think about people I haven’t spoken to in months or years, and how much I wish I could tell them that I’m grateful they were in my life for that time. And I’m sorry I wasn’t courageous enough to leave back then. I’m sorry for being so scared, and for letting my being scared end up hurting you.

I hope that you can at least be a little happy, a little proud of me for finally doing it.

The best thing I ever did was lose my mind one day and say “no.” It was for a stupid thing (my mom wanted me to hand over my phone so she could read my texts) and it was something I had given into far too many times before, had been terrified of for years, but I didn’t want to. So I didn’t let her. It seems so simple now, standing back at a distance. It was simple sometimes, when I was going crazy. The worst possible option always felt simple too, and tempting.

I'm obsessed with the show Station Eleven for many reasons (seriously if you haven’t watched it and you love post apocalypse media, please please do) but none as important as a single line: I don’t want to live the wrong life and then die.

I think that explains most of how I feel about my suicidal ideation sometimes: it feels unfair to give up when I haven’t even lived yet, when it’s felt for so long that anything that was human and enjoyable and simply fun was corrupt. So I can’t die, because I haven’t lived the right life, and maybe that’s a fucked up insufficient reasoning for keeping myself going but it’s worked for the past year so it must have some positive effect. It’s one of the hundreds of lines of media that I build my life around because that’s the type of person I am. I’ve carefully crafted my escapism to be easily accessible in any situation, the way normal people do.

I’m not sure if I remember everything that happened those two or three weeks between telling my mom I didn’t want to live there anymore, and actually moving out. I remember the relief, the settled-ness I felt in my own heart that it had to be now or it was going to be never, that I made the right choice no matter what. I remember the hurt too, when my mom couldn’t even look at me without crying—or rather, when she stood in front of me and cried like it would change my mind. Like she wanted me to look at how much I was hurting her instead of ever for a single second realize how she hurt me.

The craziest thing about leaving a cult and being out on my own is that I’m not alone, not nearly as alone as I’ve felt for years. My boss offered to drive over and help me move. A coworker I only talk to a couple times a week gave me furniture and plates and silverware for my new apartment for nothing. My best friend’s parents who I only met once before let me live in their house for weeks and crash their holiday parties and gave me a sense of normalcy and care that I haven’t felt in god knows how long.

I made a new dear, dear friend from work, and I relearned how to handle shifting friendships when the people you care about separate. I was relieved to find out that the people my anxiety said hate me don’t actually hate me, that sometimes you drop out of contact for a while but it’s easy and simple to get them back. I’ve learned that I love people more than my own heart can handle sometimes.

And what can I say about friends that hasn’t already been said a couple thousand times before? Maybe something that sounds a little odd to normal people: some of my best friends live halfway across the world and I only met them because I write gay fanfic on the internet. Some of the best people on earth I can only talk to at odd hours because of opposite timezones, and I love them like family.

I had my one year anniversary with my partner this year. One year and four months, roughly, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more comfortable with someone knowing me so well. Comfortable with letting someone care for me and not feel guilty about it. I don’t know what else to say—I’m too shy about saying it. At work, I’ll show my friend a text or tell her about something they said to me, and my coworker will make fun of how red I get. Take from that what you will. Make fun of me for it too. (My partner is going to read this and call me out for my humiliation kink, but I would argue they like laughing at me too. I hope they do. I hope I can make them laugh for as long as they’ll let me.)

So. Shit happened this year. And I keep trying to tell myself it’s reasonable that I didn’t write nearly as much as previous years, most likely because I had less of the day to run away from, because I found more ways to be happy despite. I rotate through hobbies like the devil, but I still accomplished things. Tiny things. Things that make me happy. It’s hard for me not to measure my success solely by a word count, but it’s because writing feels like the biggest part of my soul, the only way I truly make sense of the world. I feel most sane when I’m writing and the little narrative voices constantly yapping in my head narrows down to a single focused tone.

The other day, I talked to my grandpa for the first time in a while. I feel guilty too, for not being the best at reaching out to people first. I spend too much time thinking about how much I want to talk to people that I spin my own mind into dizzying circles convinced that they don’t want to hear from me at all. I’ll try to be better at that, I’m trying to promise myself.

In 2026, I’ll probably get therapy. I’ll see my sister and her family again and I’ll speed-run some forms of rebellion (pink hair, tattoo, ears pierced, wearing makeup). I’ll save up money to buy that insane LEGO Rivendell set and I’ll try to write every night before bed to build up a habit. I’ll be happier and kinder to myself and I’ll read poetry and I’ll work my crazy job and find new things to do on the weekends. I’ll put off going back to church for a while, maybe forever. I’ll think about Woozi and the rest of the teeners a normal amount.

I’m on the bus listening to “Motorcycle Drive By” by Third Eye Blind because one of my biggest faults is playing music too much and too loud and relating to lyrics too much. I’ve never been so alone and I’ve never been so alive. And that’s the funny thing isn’t it? I’m not very alone at all anymore.

The Song
Coral - demo

It’s difficult to talk about something that I’ve been writing realistically for five months, because I have so much and nothing to say at once. What I can say is that it started with a prompt (Jihoon writing another song for Minghao ten years after enlistment) and a love for angsty almost-exes to lovers, “Hai Cheng” and post-disbandment/future fics. Sometimes writing too close to reality leaves a bad aftertaste, so I enjoy when I can take something familiar and adjust it, stretch it out and throw a bit of magic in there.

I couldn’t really write about “Hai Cheng,” but this story wouldn’t be the same without understanding it. It’s too real and raw and tied up with my own feelings when it came out. So I wrote my own song, “Coral,” which in many ways is a response to “Hai Cheng.” There was a specific translation/background thread I read (here) that really inspired the idea for “Coral,” with reference to something that Minghao explained about his hometown in a Weibo live (translation + clip also in the previous link). In this, he talks about a folktale where his hometown Hai Cheng was “the city where the sea once existed in and receded from.” There’s a park called Cuoshishan Park filled with reef limestones—where it’s hard to say if they were shipped there or if they were really left behind . Sometimes the truth of a story doesn’t as matter as much as it’s romanticism—we romanticize life and stories because sometimes it’s just a prettier way of looking at, sometimes we are inserting meaning into the things we don’t understand. I like to think there’s something still special in that invention. So yes, it’s coral and not reef limestone, but I can never forget the images of dying coral reefs, how they are so vibrant before they turn bone white.

There are many interpretations of a single song, but the ones that stuck with me the most probably have to do with this inescapable feeling that I don’t have a hometown, but I’m missing one all the same.
“Hai Cheng has no sea but my heart yearns to go to the ocean”—To me, the song is about home as a place as much as it is a person, it’s about being separated from the things that make you who you are, but that separation not being a subtraction from yourself. You are still as much of that person and place, even when you are missing them.
“It’s like how across from the sea, there is a lone island, and on that island there is my lover, or the life I want, or my family, or my hometown—it has everything I want on that island, but for me to go to that island, I have to cross this sea.”

The fun thing with metaphors and interpretations is that so many can be true at the same time. The sea is my home, the sea if what I have to cross to reach that dream, that home, or that love. The sea is the center of my chest where I seem to drown in the fears I let myself believe.
Fear is what drives most of Minghao’s actions in this fic. Taking away memories, running away from the possibility of a love that could hurt. You fear hurting others, you fear being hurt by them enough that both become true. A self-fulfilling prophecy fueled by the kind of guilt that only drives you to hunker down in your isolation. What Minghao does isn’t right by any means, but it’s understandable when you are born with a power that hurts and taught that that hurting is alright. When you’ve told yourself that running away is the best option because you matter less to them than they to you.
But I think the sea isn’t all made up of fear; I think, most often, it calls you out in its own gentle melody. The thing that calls Minghao across a whole ocean is, in fact a confession wrapped up in a song.
“Hai Cheng as a ‘castle above the sea’, or perhaps, that only by crossing this sea I can reach that isolated island that represents dreams.” /“They say longing will be taken away with the sea, but hai cheng has no sea.”

“Coral” is from the perspective of that which has been left behind. The greatest loves are the ones we never let ourselves admit or explore. As a writer, it’s always the things that didn’t happen that I get hooked up on. In the context of this story, it’s meant to be Jihoon’s voice—confused because he was left behind before there was even a chance to explore this unspoken feeling between him and Minghao. The song is as much of a story as the rest of the fic. I’ll leave it up to you to tell what all the faucets of that story is.

The demo recorded here is messy and something I did when I had a chance to be alone at home, because really I am too anxious to perform anymore, I die a little inside every time I think about anyone listening to my voice, but I still want to share it. It’s a little like writing poetry first, messing around on the notes I know how to play on the piano till something sounds right, and singing until the tune finds me first. Needless to say, there are roughly ten different audio recordings of me trying to compose this song. This just happens to be the one I hate the least.

Memories are Animals
Amnesia is one of those tropes I love no matter how overused it can be—tied up in this fear that my memories will suddenly slip away and take who I am with them. What could be worse than? Having the power to erase anything from anyone, and having to be haunted with what exactly you took away. It turns you into a monster to yourself and to other people.

The thing is, Jihoon never sees Minghao as a monster. He forgives him, maybe too easily. And it can be easy to say that love does that, but I think it’s knowing a person too. Being able to look at someone and tell exactly how haunted they are by their own choices, and deciding that they don’t need your blame as well. Family is for that, I like to think.

But I have liked to think about memories as threads, as pieces of building blocks, but I also know how much memories can change over time. They age, they shift, they aren’t always trustworthy, and they bite us when we least expect it. This is closest relationship Minghao has to his own memories, as animals that he can’t quite tame. There’s fear and punishment enough in his own head.

And yet there’s one antithesis to fear that I offer in this: want. Want is so often demonized, or even in an ultra-religious setting like I am familiar with, want can be equated with sin itself. You aren’t supposed to want, it becomes selfish too easily, apparently. When you fear that your own wants are too destructive and so you deprive yourself of everything—well, you aren’t really living then, are you? So Minghao only begins to live when he follows his wants, a little foolishly.

coral: part I

The Fic: archiveofourown.org/works/53850730/

Adelaide, Texas, is a fictional version of everything I wanted in a small town. It’s the small town I spent years living in without the homophobia and the racism and the concerning history tied to everything—because while those things need to be written about, I wanted to imagine a better version first. Fic is where I’m able to put everything I want down into something real so reality becomes a little more bearable (am I already sharing too many innermost thoughts?)

So it’s a hometown. Emphasis on the word “home” because it’s an amalgamation of feelings. Banana the black lab was a real dog who belonged to my grandpa and I really loved her more than anything, even if she got her name from being like a rotten, black banana. She was more sweet to me. I moved too many houses growing up (a different one every year, and for a time period with no house at all) which is why I’m a little obsessed with the idea of a “childhood home,” a singular place where you stayed and did the majority of your growing up. For Jihoon, that place is his grandparent’s house, a place you live in by seasons instead of years.

Beyond the fake dating, this was supposed to be about finding a way to come home when the life you thought you were building ended up being a sham and a betrayal. When you aren’t sure who you are because you don’t know why you are doing what you are doing. But then again, it’s about the fake dating mainly because it’s how a stranger can become someone who helps you fall in love with a place again. Who can remind you of all the reasons staying could be worth it. Joshua decided to stay in Adelaide because of that relationship with his father, something that was rocky for most of his life, and how it became something meaningful. In some ways he didn’t want to let his father go, in some ways you can love a place because it keeps you close to someone, but not chained to them. In some ways, Joshua falls in love with Adelaide again because of Jihoon too.

Writing the want—for someone to reach over and squeeze your hand just to check if you are okay. For someone to be willing to go along with your schemes to have an ounce of peace. Here’s where the fake dating becomes another excuse for want of intimacy.

Talking about why I write something inevitably circles back to talking about me more than the story itself. I could talk about places that have felt like home until you become someone that they do not—and will never—accept. I could talk about falling out of love with a city or a religion never really means they untangle from your soul. I could talk about the beauty of church buildings but how I still haven’t found a place that would accept so eagerly, without judgment or carefully crafted looks of condemnation—but I want it to exist so I write it.

So this is a love letter to wants, to homes I want to build and rebuild. It’s a silly story about falling in love with a person and a place. How loving that person could let you love any place at all.

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coral: part i [author’s commentary]

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