I have something on my heart to say today, to whoever may need to hear it. It's long, but I hope you read it.
ARMY, you saved yourself.
So many ARMY have a story about how they found BTS during a difficult period in their lives. How the music found them at exactly the right moment. How BTS helped them through depression, grief, loneliness, fear, uncertainty, or a time when simply getting through another day felt difficult.
I have my own story. Most of us do.
And I would never diminish what BTS, their music, their art, and their words have meant to any of us.
But I think there is an important distinction we sometimes lose when telling those stories.
BTS did not save you.
Their music may have helped you.
Their art may have comforted you.
Their words may have encouraged you.
Their content may have given you somewhere to go when you desperately needed joy, distraction, hope, or simply a reason to make it through another day.
Those things are real. Their impact is real. But ultimately, you saved yourself.
You were the one who got up the next morning.
You were the one who kept going.
You were the one who made the next decision, took the next step, asked for help, changed something, endured something, or simply survived long enough for things to begin getting better.
BTS may have given you something to hold onto.
But you were the one who held on.
And I think we should be careful about giving that accomplishment away, even to people we deeply admire.
Because there is a difference between saying “this person's art helped save my life” and believing “this person saved my life".
The first recognizes the extraordinary power that art can have in our lives.
The second can unintentionally place an enormous amount of our identity, emotional wellbeing, and sense of survival onto human beings we don't actually know.
And that's where boundaries can begin to disappear.
When we turn artists into our saviors, it becomes very easy to expect them to behave like the people we have imagined them to be. And when they make choices we don't understand, disappoint us, change, grow, love someone, believe something different from us, or simply reveal themselves to be complicated human beings, it can feel like something has been taken from us.
But it hasn't.
Your survival was always yours.
Nothing BTS does today can take away what their music did for you yesterday.
Nothing they do in the future can erase the comfort you received from a song when you needed it.
And they don't have to spend the rest of their lives being the people we imagined them to be in our darkest moments for those moments to remain meaningful.
They gave us the art.
We did something with it.
Maybe you found courage in it. Maybe you found community. Maybe you finally felt understood. Maybe you laughed on a day when you hadn't laughed in months. Maybe a song gave you enough hope to try one more day.
Honor that.
Be grateful for the role their work played in your story.
But please give yourself credit for the rest.
Because pulling yourself out of depression, grief, loneliness, hopelessness, or whatever dark place you found yourself in is an extraordinary thing.
Surviving is an extraordinary thing.
And if BTS helped provide the soundtrack, the comfort, the encouragement, or even the handhold you needed along the way, that's beautiful.
But you took the steps.
If you don't ever take anything else away from my account, I hope that you take this...
You survived.
You saved yourself.
And that is a story worth being incredibly proud of. 💜
@purple_yourself I want to believe in them only if they speak out about things with conviction now. any member who raises their voice against ai, genocide, zionist brand collapse WILL ONLY have my love and support from now on
as much as I want to say that I'm feeling disappointed with the whole CB situation with bts and that i still do love them, i dont think i can go much longer with these feelings coexisting if they dont speak up about it and actually stand up for shit. they gotta address not only
@marminlade honestly im like 90 percent sure they are not gonna speak up about it and just let this situation die down (i desperately hope that 10 percent im proven wrong BTS PLEASEE)