The Person You Loved Was Real, He Just Wasn’t Whole.
TW: mentions of mental health problems, implications of su1c1de.
No I don’t think Han is suicidal, I just wanted to shine light on the numerous K Pop idols that have suffered in silence until they couldn’t anymore.
The idols who didn’t have an outlet to express their true emotions and struggles
I wanted to shine a light on parasocial relationships in the kpop community and remind some that at the end of the day. We do not know these idols personally and that they are still HUMAN with real feelings and emotions
This just in: KPop Idol Han Jisung better known as Han from Stray Kids has died at age Twenty-five years old. He was found in his apartment unresponsive by his bandmate and leader BangChan who had gone to check on him after not hearing from him for a few days. The singer had not been seen publicly since Stray Kids had returned after their American tour. The details of his passing have not been publicized at this time, please send your condolences and prayers to his family and members as we all grieve Jisung at this time.
Han Jisung is dead and from wherever he is now, he watches the world grieve a version of him that was real, but incomplete.
This isn’t a story about blame. It’s about misalignment
Very few saw him when the lights were off, the cameras were turned off and the world was silent.
The tragedy isn’t that no one cares
It’s that caring didn’t always translate into being known.
I watched it all happen, like a viewer watches a movie on the big screen. The look on Chan’s face when he found me already having exited this realm.
Physically but not yet spiritually.
The sound your chests made when you read my name next to words it should never be next to. The way you held your phones, like if you grip it hard enough, I might still be there laughing, loud, alive.
The way your tears echoed like a symphony, orchestrated just for me. The person you loved was real. He just wasn’t whole.
You loved me loudly. I loved him too, the one in your videos, your edits, your tweets. That version existed. He was alive in the lights and the cheers. He danced. He rapped. He smiled, and sometimes it even reached his eyes. But when the cameras turned off, when the fan chants faded into echoes outside the studio doors, he… unraveled.
I don’t blame you. How could you? How could anyone? I was performing joy as if it were oxygen, and you breathed it in without knowing I was already suffocating. You think I didn’t notice the irony? That the world adored me, but no one saw me? I noticed. I always noticed.
There were nights I stayed up in my studio, headphones on, staring at blank pages, trying to write songs that would make someone understand. Not the world. Not the millions. Just someone. One person. Someone who could hold me when I couldn’t hold myself. But I never found the courage to ask, not really. Because to ask would be to admit I was not enough. And the world had already memorized the part of me that was, and I couldn’t wouldn’t undo that.
I watched you from afar. I watched the edits, the comments, the reaction videos. You smiled at me. You celebrated me. You said you understood me. And you did. You understood the part of me I allowed you to. The part that was performative. The part that danced. The part that smiled. But you never got the half hidden part the part behind closed doors, in dim light, writing lyrics to cope with the ache I didn’t know how to name.
I tried. I tried to write myself into safety. The studio was my refuge, but even that was temporary. The applause faded. The lights went off. The world carried on, but I stayed behind, struggling to assemble the pieces of a self that no one really asked to see. And when the pieces broke, I couldn’t fix them alone.
I know you’re thinking it was sudden. A shock. Something that shouldn’t have happened. But it was long in the making. Every late night, every forced laugh, every song written with trembling hands; it was all leading to this. Not because of malice. Not because of neglect. Because no one ever saw the full version of me. And even I couldn’t save him.
I think about the way my lyrics are dissected now. The things I whispered into a mic at 3 a.m., the lines that were meant to keep me alive, are now being read as foreshadowing. People search for clues, analyze my words as if they were puzzles. I wrote them to survive. You read them to mourn.
I wonder if you ever felt it. The distance. Between the person on stage and the person behind the microphone. Between the laughs and the silence. Between the love you gave me and the love I could accept. I tried. God, I tried. I tried to swallow the panic before every performance, to laugh loudly, to make the world believe I was okay. But the truth was quieter, smaller, more insistent: I was tired. Always tired.
I wanted to tell someone, anyone. I wanted to confide in Chan, in Changbin, in the people who shared the same burdens and understood the weight of it all. But how do you admit fear when the world calls you fearless? How do you admit exhaustion when the world applauds your energy? I chose silence. Because silence is safe. Silence is neat. Silence is survivable. And the world would never have survived my chaos.
So I wrote songs instead. I wrote them with trembling hands and trembling hope, hoping someone would feel the cracks, the fissures in my voice, the longing behind every line. You felt it. Sometimes. And I loved that. I clung to the thought that maybe, just maybe, someone could see me without filters, without stage lights, without cameras. But it wasn’t enough. Nothing was.
When the final night came, it wasn’t violent. It wasn’t dramatic. There was no flash. No announcement. Just the quiet, the stillness, the understanding that I could no longer fight the distance between the man I was and the man I had to be.
Not because I didn’t love you. Not because I didn’t love the world. But because I loved myself enough to finally stop pretending, enough to let the cracks become reality.
You may hate me for it. You may cry at my funeral, watch the edits, light the candles, play the songs. You may wonder what you missed. You didn’t miss anything. I hid it. I guarded it. I carried it alone. I didn’t want anyone to see me falter. And now, you’re seeing me falter too late.
The irony is brutal. The person you loved was real. I just wasn’t whole. And you loved him anyway. You loved the fragments you could see. You loved the laughter, the confidence, the words that sparkled on stage. And I loved that you loved him. I always did.
But I needed more than that love could give. And so I left, in the quietest way possible, so the fragments you adored wouldn’t shatter in front of you. I wanted the memory to stay intact. I wanted you to remember him, even if I could no longer bear to inhabit that self.
Do not turn my death into a story of heroism. Do not make it a lesson. I was not brave. I was not unbreakable. I was just… me. Human. Fragile. Flawed. Tired of being seen only in pieces, of being loved only in parts.
And I hope, somewhere in the quiet of your heart, you remember that. Not the hashtags. Not the edits. Not the trending clips. Remember that he lived. He laughed. He tried. And for a little while, he let himself be loved. Loudly. Beautifully. Completely.
I know it won’t feel like enough. I know the ache will linger. That’s the thing about loving someone you can’t save: the pain doesn’t end with their absence. It echoes. But that’s okay. Because maybe the echo is what keeps the memory alive. Maybe the echo is what allows you to carry the fragments of me forward without breaking yourself.
I am gone. I am quiet. I am still. But I am not absent. Not completely. Not from you. You loved me when I could not love myself fully, and that matters. That matters more than I can say.
If you take anything from this, let it be this: the love you gave me was not wasted. The fragments of me that you held onto, that you adored, they mattered. And I mattered too, even if I couldn’t always show it.
So remember me. Not as a tragedy. Not as a caution. But as someone who tried. Someone who loved in the only way he could. And someone who finally found the quiet he needed.
You loved me loudly. And for that, I will always love you back.
