I stumbled upon my old blog.
No, it wasn’t the bethgstories blog. It was one of my many failed attempts to rewrite my brand narrative and start over. There were only a few entries, and they were all raw and real and sounded very much like the old version of me. The Beth who had the deepest passion for things. The Beth who made things happen. The Beth who loved out loud.
I used to talk about Jung Yong Hwa and EXO like my life depended on them. Hell, I would talk about them if one asked me to talk about something I love for an obscene amount of hours. I used to talk about the little things, my tiny discoveries, and even the moment I discovered how soothing hot turmeric tea with lemon and honey when you have back pains like it was a scientific breakthrough. I talked about the books that made me cry. The books I didn’t finish reading. The Asian dramas worth watching.
But then somewhere along the way, life happened. And I could no longer find that Beth anymore.
It’s not that the present version of me no longer loves Jung Yong Hwa (my Spotify has his Almost Forever on repeat for weeks now), and I even just shared a silly fan edit video of EXO cooking something over a questionable audio. The spark is still there somehow. The fan girl in me is still so alive, that now I can also talk about Sylus and Caleb and Zayne like they were my lovers in a past life.
I still go to coffee shops and rave about how good hot americano is, so much so that it had become my standard order, replacing my usual double tall hot caramel macchiato. I still love books, that I would still buy a physical copy despite already having it in my Kindle just because it was so good it deserved a space on my shelf.
But social media has become evil.
If I talk about EXO, someone will inevitably bring up the issue between SM Entertainment and CBX. If I talk about how good Love and Deepspace is as a game, there will always be that one person asking how I could not care about the wolf. If I talk about coffee, someone will probably question the coffee shop’s political stance. It feels as if everything I say in public is subject to scrutiny, as if I can no longer say I’m obsessed with something simply because it genuinely makes me happy, without having to account for every possible controversy surrounding it.
And perhaps that’s what has made me quieter.
It’s not that I no longer have things to say. If anything, I still have so many things I want to talk about. I just find myself thinking about the possible reactions before I even get to enjoy the thought itself. Will someone misunderstand what I mean? Will someone think I’m ignoring an issue simply because I didn’t mention it? Will I have to explain myself over something I shared because it made me happy?
Sometimes, I just want to talk about a song. Or a book. Or a fictional man who doesn’t exist outside my phone. I want to tell people about a coffee shop I liked without having to prepare a disclaimer. I want to be excited about something without wondering whether that excitement will be held against me.
I don’t necessarily want everyone to agree with me. I just want to be allowed to have my little corner of the internet where I can say, I like this. This made me happy. Here’s why.
And that’s what I miss about the old Beth. Not that she had more things to love, but that she seemed less afraid to let people know she loved them.
I have no idea if I’ll ever write the way I used to. And I don’t even know if I want to. I only know that, somewhere along the way, I became more careful about the things I let people see. And sometimes, when I look back at the things I used to write, I wonder when sharing the things I love became something I had to think twice about.
