Songs Map (Pt.2)
This part is so personal, I was really on the fence about publishing it. But in the end, I didn’t want to sacrifice any authenticity or depth.
A Cry from the Human Heart — Birdy, “People Help the People”
The joy of romance faded quickly, and in its place came a thick fog of confusion. In those early days, I often listened to People Help the People—as if my soul, on the brink of being crushed by indifference, was letting out a cry of mercy.
Every graduate student who had abandoned the path of academia was anxious about the future, yet all of us were trapped in our labs, with barely any chance to attend campus job fairs. By that time, I had already secured a conversion offer from a top multinational company where I’d interned—something that could easily stir envy. So, I moved out of the school dorm and rented a place on my own.
That was the first time I experienced bone-deep loneliness—a kind of desperation that defied words.
One night, I sat curled up in the dark, hugging my knees, crying, and texting him:
“Living in this world is just too lonely.”
He responded, surprised that I would say something like that.
Of course, I had no idea whether he was truly surprised or just brushing me off. I couldn’t read what was happening on the other side of his phone screen. Our communication was limited to sparse texts and pictures on messaging apps—not even one voice message. That night, he picked up my call. It was the first and only time we ever spoke on the phone.
Every date followed the same dull pattern: dinner, a walk, and then finding some quiet, deserted place to make out. Our conversations were shallow; our minds barely intersected. I couldn’t hear his inner voice or see his past. And no matter what I said, he would just look at me with amusement, calm and detached. Everything felt so flat. I could still write poetry then, and when I gave him a poem I wrote, he merely smirked and told me my writing was good.
At first, our so-called dates happened weekly. Then biweekly. Then once a month. I felt like a prostitute paid with a meal. Eventually, even the meals stopped. The only time we’d cross paths was during boxing class. Afterward, we’d walk home together, sometimes taking a detour through a small garden.
We were both growing tired. I was tired of being treated like a toy. He was tired of my resistance—of how slow things were progressing physically, of how troublesome I was.
Even with such emotionally detached interactions, our conversations were still full of conflict. I felt like a malfunctioning machine, constantly trying to recalibrate myself to match the negative feedback he gave—yet always falling short, never logically aligned. I can’t even remember what triggered those quarrels anymore. I just remember how they always escalated quickly into cold violence from him, and then into torrential waves of verbal abuse.
And I—I would always pretend none of it had happened, swallow my pride, and try to coax him back. He would always pretend he’d never humiliated me, and ask to meet again.
Only once did one of his silences end a little more gently. I was at home with a fever and painful menstrual cramps. I’d taken time off to lie in bed. Eventually, I couldn’t help texting him, half-joking:
“So you’re just not planning to sleep with me anymore?”
He finally replied:
“You’re sick. I’ll sleep with you when you get better.”
Lord, looking back on that time now, I can’t believe how degraded I allowed myself to become. Back then, I listened mostly to soft, boneless voices like Flower Face—songs that could tip you gently into depression. People Help the People was the only one that still held a glimmer of strength.
I didn’t think of You at all back then. I don’t even know why I kept playing a song that repeated the words “God knows.” Maybe… it was a mark You left for me long ago, hidden deep within time—something that would one day ask me this:
Was it no longer romantic love that sustained me in my suffering, but charity?
Was I holding on because I refused to stop believing—
that he, too, was a living soul, created by God?
Descent — Purity Ring, “Repetition”
I never held strong views about premarital chastity. I was willing to offer my body to someone I loved.
But just like that very first kiss, every progression of physical intimacy between us came unexpectedly—initiated by him.
Very soon, I no longer felt curiosity or excitement toward these intimate acts. Instead, it felt like I was undergoing a test of obedience.
With each step forward, I felt a sense of sacrifice. Each step brought greater resistance, suffocation, and fear. But each step also lowered my bottom line, creating a kind of pathological dependence on him.
Six months into the relationship, I visited him for the first time at his home as he was recovering from an eye condition. On the sofa, he pressed me beneath him, slid off my underwear under my skirt, and tried to push his penis into my vagina…
It all happened too fast. I panicked and told him I had only come to visit—sex had never crossed my mind.
And besides, he didn’t even use any protection. After he returned wearing a condom, I asked if he intended for me to spend the night.
I couldn’t go through with something so casual and then just go home.
That was the first time I firmly said no.
Afterward, for the first time, I seriously questioned whether he was too casual about sex. I thought about the opened box of condoms in his new home. More importantly, I realized that in my mind, sex and children were inseparably linked.
I simply couldn’t treat sex as a mere act of pleasure the way he could, just by putting on a condom. I couldn’t disconnect “children” from sex.
The thought of children lingered in my head and filled me with heaviness—even pain.
But he couldn’t understand this at all. He just thought I was being overly conservative, maybe even neurotic. That deepened my pain further.
And I questioned myself, again and again: do I really want to carry his child? why is it that so many women in the world can detach sex from the idea of children—and I can’t?
Now I’m willing to believe that this thought—this unexpected association with children—was a buffer set in my mind by the Lord.
And when I finally stumbled out of that buffer zone, I realized that all my sense of safety had already been worn down by his emotional abuse.
I was still deeply attached to him—but I no longer trusted him. I kept avoiding having sex. I wasn’t very determined, but it worked every time.
But I couldn’t resolve the void inside me, the anxiety, or the uncontrollable exhaustion of my soul.
Eventually, I fell into a place where I was willing to disregard my own real feelings. Even if I didn’t say no, or was even accommodating, my body screamed ‘no’ and protected itself.
And it was then that his coldness turned into a sudden and complete breakup.
Lord, I think of that time as a slow burn. In Chinese, both the words for “boil” and “simmer” are tied to fire.
I believe You allowed him to end things then, because You didn’t want me to experience being burned alive later.
Now, when I recall all of it—even though I know I technically never “lost” my virginity—
I still feel an overwhelming sense of regret, as if my body and soul had already been trampled.
That slow burn was long and drawn out.
During that time, I learned how to masturbate.
Just like in Repetition, I wanted to crash everything to the ground—reckless, desperate, hysterical.
Each time I wore myself out, heart aching, crying quietly in the dark.
Search — Vox Angeli, “The Scientist”
Even though I already had a job offer, graduation still felt like a final battle. For the two months leading up to it, my advisor still hadn’t allowed me to publish the paper required for my degree. Every day, I was stuck in the lab, repeating dull experiments at request, while trying to process the confusion and shock left by the breakup that had come like a cliff’s edge.
At times, I had anxiety attacks—irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath, followed by numbness all over my body and complete mental blankness.
A PhD student in the same graduation cohort once told me she would call her boyfriend, who was also struggling with graduation stress, in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep, and the two would cry together on the phone. When I greeted a junior in the same lab, she also burst into tears under the pressure—even though her boyfriend had just finished comforting her.
Humans are truly fragile—especially women.
In those moments, or when I saw campus couples walking side by side, I always asked myself:
Why am I like this?
Eventually, my advisor gave in—mainly because I had been an outstanding student when I enrolled. If I not only failed to pursue a doctorate but also couldn’t graduate on time, it would’ve made him look bad.
At the very last moment, I published the required paper, and my three years of aimless graduate school came to a close.
With the pressure gone, I began to take care of myself each morning—dressing neatly, putting on makeup, and leaving my rented apartment to walk nearly an hour to school, always taking the most scenic route by the riverside.
On the way, I observed the trees, flowers, clouds, and sky. Passersby observed me.
In the morning, I wrote my thesis at the lab. In the afternoon, I read in the library. In the evening, I went to a boxing gym near my apartment.
I couldn’t tell if I was trying to love myself—or if, apart from my appearance, there was nothing left of me.
A guy from my research group who had started the same time as I did once told me, “I envy you every time I see you—you’re graduating smoothly, signed with a top multinational firm, pretty, and free.”
No one thought I was someone to be pitied.
But I still found myself in tears as I flipped through physics textbooks in the library, unwilling to let go of the knowledge I had once loved so deeply.
I’d stare blankly at the green leaves outside the window, or toss and turn at night, unable to stop thinking about him.
Like many people left in the wake of a sudden breakup, I kept dissecting myself against the vast black hole he left behind.
After graduation, I moved to a new place. I didn’t go traveling. I had no idea how to live outside of survival mode.
Instead, I kept buying furniture and home goods, pretending to be happy just because I finally had a place I could call my own.
I made the same mistake I had after my undergraduate graduation. Just like back then—when I told my mother about being isolated by the girls in my dorm—I told her about the breakup.
And once again, I absorbed the full force of her rage, hostility, and blame.
Just like when the pressure of graduate exams and campus bullying had pushed me to the edge of a breakdown, I once again dissociated.
Too tired. Let go.
Just fall again. Shatter into pieces.
After all, everything about me is wrong.
During the onboarding training for my job, I often went out with other new hires, but I could never seem to fit into their youthful world.
No guys were interested in me.
Gossip about love stories didn’t involve me at all—yet it always made me feel like I was sitting on pins and needles.
Obviously, I wasn’t in a good state to begin my career.
Thankfully, my coworkers, though they might’ve thought I was odd, treated me kindly. My first manager in marketing was also very kind.
Still, I was perpetually gloomy.
I drifted through the days like a sleepwalker because the work felt meaningless. But at night, my brain was overly alert and buzzing.
From that time on, insomnia became the norm.
Thoughts of death and hell began creeping back into my mind.
On October 14 that year, South Korean celebrity Sulli took her own life.
I wasn’t a fan—I had only seen one or two of her works—but the death of this girl, just two days older than me, hit me hard.
In her final days, she looked swollen, her eyes always half-shut, as if she might burst into tears at any moment- just like me.
I had a sense that what destroyed her wasn’t the alleged “casting couch” rumors.
More than once, I wondered:
If I were to die now, would anyone grieve that I was only 25?
Would he remember that I was just 25?
After that, I developed a subtle but unshakable desire for self-destruction.
I moved close to the office and adopted an orange tabby cat, because I suddenly longed for something alive in my home.
The cat was noisy and clingy. I often got sick of it and bullied it.
I didn’t care about staying up late, binge eating, or whether I looked put-together anymore.
I wanted to destroy this objectified, youthful body—this femininity—
Because I desperately wanted to unearth something truly valuable from its ruins—something that could sustain me.
Back then, I often listened to the Vox Angeli version of The Scientist,
Not knowing who “you” in the song referred to.
Maybe it was my ex-boyfriend. Maybe it was the version of myself before my first dissociation. Maybe it was some precious ability I had lost.
I just kept listening, as if I were repeating an apology.
And today, as I’m nearly finished writing this part, I finally came across this online:
Before she changed her name to “Sulli,”
She had been named Jinri—meaning Truth—
By her Christian family.