If nobody is perfect, yet as soon as we fall in love with someone they appear to be flawless in our eyes, falling in love must be fundamentally, shamelessly egoistic.

All it's about is choosing a person, turning them into an unrealistically ideal image of themselves and getting disappointed if they aren't able to act upon it.

 

Yoongi has never been much of an ideal example. He doubts a lot of us are.

 

The light in the bathroom flickers every two or three minutes or so. It used to annoy the hell outta her. Every time she took a shower, brushed her teeth or even just went to pee, she would come out of the bathroom with a determined: “Yoongi, you need to buy a new light bulb!”

Three months down, when he still hadn't done anything about the lights, she actually told him she wouldn't stay over anymore until he had it fixed. Less than a week, and the threat was forgotten. She didn't stop complaining about it, anyway.

Yoongi yawns as he runs both hands through his shampooed hair. The light still flickers.

Some things, you just learn to block out. But he guesses there's a limit to it.

 

If nobody is perfect, falling in love equals falling apart. Some things you gain, others you give up. Given a fifty-fifty chance of success in any interpersonal relationship, the chances of loss as the overall outcome are just as probable as the chances of gain.

 

Needless to say, a fifty-fifty chance isn't exactly close to reality.

 

Her voice echoes Yoongi's head with a soft chuckle. “That's my boy, cynical as ever.” And a wet body presses against his in the steamy air of the shower, wet lips capturing whispered complaints, and–

He freezes as suddenly, Yoongi realizes he doesn't know whether it is memories or daydreams clouding his thoughts.

 

Sometimes, he wonders what's worse: Thinking too much or not thinking at all.

 

He pulls the faucet and sighs as ice cold water comes pouring down on him.

 

 

 

- -

 

 

[Wednesday, June 1st, 2016. 9:44 pm. Min Yoongi. vlog.]

 

See, the thing is that I simply don't believe in love. Not anymore, anyway. It's a concept. Not even a good one. Anyone with experience and the ability to reason gets to that point, and if they don't, it simply means that they refuse to think and acknowledge their loss. Because we agreed on the fact that loving someone means giving up on things, right? Even if you won't lose them, you will lose something.

It took me losing her to understand that fact. Because most times, it's simply both.

If you were to divide the state of loss into stages, there would be four. Been there, done that, and I had plenty of time to think. Because that's what you do in times of misery: You think about it. All damn day long.

I don't know myself why people constantly feel the need to label their experiences – maybe to have something you can compare with others – whether it is for comfort or understanding humanity or simply the primitive desire to have it worse than the rest, I don't know.

 

Four stages, however. That is something I know pretty damn well.

 

Stage one, denial. You loved something. You lost something. It hurts. The concept is simple. What isn't as simple, you see, is accepting your fate. So you come up with a bunch of more or less stupid reasons not to lose hope.

I don't remember if it was in the second or third week after the breakup that I ran into her during my usual round of grocery shopping. I was alone, she was with people, and I do remember freezing in front of the whole group and taking all of them in with wide eyes, and getting a little pissed, because I recognized none of them. Hadn't ever seen them before. See, that's what denial does; it makes you believe that you are supposed to know about these things.

 

Who they are around, who they spend their time with. In retrospect, I can say that she has always been the type to make new friends easily. Seeing how she did exactly that after me, it shouldn't have been much of a surprise.

I was in denial, though. And denial gives your brain a little extra boost. “Hey,” I remember my exact choice of words because I had barely even been able to press them out, “that's... my shirt, isn't it?”

 

 

 

- -

 

 

 

There is something about people that if they get famous, even if just moderately so, everyone suddenly cares about what they have to say.

Hoseok has no idea why that is. He has always been a big fan of Min Yoongi, if not the biggest. Sometimes, when his best friend comes over after a long day of work – and that usually means sitting alone at home on his computer, writing for hours – all he needs to do is take a look at him and he knows what kind of day it was.

That's not him being a psychic of some kind. They have known each other since Hoseok can recall, there's a base of understanding that comes naturally when you grow up with someone. Like family. Sleeping over at each other's apartments has long stopped being a matter of exception.

There is something about people that if they get famous, even if just moderately so, they forget. About their friends, their family – their roots. At least that's what they say.

Hoseok thinks that's bull. If there is anyone he knows of who's truly down to earth and self-aware, it's Yoongi. A sarcastic little maybe, with a humor as dry as the desert and a constant urge to act as if he couldn't care less about literally anything, but Hoseok knows to see through that facade.

And he might be the only one. It doesn't matter, anyhow, he thinks as he closes the youtube window – but not before leaving a thumbs-up on Yoongi's latest vlog – because his friend doesn't have anything to prove. People are going to misjudge him, either way. That's what they do.

What he can do, though, is be a friend.

 

 

 

- -

 

 

 

[Friday, June 3rd, 2016. 10:34 pm. Min Yoongi. vlog.]

 

Next up is stage two. Panic. And while it was panic that came onto me in that exact moment her eyebrows perked up in a familiar way that said the , Yoongi? – and I knew, I know her and the many looks she used to give me so I know to read the messages in them – this stage covers a lot more than simply the release of adrenaline. Panic isn't all about fear and going insane.

Panic is extreme. Extreme fear, extreme grief, extreme impulses of trying to make things right. Often connected with mood swings, ranging from self-loathing to the strong conviction of being better off without the person you lost. Yes, I have that written down somewhere.

I'm pretty sure it was during that stage, at around three a.m. in a smelly bedroom, that Hoseok decided I needed to be stopped. That's the key to dealing with a person in panic: Give them brutal honesty.

I didn't need one half of my friends excessively trying to distract me from my loss while the other half proceeded to sugar-coat things.

“Maybe she just needs time to figure out how much you mean to her. I'd bet on it, less than a month and she will come back to you.”

Seriously, don't do that. People panic and hold onto any straw handed to them. You tell me my cheating ex girlfriend of two and a half years only dumped me because she needed to be reminded of how bad life is without me, and even though I know for a fact that's bull – I know my girl – I'm going to believe you because that's what I want to do.

Besides, she didn't cheat on me, technically. I know that now. The idea of love hits you in unexpected places. Not her fault she fell for someone else when I was still around.

And she was fair about it. Talked to me before even approaching the kid. Seriously, she was a good girl.

 

 

 

- -

 

 

 

When Yoongi stops the recording, his first thought is that things have changed. It's not a bitter thought, just realization, and he yawns as he takes the camera from its stand.

Just a few months ago, the simple thought of having a camera pointed his direction had made him uncomfortable. Now it's… still not any better, if he's nothing but honest. But at least he gets something out of it. Some… relief.

He's not bitter, certainly not, but sometimes you just need to talk about things to get them out of your system. And, well, sometimes it's easier to talk about things when you're talking to no one in particular.

Yoongi doesn't suffer from any trust issues, nor the lack of friends. He could totally ring up Hoseok every time he gets the urge to talk about the past, but honestly? Not only would it burden his friend and give him the duty to react or give advice in some way, but also is the past not really the point. Yoongi is over it. He's not heartbroken, he's not filled with regret.

It's not as superficial as that. No, he has this figured out. The system, that is. The stages. The concept. And what his duty is along with that is to share it with the world.

He wrote a novel about soulmates once. It became a bestseller. When Yoongi thinks about that, he cringes.

Love is a concept. He made a bunch of people think that he is the naive supporter of a cheap concept.

Hoseok would laugh at him right now. Not because he thinks the same way, hell no. Yoongi knows Hoseok is a hopeless romantic. But no, he would laugh because Yoongi is doing the thing again.

Stop worrying about what they think already, Hoseok would say (if they were somehow telepathic and he could hear Yoongi's thoughts right now), what does it matter? what they believe about you. They could be convinced you have teeth growing on your toes and there's nothing you could do to prove them wrong. Well, you actually could just record a video showing your feet, so you probably could prove them wrong, but– well, that's not the point. Point is that they would find a different ty rumor to believe about you if they set their mind to it. What does it matter?

When Hoseok talks, he tends to make it sound like total he just made up out of the blue, but then you think about it for a second or two and realize the guy is actually some kind of a genius. Yoongi told him that once and was rewarded with a happy grin.

Yeah, that's the thing, he's fond of him. He wants Hoseok to know what's going on inside his head, because if there's one person he trusts more than anyone else, it's him. But Hoseok doesn't share his opinion. Not at all. And it's not like he would give Yoongi constant for talking about his theory, no, cognition, all the time, but Yoongi doesn't want to talk about the stages of loss because he needs any confirmation of their truth.

He wants to reach people. He wants to share what he got to know through experience.

So that's why he started with the vlogs.

 

He rewatches it, just once to make sure the camera didn't have any random focus errors or anything, before uploading it.

„She was fair about,“ Yoongi repeats once the screen goes black. He smiles. There are a lot of things he used to tell himself back then only to make her look like a better person in his eyes, some attempt of justifying how long and how deep he had been in love with her. But that one? That one's actually true. She had been fair.

 

However, that's not the page he had been on that night, crumpled up notes all over his bed, covered in ink and thoughts of all extremes, and his best friend on the phone. Yoongi sighs as he lets the memory wash over him.

“Listen, Yoongi,” Hoseok had sighed on the other side of the line, “I really don't think you should go over to her apartment right now and give her a hand-written letter from the depths of your heart.”

“But why not?” He had protested. “It's easier for me to express my thoughts through words! Hell, I even wrote your mom a letter that one time I accidentally knocked her vase over and-”

“Yoongi! Listen, man, that's different and not the point! Besides, the letter was really awkward.”

“Your mom was touched.”

“That was back in middle school.”

Yoongi had sighed. “But seriously. I have been thinking about it, about us, as in she and I us, a lot these days, and I mean – it was the first actual relationship I have ever had in my whole life, and there are so many things I never even got to tell her! I mean, things she maybe needs to know, I mean-” He had trailed off and heard Hoseok sigh on the other side.

“Yoongi. I… You're not gonna like this, alright?”

Now the slight, panicky feeling wrenching his guts hadn't let Yoongi let out much more than a choked sound of- of what? Panic. The stage of panic is a tiring one. Immediately, there are a million thoughts at once, swirling around your head in a way that it's making you dizzy; suspicions, farfetched conclusions, implausible guesses. What is it?

“Well.” Hoseok had sighed. “I ran into her today. Let's put it this way… she didn't seem like she's in need of your heartfelt thoughts.”

It was the exact moment Yoongi's stage of panic had ended, and he thanks Hoseok for that.

“It's that guy from her work, right?”

His friend had sighed. “Right.”

 

 

 

- -

 

 

 

[Sunday, June 5th, 2016. 9:55 pm. Min Yoongi. Vlog.]

 

Stage three, resignation, equals a lot of pain.

I think it's resignation that one would think of first when they imagine loss. Resignation is realization. Just now you become aware of your surroundings, almost overly so, noticing all the little things that left along with her. Hope becomes rarer and rarer, and then, at some point, you eventually realize that it's over. Over and done with.

I saw her new boyfriend just the next day after my conversation with Hoseok. I mean, I had seen him before, too, but that was the first time I saw them together. He was taller than me.

They were holding hands. They looked happy.

Those two thoughts were the only ones popping up in my head. And no matter how hard I tried, it felt like my whole capability of feeling something deeper had been exhausted by the stage of panic. Now, I just felt empty.

Not sad. Not angry. Not even jealous. Just empty. It's crazy how these things can change overnight. At some point, you just aren't capable of emotions anymore. Tank's empty.

You just feel so ing exhausted.

 

And it took me the longest time. I got home after seeing the two of them on their coffee date, flopped down onto the bed piled with crumpled papers of panic and stared at the ceiling for god-knows-how-long. Empty. Done. Resigned.

I didn't leave my apartment for a week.

Day one was reserved for the simple process of grief. I lay in bed for most of it, listening to our mix tapes and watching memory cinema. And I managed to not even text her. Well… once maybe. Or twice. It doesn't matter, she didn't reply, anyway. It was pretty pathetic.

Day two was… just the same, with the exception that my phone was now turned off.

Around day three, I got sick of watching the same movie over and over again. It's surprising how soon something that once meant the world to us becomes just another part of history at some point. Not then, yet, of course. It was still a big deal then. Just also the moment I realized it would happen, eventually. It felt a little comforting and a little terrifying, but truly, it didn't feel like much of anything. Feelings are so ing exhausting.

I turned my phone back on on day four and saw 37 calls in absence. My heart did a pathetic little jump; my fingers were shaking a little, and– Hoseok. Oh, and my mom. Okay. I buried my head in the pillow and felt like crying a little. (But I definitely did not actually cry. It's not like men actually do that or something. Get rid of your delusions.)

Anyway, you see the pattern. Hoseok let me pull that for exactly seven days before he actually made use of the spare key for the first time, brutally intruded my session of self-loathe with a bunch of DVDs and an apparently lifelong supply of chicken and beer, and said: “The only thing stronger than this soap opera is a good, old action roll.”

I love Hoseok, even if my initial reaction was to throw the first thing at him that came across. Well, it was just a sock. And the throw was . It didn't even hit Hoseok. Instead, it pathetically hit the ground around a foot next to where he was standing, an accurate representation of how I had my life together. He snorted, and I grinned despite myself, and it was the day I realized that eventually, things were going to be alright.

 

Now that is where you would expect things to finally get back to what they were like before. You know, the perfect, time heals all wounds manner. But know this one thing and take it to heart: It's a ing lie. Time heals wounds? Time heals my . All it does is teach.

Time teaches you to deal with the pain; time slowly but surely turns you numb. Loss has four stages, but the fourth one is the worst:

 

Illusion.