—————————— ✦ ⋆ ✦ ——————————

passionate, adaptable, skillful, adventurous, independent, dynamic, easygoing, fearless, daring
inconsiderate, shameless, aggressive, aloof, dishonest, disobedient, arrogant, stubborn, petty, boastful, resentful

—————————— ✦ ⋆ ✦ ——————————

—————— ✦ ——————

• i
• ii
• iii
• iv
• v
• vi
• vii
• viii
• ix

" the world is happening in a room that i can't enter,
life is happening in a gathering i am not invited to.being unwanted is a language i am fluent in. "

— fatima aamer bilal

—————— ✦ ——————

—————— ✦ ——————

the beginning

you were unwanted from the start and, though you wouldn't realize it for several years, it would set the course for the rest of your life.born at 3:40 on the morning of june 30th to a woman who never wanted children (you were an accident, nothing more than a miserable nine-month-long nuisance) and who you would never see again, you were instead handed off to a couple who had been eagerly awaiting your arrival. unable to have a child of their own, they opted for adoption — you were the answer to all their prayers. (or so you all thought.)yeong-hwan lee. this was your given name, perfect for a bright-eyed little boy (you would have much to say about having this word forced upon you later, but it needn't worry you now). a curious and energetic child, you loved your eomma and appa and they loved you too. life was good. it seemed as though it was only going to get better when your eomma discovered, unexpectedly, that she was pregnant. you were going to have a little sister, and you were so excited. you had wanted to be a big brother from the moment you first discovered the concept of siblings.you were four years old when little hwa-young was born — september 9th, the beginning of the end of your life as you'd come to know it. your parents never had a lot of money to begin with, barely making enough for all of you to scrape by before the baby arrived. now, with eomma working from home and appa working longer hours than ever before, they barely had time for the baby and household chores, let alone for you or themselves. unfamiliar as you were with not being doted upon, you began to act out in an effort to regain the lost attention. (it was too much. you were too much.)your fifth birthday was only two months away, and you were no longer home. injected instead into the home of another family, a "foster family" as you had it explained to you, your parents told you they were doing this for your sake. it was a temporary situation, they said; just for now, just until they were in a position to better support two children, then you could come home. (LIARS.)you would see and hear from eomma, appa, and even hwa-young with some regularity for the first couple months. they even celebrated your birthday with you when it finally came around. having to say goodbye to them all was always hard for you though, you would always try to convince them to take you with them — first it was crying, but when that didn't work you would scream and throw things. even when you reached the point of begging, of clinging to them and sobbing, it seemed you only made things worse. slowly, you would see them less and less. at some point, you would stop getting calls. "they just don't want to upset you," your foster mother would tell you; "they don't want to make this all harder on you than it already is." (you were the one making things harder for everyone. it was always you.)you don't remember the last thing your parents said to you, or that you said to them. but you do remember that the last time you heard mention of them, it was your foster mother telling you that they decided to change your last name from lee to byun. to her credit, she tried to make it sound exciting, like it was a new beginning for you, but you would eventually come to see it as what it truly was: proof that you were unwanted. you could never be more important than someone's biological child, even if you were the one who came first, so how fitting it was to return to you the surname of the biological mother who got rid of you in the first place.if she didn't want you, why would anyone else?

—————— ✦ ——————

—————— ✦ ——————

not good enough

( content warning for child abuse, transphobia, and violence. )

this feeling of being unwanted, of never being good enough, would only continue to grow within you. it would become a recurring theme across the span of your life, instilled deeper and deeper inside you with each event you experienced. how small and insignificant you'd feel upon starting school and seeing all the other children eagerly boasting their accomplishments to their parents; how empty and inadequate you'd feel each time you'd leave a foster family's home. no one seemed to want to keep you around for long, and so a seed of doubt was planted in your self image — there had to be a problem, something fundamentally wrong with you for not a single person to want you.life would continue to do nothing but enforce this idea upon you.you would struggle more learning to read and write than anyone else in your class seemed to, and would continue to struggle long after everyone else had gotten the hang of it. while all the other kids and everyone else you saw in the world seemed happy to live the way that they were told to, be it as a boy or girl, you found yourself growing more and more uncomfortable with the entire concept and would look longingly at the cute hairstyles and bright clothes that the girls all got to wear. friends would be few and far between, and you often found yourself left out for being a bit too "weird" or too much. no matter how much quieter you got, no matter how much you tried to cooperate, to bend yourself into what everyone else seemed to think you should be, nothing you did was ever good enough. nothing got you the love and care that you so craved. (the love and care that you'd once had.) at most, people seemed to tolerate you until they hit their limit and abandoned you; one after another after another...at age 8, you experienced your first abusive household. it wasn't your first time being hit, let alone your first time being hit specifically for wearing girly clothes (the boys at school had all seen to it to torment you at every opportunity), but it was the first time an adult was the one throwing the punches. the first time someone who was meant to protect you was the one causing you harm.the first, but not the last.you run away. (for the first time, but not the last.) survive a stint on the street for almost three weeks. (for the first time, but not the last.) after you show up at a shelter one night in search of a warm meal, you're brought to the attention of child welfare and placed in a group home for children. (they don't send you back to the people who hurt you, but you would discover in the future that this would not always be the case.)all the worst things that happen to you seem to happen on repeat. you try to bring attention to it — to the other students who bully you, to the teacher who picks on you, to the foster parents who scream at you and worse — but no one cares. no one does anything.so you snap.pent up anger and frustration gets the better of you. the boy who seems to love tormenting you more than anyone else keeps flicking at the back of your head and you lose it on him. the final straw snapped, you tackle him to the ground and unleash everything you've been holding back on him.when a teacher finally manages to pry you off of him, you're covered in blood. mostly his, but a bit of your own, too. you can still remember the bitter taste of his blood on your tongue; you bit his hand so hard, he'd have a scar for the rest of his life.he has to go to the hospital. you barely realize that you're in the principal's office. you can't hear anything he says; everything sounds muffled and distant, like you have earplugs in.later, you have it reiterated to you that you've been expelled. (this is the least of your concerns at the time.)

—————— ✦ ——————

you're afraid of yourself after the incident. afraid of what you're capable of. afraid of what your anger does to people. there really is something rotten inside of you, isn't there? something terrible and dark and wrong.the kids at your new school are afraid of you too. word has spread about what you did to that boy, about how it was all because he was playfully teasing you. they all whisper about you, stare at you when they think you aren't looking. "i heard he doesn't even have any parents. do you think he killed them?" "someone told me he bit that kid's finger clean off. is it really safe to let him come to school here? what if he does that to someone else?"the rumors haunt you. they grow more and more exaggerated every day, and you? you get quieter. you isolate more. you just want to be left alone.

—————— ✦ ——————

—————— ✦ ——————

never good enough

( content warning for transphobia and bullying. )

you give yourself a new name. you want to distance yourself from yeong-hwan — it's never felt right for you, and now it's just tied to an angry, violent boy. (it's tied to a family who abandoned you, to a sister who was given a matching name only to be chosen over you.) you play around with a few different ones you find in books and online, but nothing fits. it's not until you try mashing your first and last names together that you finally find the perfect answer.byan.it's perfect. it's not a boy's name, nor is it a girl's name. it's unique, it's a name that no one else has, and it's been born from the ashes of your past to suit the present.everyone gives you an odd look when you ask they call you byan instead of yeong-hwan, but most of them play along. (you always had a hard time getting them to pronounce your "real" name right anyway.)it gives you a boost of confidence that you've been in desperate need of. finally, you let yourself start experimenting with clothing again. you start wearing the cuter things that you've been staring longingly at since having that confidence beaten out of you the first time — after all, if everyone is already looking at you strangely, if everyone already thinks you're weird, why not lean into it? who cares? you think. who cares what i wear? who cares if i look more like a girl? (it's not as if anyone has ever cared about you to begin with.)as it turns out, a lot of people care. not about you, but how you choose to express yourself. you thought that one foster father was a one-off, but it turns out a lot more people than you expect share his opinions. it's like a flip gets switched — sure, you have a span of time where you're feeling happier, feeling more comfortable in your body now that you're being more true to yourself, but then... suddenly, so many of the kids who were once afraid of you aren't so afraid anymore.the boys start making fun of you like the ones at your last school did. at first it's all verbal, just a lot of name-calling and making fun of you. you try not to let it get to you. (you're still afraid of letting your emotions out, of what might happen this time if you try to retaliate.) you try to bring it to the attention of your teachers, of your foster parents, but they don't seem to take it seriously. "kids are just mean sometimes," they tell you. "if you don't let it bother you, they'll all get bored and stop."they don't stop. if anything, they start to feel more emboldened by your lack of response.

—————— ✦ ——————

—————— ✦ ——————

does "good" even exist?

( content warning for child abuse, attempted murder, transphobia, self harm, and violence. )

you try so hard to ignore it all — the harassment at school, the instability of your home life, the difficulty you're having in all of your classes, the way no one seems to listen — but your emotions refuse to be ignored. they build and build and build, and no matter how hard you try to push them back down... eventually, they all boil over. (the angry scribbling you've been doing for as long as you can remember can only work for so long.)at age 11, you burn down your foster family's home. acting on pure emotion, you don't think about the lighter fluid staining your hands before you light the match. you suffer severe burns and lose the fingerprints on your right hand because of it. any hope you had of escaping the accusations of being a problem child disappears, and you find yourself removed from another family and shoved into mandatory counselling.at age 12, you cut yourself for the first time. afraid to turn your anger outward, you focus it on yourself instead. a pack of razors you stole from the store and the overwhelming hopelessness you feel over your situation are all you have to keep you company.in the same year, you would have the father of one of the families to take you in try to kill you.he nearly did you in when he learned you had plans to go shopping with one of the girls in your class, to look at and try on dresses, and so you ran away (running has become your go-to, your first response when things get difficult). a pickpocketing gone wrong as you tried to get money to feed yourself lands you in the hospital, and the hospital calls your parents. (they aren't your parents, you've just been shoved into their care for the time being. "care" is such a funny word when all you've gained from them are bruises.) the nurse doesn't listen to your pleading, your begging for her to not let them in.you expect him to hit you the moment you return home. what you don't expect is the way he throws you, throws things at you. through all the shouting, all the pain, you're just trying to escape—and then he grabs you by the throat.the fear is still there, still sending ice into your bloodstream, but the rest of your emotions come flooding back in too, and the most prominent among them? anger. anger at him, for taking his own issues and insecurities out on you like you're nothing but a living punching bag. anger at the hospital, at the foster care system, for allowing you to be placed over and over into households like this, and the ones which only take you in because they want that extra bit of money that's meant to go in to taking care of you. anger at the world and all the people in it who never gave a damn about you until you were the one causing the problems.like a cornered animal, you finally fight back. if you're going to die here, then you're going to at least put up a fight first. you're at least going to make sure he has some scars to remember you by. you give him a strong enough kick that he lets you go. breath floods back into your lungs, and you start biting and clawing and punching. you don't stop. you can't stop. only when you grab a shard of glass from the vase he threw at you earlier and stab it into his shoulder do you finally come back to yourself.and then you run.

—————— ✦ ——————

—————— ✦ ——————

did "good" ever exist?

you think that surely life can only get easier from here, right? things can't possibly get worse than a foster parent maliciously and angrily trying to murder you.how you'll laugh at your younger self years later for their sheer naivete.

—————— ✦ ——————

( content warning for transphobia, homophobia, and bullying. )

at 13, you make the leap to fully reinvent yourself and become the person you've always wanted to be (the person you've always been but have always been forced to hide). you don't care what anyone says or thinks anymore, you're done with trying to make them all happy by making yourself miserable — what are they gonna do about it, kill you? someone already tried.you start letting your hair grow out like you've always wanted. you stop dressing in boy's clothes entirely, instead opting to wear all the very cute, more feminine clothing that has always appealed so much more to you. you tell everyone to call you 'they' instead of 'he', but you'll find you don't terribly mind it when a stranger mistakenly refers to you as 'young lady'. you're not a boy, and you're not a girl either, but if someone is going to assume you're one or the other... you prefer it being the latter.of course, your life doesn't suddenly change. people don't suddenly change. the bullying you've faced at school doesn't just stop because you've finally embraced your identity — but you're no longer ignoring it. you don't let those who try to hurt you get away with it anymore. now, you fight back. it results in a lot more detentions, a lot more lectures, and even a few calls made to the police, but you don't feel as powerless anymore. in fact, you start getting the better of them in no time. for some reason, the boys are always surprised that you can throw such a mean punch.then you have your first kiss. a boy in your class, one who's always been nicer to you than the others — he never stood up for you, exactly, but he did actively choose to spend time with you. you think, maybe, that things are finally starting to look up.and then you find out that someone saw you.everyone at school is talking about it the next day. they're all gawking at you, snickering and making faces as you walk past. you don't think much of it because, at this point, you're fairly used to it.the boy you kissed, as it turns out, is not.when you approach him with the intention of asking if he's okay, he gives you a disgusted look and shoves you away. suddenly he's yelling at you, capturing the attention of everyone else in the hallway, going on about how he doesn't want you to come near him, that this is all your fault, because you forced him to kiss you. it's a blatant fucking lie because he was the one who'd suggested it, but he just shouts louder when you try to mention that.before you know what's happening, some of the boys nearby step in, shoving you away from him. they start hissing nasty things at you, using disgusting and offensive words as they all talk about how they knew you were like this.you're a freak. you're the villain. (other boys will take advantage of you in the future because of this.) and he gets off scot-free.you track him down after school the next day and break his nose.

—————— ✦ ——————

—————— ✦ ——————

no. there is only evil

( content warning for substance abuse, drugs, transphobia, assault, and murder. )

more and more, you find yourself running away from foster homes. more and more, you find yourself on the streets, in bad parts of town, around people who don't always have your best interests at heart. (has anyone ever, though? has anyone ever truly given a shit about your well-being? at least these people are honest. at least you know they don't give a shit.) you find yourself falling into the world of alcohol and drugs, but you find a certain peace in it. a freedom. you can escape from the pain and the hopelessness, even if only for a few hours, and there's solace in that.one night, after making a less-than-legal purchase from one of the local dealers in one of the shadier ends of town, some drunk loitering behind a club calls out to you. you ignore him, intent on getting back to the group home and diving nose-first into the powder (now securely hidden in the cute pink backpack slung over your shoulder) in the privacy of one of the bathrooms. this only seems to agitate him further. a hand grabs your wrist and yanks you to a halt, his voice raising as he spews familiar slurs and crude words. panic rises in your chest as he looks you over in disgust, gaze pointedly lingering on your skirt and the vibrant makeup on your face. you try to pull away, and his grip tightens. soon enough, you're in a struggle; both of his hands are on you, your back is shoved against a wall, and try as you might to wriggle free, to push him off... there's no escape.it's painfully familiar. briefly, you see the glint of your foster father in the hatred that fills his gaze. in every slam of your body against the concrete behind you.you're sure that this time, you're going to die.fortunately, your survival instincts are louder than your fear. when you realize that struggling isn't enough, that he's stronger than you and that he has every intention of using that advantage against you, you reach for the knife in your pocket.you think that a few slashes from it across whatever part of his body your hand is closest to will be enough to make him back off. instead, it only seems to infuriate him further. a hand grips your throat and starts to press, and the realization sets in: it's you or him.so you start stabbing.you're not sure how many times you sink your knife to its hilt in his stomach before his grip finally starts to weaken. you don't realize just how much blood has coated your hands, your clothes, and your shoes until he collapses and you see a small puddle of it underneath. you're not sure when you start breathing again, let alone when it was that you fell to your knees next to his body, but the impact of what's just happened hits you on a delay, all in an instant.panic flares again as you see his cold, lifeless eyes staring up into the sky. he's dead. he's dead and you killed him. his blood is painted across you, your latest and most macabre piece of art, and you don't know what to do.so you do what you've always done best: you run.

—————— ✦ ——————

—————— ✦ ——————

evil that has so many faces

no one ever finds out what you did.they at least notice when you're quieter and more distant than usual, but no one really presses you about it. you're more manageable this way, after all. when you're not getting worked up, not breaking rules or talking back or getting into fights, you're so much easier to deal with.you're not causing them problems if you're catatonic.

—————— ✦ ——————

( content warning for substance abuse, drug use, depression, and (hinted) sexual assault. )

rather than processing the event once you're past the shock of it, you opt into avoiding it. as you have with every memory, every event, every single unpleasant thing that has happened to you in your short life, you don't let yourself think about it.spiraling ever downward, you lean heavier on the substances which lighten the burden for you. they're the only things that bring you any sort of comfort anymore, aside from all the cute items and clothes you've grown more into the habit of shoplifting from stores. you start caring less about everything, including yourself — the world around you certainly never cared, so why should you? entire school days are missed more often than you bother to attend, the consequences of stealing don't enter your mind, and you barely even bat an eye when your foster sister's much older boyfriend takes a particular interest in you after he accidentally walks in on you shooting up in the bathroom in the middle of the night.nothing matters. you don't matter. nothing that happens to you matters. and certainly nothing that you do matters.you wish it did, but you've accepted the fact that it doesn't. and any time you start to feel too strongly about it, you can always just numb yourself to it, right?

—————— ✦ ——————

( content warning for substance abuse, drug use, depression, overdose, and attempted suicide. )

you're 14, and you're kicked while you're already so far down. you're shoved off the ledge you've been teetering on for months now.kicked out of your foster home after introducing your foster brother to drugs, you're forced to leave without any of your belongings under threat of having the police called on you. it's not like you want to stick around that badly, so you oblige — only to break in the next day while everyone is out. you shove what you can of your things into what bags you can carry but are forced to leave a great number of your already limited possessions behind to be sold off or thrown out. as compensation, you steal a few hundred dollars in cash from the family's rainy day fund where you know it's hidden in the back of your ex-foster parents' closet.you aren't planning to spend all that money on drugs that same night. you meant to use it for food too, yet somehow you find the stack of bills leaving your hands all at once in exchange for the substances you know will make a miserable night easier.you don't mean to overdo it on the dosage, either. —or, maybe that's just what you tell yourself while knowingly injecting more than you'd normally allow. maybe that's why you choose to do it in a more open location than usual too, in the mouth of an alley on a semi-busy street. maybe you just need to feel like someone cares, and maybe the only way to do that is to visibly self-destruct in a place where it's harder for others to ignore.you aren't trying to kill yourself, you think, but if you do die... well, whatever.

—————— ✦ ——————

—————— ✦ ——————

so many faces that would see you dead

( content warning for suicide mentions, psychiatric facilities, and forced restraint. )

everything that happens after you wake up is a blur. you don't have a good grasp on everything that happens until you suddenly find yourself in the hospital's psych ward under an involuntary hold due to your mental state and attempted suicide. after your last stay in a hospital, you're terrified. you also find that you're angry — angry at your foster family, at all of the families you've ever stayed with, angry at the system that's failed you time and time again, angry at eomma and appa who you haven't let yourself think of in years, angry at the biological mother you never knew, angry at the world — and that the fear you feel somehow makes you angrier still. it's not your fault that you've ended up here, trapped like this, it's everyone else's! they're the ones who did this to you, and now they expect you to pay the price?you feel like a cornered animal, so you act like one. as a result, your first few days on the psych ward are spent strapped to a bed and lightly sedated.it doesn't make you feel any safer. it doesn't make you want to cooperate. all it does is make you feel so much smaller and so much angrier.

—————— ✦ ——————

after that, you refuse to talk with anyone. not the nurses, not the therapists, and not the psychiatrists. you settle down enough that they release you from your restraints, but you still find you're always approached by no fewer than two people whenever it's time for medication or counselling or whatever else they want from you.finally, after what you estimate to be about a month, you're set free. you still aren't cooperating with treatment but you're also giving them no further evidence that you're a danger to yourself, and with the limited room to admit new patients without first releasing others... they have little choice but to let you go. you return to the group home you've been in and out of for so much of your life, but you refuse to let things continue the way that they always have.things are going to be different from now on, you decide. for real this time. no longer will you try to mold yourself into the shape anyone demands of you. you're still here, still alive, and now it's their problem, not yours. you have experienced more pain and suffering than most people twice your age have or ever will, and you're sick of them telling you what's right and what's wrong. you're sick of them acting like they know better than you. you're sick of them judging you.you will be yourself, unapologetically, and they'll all just have to fucking deal with it. you're not going to give the world that never treated you like a child, never treated you like a person, the satisfaction of your death nor your silence or acceptance of their treatment of you.they've always called you a problem. now, you'll show them what a real problem is.

—————— ✦ ——————

—————— ✦ ——————

but you will not go down without a fight

things don't get any easier, but you feel more equipped than ever before to handle all the shit that life has to throw at you. you don't bow down and back off from any trouble that comes your way. instead, you stand tall and meet it head on. you give back what you get, and then some, and you do so violently.violence, you find, solves your problems a lot better than running ever did. it says a lot more, too. lets everyone know that you're not going to take their shit and, actually, they're the ones who'll have to figure out how to handle the shit you have to throw at them.you continue to be labelled a problem, but now you take satisfaction in it. now, you test the limits and see what you can get away with.now, you're the one in control.

—————— ✦ ——————