I spent most of my childhood treating my love for K-Pop like some sort of secret.  I’d hide my phone whenever I had anything K-Pop-related pulled up, act casually whenever a song came on, and watch videos at the lowest possible volume.  Back then, liking K-Pop felt like something that I had to defend myself against.  Not that the teasing ever got bad, but hearing that your special interest is “weird” or “cringe” isn’t exactly what you want to hear.

Looking back on it now, it’s kind of silly how adamant I was to hide my interests, but I can still understand why younger me did what I did.  Middle school to high school was basically an audition for social acceptance, and I didn’t want to risk failing mine.  Instead, I’d keep everything on the down-low, like denying it whenever someone asked, even going as far as to hide my following on TikTok.  I have a specific memory of someone asking me if I was still super into BTS (since I was extremely into them in elementary school).  Of course, that scared the crap out of me, and I remembered getting really hot and sweaty as I denied, denied, denied.

But somewhere between freshman-year awkwardness and senior-year burnout, something shifted.  It could’ve been growing up; it could’ve been the realization that literally no one could care less about what I listened to, since they were all worried about themselves.  But I know for a fact that it was really that I thought it was more embarrassing to hide something that genuinely makes you happy than just owning it.

The moment that the realization dawned on me, I became even hotter and sweatier than I did when someone simply asked me about my interests.  The reason for this is because of the extreme lengths I’d go to just to fit in.  I’d purposefully change my phone wallpaper to something more socially acceptable before I’d go to school, choose a playlist that contained Western music only, the list goes on.  Just from these examples alone, I’m cringing at how desperate I was not to be myself.

So now, as a senior, I go out of my way to include K-Pop in most things that I do, and I wish I had gotten to this point sooner.  With the impact it’s had on my life, and how long I’ve been into it, it’s only right that I bring it into my personal life.  And as I graduate, I encourage other people with “cringe” interests to stop hiding it, because life gets a lot better when you stop apologizing for what makes you happy.