Happy Birthday, Jay!
Today I don’t know how to explain it without sounding like I’m writing about a version of myself I only learned to meet through someone else’s voice.
But it started with you, Jay, and a song that didn’t feel like music at first, but like something breaking open inside me.
“Wake up, 이제 눈을 떠…”
There are songs you listen to, and then there are songs that pull you out of places you didn’t even realize you were trapped in.
Blessed-Cursed did not comfort me. It confronted me.
It made me realize how long I had been living inside things that looked like blessings but never asked me who I was becoming inside them.
I used to think being good meant being chosen.
Being blessed meant being safe.
Being guided meant being loved.
But the more I listened, the more I understood the terrifying question buried in every beat:
“Tell me, do I get blessed or do I get cursed?”
And suddenly I couldn’t tell which parts of my life were mine, and which parts were just expectations I learned to smile through.
Jay didn’t just perform in that space, he inhabited it. Like someone who has stood in front of invisible walls and decided they would no longer call them home.
And something about that changed me.
Because I think I was living like a marionette without even noticing the strings anymore.
Smiling at things that made me smaller.
Saying yes when my chest was already saying no.
Calling it gratitude when it was actually fear of disappointing people who never even asked who I was underneath the obedience.
“마리오네트의 사각 안에서 춤을 추던 나였어…”
That line didn’t feel like lyrics.
It felt like recognition.
Like someone finally naming a version of me I had been pretending didn’t exist.
And I remember the first time I really heard Jay’s part, not just the sound, but the presence of it. There was something in the way he carried defiance that didn’t feel loud or reckless. It felt… awake.
Like someone stepping into their own name for the first time after years of answering to everything else.
And I broke a little inside, because I realized how long I had been waiting for permission to do the same.
“Just stop, don’t tell me what to do…”
It sounds like rebellion, but for me it felt like grief.
Grief for every time I didn’t speak.
Grief for every time I softened myself to stay acceptable.
Grief for every yes that meant abandoning myself quietly so nobody would notice the cost.
And yet the song doesn’t stay in grief.
It moves.
It refuses to stay trapped.
Like something inside it keeps choosing itself again and again, even when it hurts.
“And I walk like a lion…”
That line didn’t make me feel powerful at first.
It made me feel small.
Because I realized I had forgotten what it meant to walk like anything other than something carefully controlled.
But Jay, through the performance, through the intensity, through that refusal to shrink, made me understand something I didn’t want to admit:
Maybe strength isn’t becoming untouchable.
Maybe it’s finally allowing yourself to stop disappearing.
Today is your birthday, but I keep thinking about what it means to be born again in small ways.
Not in celebration.
Not in applause.
But in realization.
The kind that hurts a little when it arrives.
The kind that makes you sit in silence after the song ends because something in you didn’t go back to how it was before.
There’s a version of me that used to believe everything given to me was meant to stay.
But Blessed-Cursed taught me that even gifts can become cages when they come with conditions I never agreed to.
And Jay’s presence in that world, sharp, grounded, unafraid of contradiction, made me realize that I don’t have to call everything a blessing just because it was handed to me.
Some things are blessings.
Some things are curses.
And some things are just illusions that only stay powerful as long as you don’t question them.
I think that’s why this song hurts so much for ENGENES.
Because it doesn’t just talk about freedom.
It reminds us we forgot we needed it.
And today, on your birthday, I feel that reminder sitting quietly in my chest again.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just honest.
So if I could write something into the space this song opened in me, it would be this:
To the version of me that used to confuse control for love, thank you for surviving long enough to learn the difference.
To the version of me that stayed quiet, thank you for finally learning that silence is not the same as peace.
To the version of me that is still learning, keep going. Even when it feels like losing things. Especially then.
And to Jay, in the strange way music allows gratitude to exist without needing proximity;
Thank you for being part of the sound that taught me how to wake up without asking permission.
Because now, when I hear
“Wake up, 이제 눈을 떠…”
It doesn’t feel like a command anymore.
It feels like a beginning.
Happy Birthday, Jay.
Keep shining. Keep burning. Keep dreaming.
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