1

I’m sure the author had a clear “intention” in mind while writing this book… but I don’t think I opened it with the mindset that aligned with that intention. Not long ago, my older brother, who struggles with depression, recklessly took out an absurdly large loan and lost all of it in stocks. After that, he fell into a cycle of giving up—sleeping and ordering delivery food every day with no will to fix the situation. Watching that up close had already exhausted me with feelings like self-pity, passive aggression, and self-justification. Of course, the one who suffers the most is the person with depression, but the people around them end up suffering too.

At this point, I believe the things that can truly save someone with depression are the strong patience of someone who loves them and the active effort to pull them out from the depths. Yes—helping a depressed person is not something “anyone” can do. It must be someone they have a loving relationship with.

But as his younger sibling and family member, I was, to my brother, just one of the many “anyones.” If a pretty woman had said the same things to him, he would have listened—truly, absolutely. But me, someone living under the same roof? No matter what I said, none of it reached his heart.

Seeing something clearly wrong yet knowing I had no power to change it was painful. And the fear that his irresponsible decisions might become a major obstacle to my loving parents’ long-awaited retirement—this fear only amplified that pain.

With this crooked, frustrated outlook toward depression, I began reading “I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki.”

2

I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki lays bare the mind of someone depressed without any beautification or dramatization.

Movies and dramas usually guide the viewer into a certain perspective using various intentional devices. It’s easy to follow the storyline through the protagonist’s eyes. But this book, which contains none of that deliberate framing, felt raw and pure—and because of my current situation, I often found myself empathizing not with the author but with the people around her.

Depression was incredibly elusive. Even if someone captured the scene of depression with a camera, not everyone who saw that photo would truly understand it.

As I listened to Baek Sehee’s story, it became clear that much of depression plays out quietly within the private boundaries of the body. Even in situations that looked perfectly normal on the outside, she was suffering.

Was this what tormented Baek Sehee the most?

The truth is, there are countless things she wanted from the world.

But whenever anything happened that didn’t align with those expectations, it turned into a massive inner blade that cut her from within.

And those expectations weren’t even concrete desires. They weren’t something that could be satisfied by fulfilling a specific need.

They were more like a bottomless vessel of life—something no person or thing could ever fill.

She kept pouring her sensitivity and anxiety into that vessel, trying to fill it somehow,

yet the fundamental emptiness she felt—the emptiness that lingered no matter what she did—

seemed to be what endlessly tormented her.

She sounded cynical, as if she wanted nothing from the world, yet at the same time she kept whispering these small, directionless pleas—as if she were longing for something.

3

Recently, I heard that Stanford professor Nolan Williams, who had developed new treatments for depression, took his own life. Both he and Baek Sehee surely understood the nature of depression deeply. And if people who grasped depression better than anyone still couldn’t fully handle it until the end of their lives—what attitude should the rest of us take toward depression?

The internet is filled with content like “Don’t say these things to someone with depression,” urging compassion for the depressed and warning those around them. It’s true that every human—regardless of their condition—longs to be seen and accepted as they are. “Being understood” is one of the most exhilarating experiences a person can have.

But empathy is a desire—not a solution.

How nice it would be if depression could be treated with clear, objective indicators, like a surgical procedure…

The truth is, I myself have a baseline of depression woven into who I am. But I rarely talk about it. When I tell someone, “My eyesight is bad (= I’m visually impaired),” and they immediately say, “Mine too!”—I worry the same thing will happen with my depression.