Hello, this is Heezy. I just realised that I didn’t blog at all last year. Well, here is my first blog post of 2023. This post is probably about something like being sick, and accepting and embracing life. It may be also about not being really good actually being okay, and not letting others tell you what you can do or cannot do. Okay, that was literally the worst summary I’ve ever written, but hopefully it will make more sense once you read the whole thing.
I was recently in Europe for about 5 weeks. I was doing (drag) shows, I was catching up with my friends, and making new friends. It was supposed to be my fun and relaxing holiday after being stuck in Korea for 3 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Actually I’m supposed to be still travelling and performing in Scandinavia right now, but I’m not. I’m back home in Seoul. I have been back in Seoul for about 2 weeks now, but I didn’t really tell people about it – that I cancelled all my remaining Europe gigs and holiday plans, and I have been seeing doctors and getting tests done in Seoul, instead. Many reasons, but mainly because I felt defeated, and I wanted to be left alone.
All the gigs I did in Europe were really fun, and all the people I spent time with in Europe were truly amazing, but the truth is that the 5 weeks in Europe for me was hell and I was miserable, not because of anything else but solely because of my health. I had my seconds COVID-19, and the flu, back to back, and I also suffered from post-COVID conditions, and bronchitis developed from the flu. P.S. I have asthma to begin with. While I was in Europe, I only posted happy pictures from gigs and photos with friends, on social media, but day by day, I was getting sicker and sicker. Shortly after I arrived in Norway, I had a breakdown, cried, cancelled the remaining Europe gigs and plans, booked a plane ticket home for the next day, and came back home on Christmas day. I felt so beat up and empty.
Thankfully all the test results so far don’t indicate anything very serious, other than bronchitis and some post-COVID conditions, but what’s not so thankful is that it means they could not find out what’s been causing the chest pain I’ve been having for over a month. I’m on antibiotics and several other medications, including an antidepressant, and I have a few more doctor’s appointments and tests coming up. I’m extremely weak and my stamina is very low, but I guess that’s natural when you’ve been sick for so many weeks. What worries me the most at the moment after having all these respiratory issues (other than the all the medical bills I had to pay/will need to pay) is – some may find it silly – my singing ability. For a while I’ve been too sick to even think about singing. This week, I tried singing for the first time since my last gig in London. And the result? I couldn’t sing shit. It not only physically hurt just to try to sing, and also my lungs and my voice feels so foreign to me. I said some may find this silly because I never had the vocal abilities of Mariah Carey or Bruno Mars anyway, and my singing was always…just okay objectively. But guess what? I was never that good before, and now I could be even worse! And it’s not just about how good I was/am. It’s also about how much I care for singing and how much it means to me. Being a singer-songwriter, making music and performing with my own voice are important means of expression for me. Also, I’m one of the very few live singing drag performers in South Korea, so it’s something that makes me unique and I take pride in it. Most of all, I just love singing. So the idea of losing my singing ability terrifies me. Not to mention I have multiple shows to do, later this month.
The first time I had COVID-19, which was earlier in 2022, the symptoms were pretty mild, however, rehabilitating my singing ability after the virus was gone required a lot of time and effort. It took a few weeks to sound not too terrible to be back on stage, and it took a few months to feel like I was getting close to where I was vocally, before having COVID-19. I still don’t think my voice fully recovered from that time, and now BOOM here we go again. Another COVID-19, the flu, and bronchitis, all while I was abroad where I didn’t have access to medical assistance from my doctors in Korea. And this time the symptoms were not mild.
5 weeks of being sick in Europe, and 2 weeks of tests and treatments later, now I have no control over my breaths, meaning I can’t hold pretty much any notes as long as I’d like to. The notes I’m hitting are flat or sharp. I have a lingering chest pain on my upper left chest 24/7 and it gets very bad when I sing. I get a hoarse voice after attempting just a few times to sing a song I used to be able to sing well with my eyes closed. I can’t even sing my own songs the way I made them to be sung, for fuck’s sake.
Yes, I’ve been sick for many weeks and I’ve only been treated for a short period of time, so things might look up in time. But I’m a person with chronic anxiety issues who quit business school to do art, and my main income source at the moment is performing (mostly singing live), so being in a situation like this really affects me negatively mentally, and that’s why I’m back on an antidepressant.
I’ve been spending so much time in bed since I came back to Korea, partially because I was physically sick and tired, and partially because I was depressed. I was on my phone, going down the rabbit hole, pity party, hypochondria, etc etc. But then I read about other singers who were affected by COVID-19, on the internet. And then I started thinking about all these people whose lives were affected (or completely destroyed) by COVID-19, one way or another, singers or not. Then it became clear. I said to myself (in my head, not out loud) “you get your ass out of the bed and look around. COVID-19 happened to everyone in this world, and many people had it worse than you did.” I may be struggling to get my singing ability back, but some people literally died from COVID-19. It’s not even just COVID-19. In our lives, there are always a lot of worse things than COVID-19 happening to people, happening to us, all the time. What do people do? Most people accept, adjust, and carry on. Some people cry a bit. I did that already. Some people quit and kill themselves. Well, I’m not gonna do that.
So here’s what I’m going to do now: rest and patiently wait for my body to recover, and take my time and work hard to rehabilitate my singing ability. If I don’t sound like I did before, oh well. It is what it is and I will find a way to work around – sing differently. Or I guess I’ll just be a worse singer. Like I said earlier, I was never an amazing vocalist like Mariah Carey or Bruno Mars. People have previously told me that I’m not good enough to be a musician or a live singing performer, a number of times. But did that stop me from becoming a singer-songwriter, or regularly singing live on stage and making money out of it? No. So it was never about what others think I can do or I can’t do. I did what I wanted to do anyway, and I did it my way.
People say you should be really good at something, or you should even be the best, if you want to do something. But that’s not true. You can do something, if you just simply go ahead do it. Will you be successful doing it? That depends a lot on how you define success but you wouldn’t know until you try. And so what if you won’t be successful? You wanted to do it, and you did it. Shouldn’t that be what matters? You don’t need to be a great vocalist to be a singer. You don’t need to be 180-cm-tall to be a model. You sing, then you are a singer. You model, then you are a model. Being really good is overrated. The only thing you should be really good at, I think, is simply being you, and that’s an easy one because no one can ever be more you than you.
The music I make is meaningful because it has my stories and my creativeness in it. People come to see me sing in drag not because I sound like Mariah Carey or Bruno Mars, but because of a combination of reasons that make them want to come see my shows, and I successfully found and combined those reasons.
As a singer-songwriter and a live singing drag performer, I was already carrying on, knowing I will never sound like Mariah Carey or Bruno Mars, and knowing there will always be people who say I’m not good enough. So I might as well carry on whether I eventually fully recover and sound like I used to again, or remain sounding worse. (Hopefully not a lot worse, though!) I will carry on whether life is pink or blue. I mean, if I could have COVID-19 twice and suffer from the flu, and bronchitis, all in one year, this definitely won’t be the last time my respiratory system suffers in this life. But from now on, I will accept and embrace what happens to me in life, I will make adjustment accordingly if I need to, and I will carry on, without letting others decide what I can or can’t do.
P.S. I’m not gonna lie though. I’m gonna be in and out of hospitals and clinics for my physical health and mental health for a while, and it’s gonna be a long, depressing, expensive battle. Your love and support will be helpful and appreciated.
P.S. So now you know I’m back in Korea, and I will be having shows soon again. Come see me at my shows, and bless me with generous tips if you feel bad about me or feel inspired, after reading this blog post. Thank you.
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