It’s 2022; I’m turning 25 later this year, finally had my 2020 graduation ceremony a month ago, work at the executive level at my company, am trying to plan a wedding, and save for a mortgage. My old K-Pop album collection sits at home, now mostly taken over by my 18-year-old sister.

It’s early 2013; I’m still 15 and just started high school. My passion for K-Pop and the industry knowledge that comes with it grows more and more each day when I come across this new rookie group on Tumblr with some rough, gritty hip-hop demos and decide it’s time I share them with my Twitter friends from back home, Brazil. This one decision leads to an early career start, college acceptance, events covered, interviews done, friends made, and BTS’s eventual, undeniable, unprecedented yet obvious superstardom.

Well, at least that’s how it all went down in my head. BTS were superstars from the second I first read the names “Bangtan” on that Runch Randa demo back from who knows when. Something about it all spoke to me. It could’ve been my absurd need to be different from those around me and then choosing to focus on hip-hop-heavy groups instead of the hyper-pop dominance K-Pop had back then. Maybe it was my own pretentiousness, or maybe it was truly a calling.

This is all to say that, from the age of 15 until around 19 and 20, my life revolved around BTS. Personally, professionally, and academically. Until one day it just didn’t. Like the change in tides, one day it just felt different. This doesn’t mean the love and care I’ve felt for the members of BTS changed, or that the memories I had up until that point now meant any less than they once did. I could⁠—and can⁠—still feel it all inside me, but suddenly it was as if it didn’t matter as much.

I have a (possibly horrible) habit of taking things too seriously. Once I decided I loved BTS and wanted my friends to love them too, I created Bangtan Brasil. At the peak of its glory, BTSBR was nearing half a million followers on Twitter (thanks to copyright infringements, we lost our account) and ran as the biggest Latin American fanbase dedicated to BTS. We had our website, our official store with original products, we organized all projects, were invited to shows and events, received gifts, and were interviewed by major outlets.

It was a full-time job I created for myself at the age of 15. It went through a lot of changes, but once me and my two wonderful friends Caroline and Rebecca put our heads together in 2016, we were unstoppable. And then that shift happened for me. It didn't happen for them, at least not then, and so BTSBR carried on without me. I didn’t really care about it anymore. I went from pulling my laptop out in the middle of class to immediately translate a new tweet and upload it to all platforms to not caring if the new comeback had been announced on our website.

While this was happening, I was still writing articles on other platforms about BTS that I had to insist were relevant because being the first K-Pop group to get their own hashtag emoji is a big deal. I had to create a project proposal twice as long as my classmates’ for my marketing professor to allow me to conduct my end-of-semester project on a music group. I was going to shows, watching every comeback; I still actively took part in it all. That article would later find its place on BTS’s Wikipedia page and just two years later, that professor would find me on LinkedIn to apologize for not believing in me, that he didn’t realize how ahead of the curve I was then.

And it all still faded. At this point, I had already met BTS twice, worked on two of their shows in Brazil, and could’ve positioned myself as a trailblazer for the group. On top of BTSBR, I was one of the members of the first cohorts of BTS-Trans and had taken part in all major projects recognized by the group and the former BigHit Entertainment, and I had started a popular web radio show with my BTSBR admins. We had done it all and were still doing it. I could’ve officially made them my career; I just suddenly didn’t feel like it.

I couldn’t explain why then and was only able to do so yesterday after RM’s speech during their livestream celebrating their nine years as a group. I simply had nothing else to say. I had done it all, I had created every project, I had worked in every sector, I was done. That part of my life was gone, I had lived it, loved it, and had to move on from it. Trying to force myself not to let go was making me hate everything I once loved and got so much joy from. Anything I had to do for BTSBR was a burden; I did it last minute only so I could get it done. I refused to let it go and in turn, started to regret everything I had once done for and because of them.

I once again go back to that one decision I made at 15. That decision led me to a career in communications, not law, to NYU, my dream school, to an entire pre-COVID career in music, and my dream job at Live Nation. It made me a better fan of other groups and bands and a better friend. I’m not unaware of the opportunities BTSBR has brought to so many of those who once were part of that team, even if it was just finding their best friends to founding their own media companies.

Hearing BTS discuss their decision, their need, to take a break from the group, from each other, in order to find a natural end to a cycle and beginning of a new one was the light at the end of my tunnel. I had never understood why from one day to the next, I just didn’t want to deal with any of it anymore. I blamed new friends for liking other things and not BTS, I blamed my fiancé for showing no interest in anything related to K-Pop, I blamed BTS for making new songs that weren’t in the style I now preferred. I did everything I could to blame everyone and everything around me. The only factor in my life I never blamed was growing up.

Their own reflections on their nine years together made me think of the decisions they made at 12, 13—even younger than when I was 15 and made that one decision that shaped the beginning of my adult life. Why does that one decision they made then have to dictate the rest of their lives? Why does it have to dictate mine? It doesn’t, and BTS not letting it is breaking away from the K-Pop mold so many have lost themselves in.

It’s not uncommon to see older generations of K-Pop idols in their 30s and 40s still singing the same songs they sang at 15. Yes, that is the ideal outcome; a successful career doing what you love for the rest of your life. But we now all know that K-Pop so often works like a trap. It keeps you in that same cycle over, and over, and over again. For many, trying to break from it means giving up on a career you took so long to build, from losing contracts to losing fans.

If you have read any of my other articles for The Kraze, you know I’ll do all I can to compare K-Pop to artists within the mainstream. So here I go again. BTS was not the beginning of my obsessive fangirling. So many came first, and My Chemical Romance and blink-182 are great examples to take into consideration. Both bands came to a point where they decided to part ways. There were no big public breakups, no arguments that indicated the members now hated each other, nothing to tarnish their reputations. They simply wanted a break. Years later, years after new bands, solo projects, non-music-related projects, they have come back. blink-182 released one of their best albums as a group, Neighborhoods, after their breakup. My Chemical Romance is now touring again with a brand new song as if it’s 2006.

This doesn’t mean the end for BTS and it had never meant the end of my adoration for them. This is a break, a creative and personal pause to allow for them to go beyond what they already have, to explore places they have not been able to professionally together. It’s a pause from nine years of the same routine, a pause for them to grow up. As fans, let’s take this time to reflect and reminisce. Let’s remember all that we love, why we love them, and grow with them. The best is yet to come; let’s not tarnish it with a fear of the unknown.

Edited by Aleena Faisal