"growing pains", an open letter by Bradley Kim
I am gay, but I don’t think I’d be able to pinpoint the exact moment when I realized I was gay. If there was one thing I was good at, it was repression; any inkling I had of my sexuality while I was growing up was immediately shut down. So, when people can pin point the year that they knew they were gay, my response to the same question is usually a shrug and saying, “sometime in high school I think” because the topic didn’t really become salient until then.
I grew up in a small suburb of Seattle, WA that was predominantly white, so I already had an uphill battle in my attempt to fit in and find a sense of belonging among my peers. I am the youngest of 5 mixed Korean siblings and we all navigated our lives in a similar way: through sports. I played every sport imaginable growing up and so I eventually found my niche among a group of jocks.
This niche gave me a sense of belonging growing up, but at a cost; I had fun at times and was generally well-regarded as a result, but I was forced to listen to and experience homophobia and racism as if it was normal to accept this type of treatment everywhere. I was conditioned to believe that being liked or loved came with its price, and that price was biting your tongue when you wanted to scream and accept the love you think you deserve. I was conditioned to hate who I was, so as a result, I accepted the treatment that I thought my real self deserved.
My song “growing pains” has a lot more context than just my experience as a closeted athlete in high school, but also the feeling of a lot of us relating to the idea of outgrowing the standards and coping mechanisms you had previously set for yourself in times like high school. I still very much struggle with self-worth today and repeating these toxic loops. I constantly fell into it in my youth, so this song [growing pains] was kind of my way of talking about it and expressing my frustrations.
The chorus fully encapsulates this toxic loop of being able to recognize that you deserve better than what you’re getting, but not having the fortitude to be able to walk away: “but I just can’t refuse to accept the things I’m used to”.
I wrote this song while reading a book called “The Mountain is You” by Brianna Wiest, and the part in particular that caught my attention was a section where the author talked about how humans are creatures of comfort; we are at peace not when we are our happiest, but when we are most comfortable. It got me thinking that we don’t seek out things that will make us happy, we seek things out that make us feel comfortable, even if those things are bad for us. Thus, “growing pains” was born.
This song is pretty special to me because it’s kind of a milestone in my progression as an artist, but more importantly as a person in my endless journey of healing and growing. I am super excited to release more stuff later this year and I plan on keeping them equally as deep and probably just as sad.
Thanks for sticking with me :) peace and blessings to all.
Love,
Brad