Late SHINee singer Kim Jonghyun confessed in a May 2017 interview that he struggled from feeling depressed since he was a little boy, and was trying to change that to thrive in the future. The insightful interview came just seven months before Jonghyun tried to take his own life and later died in the hospital. “Ever since I was little I showed a lot of depressive feelings, and it’s the same in the present,” Jonghyun said in the interview with Esquire, translated by Omona They Didn’t. “But I don’t think I can keep living my life sustaining those depressive feelings forever. You might be able to go through the early-to-mid-part of your life with that kind of melancholy.
“But if you want to grow, you can only survive if you throw those feelings away,” he said. “Unless you want to get trapped within yourself and die, you have to grow no matter how much it hurts — but if you stop because you’re afraid, in the end it’s inevitable that you’d remain in an immature state of mind. I chose the path to transform myself. To reveal myself to the public. To attempt to make my thoughts understood. I have to make people aware that this is the kind of person I am, and I can only be on the defensive if I know that they know.”
The rest of the interview is equally heartbreaking. Jonghyun was optimistic about the positive changes in his life that would come with ending his popular radio program Blue Night, which was causing him stress. He confessed that his only goal moving forward was to be happy. “I’ve thought about this the most over the past six months. About happiness. My disposition in and of itself has a tendency to torment me. For people like me, it isn’t easy to be happy. Though on the other hand, it is possible to grow,” he said.
He shared a truly upsetting anecdote about his desire to be happy from several years ago. He said that he got so drunk that he woke up his entire family in the middle of the night and asked them if they were happy. They were. “I was so envious at the fact that they were able to reply that they were, indeed, happy. Because it wasn’t like that for me. I told them while sobbing: ‘I want to be happy too.’ Then I felt like I’d done my mom and sister wrong. But from then on, I started contemplating about happiness. For about six months, I pondered specifically over what I would need to do in order to become happy. I think that time of transformation has come. I think I need to become happy, now. I must become happy. I am going to be happy.”
Jonghyun’s sister called police the day of his death and told them that she feared he would take his own life. He had sent her a disturbing message, which said, “It’s been too hard. Please send me off. Tell everyone I’ve had a hard time. This is my last goodbye.” She was right; police found him unconscious in his apartment with coal briquettes lit inside a frying pan on the stove. He died later that same day in the hospital after suffering from cardiac arrest.
HollywoodLifers, our thoughts are with Jonghyun’s bandmates and loved ones during this difficult time. Lend them your support in the comments.