Patterns and Demons

Sometimes we all need a kids’ movie to teach us that the patterns we hide are meant to shine. I’m currently obsessed with KPop Demon Hunters.

This movie is exactly what it sounds like. It’s about a popular K-Pop girl band who are also demon hunters competing with a rival K-Pop boy band... who are demons! And the fate of the world is at stake.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Unbeknownst to everyone? The main character, Rumi, the lead singer from the Huntrx, is part demon. She feels she has to hide herself because no one, not even her two band member besties, will ever understand the darker parts of herself.

The movie’s saving-the-world plot states that if Huntrx can become the most popular band with the most love from their fans, they will be powerful enough to seal away the demons forever. So if Rumi can just hide all of her flaws and have the perfect image and get all the accolades and all the fans, her flaws (demon patterns) will literally cease to exist, and no one else will ever have to know about them.

I lived two lives, tried to play both sides

But I couldn’t find my own place

It is such a wonderful comparison to real-life situations and something that I’ve been struggling with lately. I feel like I can’t be who I really am, because that’ll drive people away. I feel like I have to do everything within my power to make people like me, to figure out what they want from me, and to not let them see the parts of me they might not like, or they will reject me.

There is no extreme reason I should be afraid of letting people see who I really am. I’m not half demon in a world where me and my two best friends are the only people equipped to defeat demons. I’m not a murderer; I don’t have multiple bodies buried under my basement floor. It’s ridiculous how society conditions us to hide our flaws and pretend to be perfect. Or even just pretend to be okay.

Waited so long to break these walls down

To wake up and feel like me

Put these patterns all in the past now

And finally live like the girl they all see

Rumi is eventually forced to reveal that she’s half demon to her friends. And they do instantly reject her, but ultimately it was more because of shock at what she’d been hiding from them. You can’t hide a dark part of yourself for years to suddenly word-vomit your secret and expect your friends to not have any sort of emotional reaction.

Rumi’s friends initially react badly, but she’s able to forgive them and still try to work towards a better future. During her darkest low moment of self discover, Rumi challenges her mentor, a mother-figure who raised her, trained her to hunt demons, but never showed her the love and acceptance that a mother should. Rumi rejects her mentor’s excuses, saying if always has to hide her true self, that’s not a world that she wants to fight for.

And damn, that resonates on a spiritual level.

Why should we follow blindly any religious doctrine that only elevates certain people and claims that the rest of the world will be condemned to hell because they’re different? It’s not the type of ideology I want to follow.

The songs are super catchy and fantastic, but it’s the last one that gets to me specifically.

I broke into a million pieces, and I can’t go back

But now I’m seeing all the beauty in the broken glass

The scars are part of me, darkness and harmony

My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like

I am literally like a ghost at all my family events because I’ve internalized that they don’t care about the things that I like. It’s easier just to sit there and go unnoticed, or fall into their conversations but never actually speak my truth. So much of the time I feel like I’m putting on a show when I’m with my family, or at work, or in a group of friends. It’s exhausting.

Oh, I’m done hidin’, now I’m shinin’

Like I’m born to be

I need to put myself out there, all of me. I want to be a published author and share the books that I’ve written with readers. Writing and sharing stories is my passion, and I can’t do that whole-heartedly if I’m constantly trying to figure out what mask I should wear to attract readers. That wouldn’t work anyway, because no mask is going to please everybody. I want to be authentic. And yeah, there are rougher edges to that, and not everyone is going to accept me.

But the ones who do are golden.

We’re shattering the silence, we’re rising, defiant

Shouting in the quiet, “You’re not alone”

We listened to the demons, we let them get between us

But none of us are out here on our own

I think many of us have been trained to hide our own patterns, and it is a hard thing to unlearn. That’s why the songs in this movie hit so deep. Because they shine light on things we ignore as adults, at the same time are teaching kids to break free and be better than the generation before them.

To be free.