Finding BTS in my 30s: How a fandom became home and healing, not just hype

At fourteen, I was obsessed with a wildly eclectic mix of bands—Nirvana, Linkin Park, Green Day, Guns N’ Roses. I meticulously collected their posters, set their lyrics as my MSN name, and hunted for ways to stream their music online, often through apps that nearly crashed my father's desktop with viruses.

But what did love for a band mean at that time? Apart from posters and getting excited when watching them on television, it meant listening to them everyday—till gradually you didn’t. But you always remembered how the songs made you feel. Each one of them was associated with some mood, or just your past self. When I listen to Smells like Teen Spirit, I remember the 14-year-old me furiously listening to it on wired headphones while trying to prepare for a math exams. When I think of Metallica's Nothing Else Matters, I remember the 15-year-old listening to her cousins trying to sing it at home.

Music was memories. But rarely, had music been about people in that phase. I only knew bits and pieces about their personal lives, except for Kurt Cobain.

Sometimes I wish that I did, after Chester Bennington died in 2017, I was filled with grief for the singer that had built memories of my childhood—songs that I still turn to, as if it was yesterday. How do you grieve for someone who you never knew, but still somehow knew so well?

I don't know, but I still do. After all, growing up with a band and losing them in adulthood and hearing their songs again, is a different kind of grief.

Nevertheless, since then, music had just been the songs, tying them to moods, experiences and seasons, and appreciating the artists. A favourite artist was someone to whom I listened to, regularly. Someone who coloured a different phase of my life.

Till 30, I listened to songs, and just knew the singers names and appreciated them. 

I don’t know what changed, frankly. Perhaps, it was because I had married and moved to Abu Dhabi after living in India for 30 years. I was homesick.

I was without a job, for the first time in my life, and it was the COVID-pandemic, the devastating second wave. In the midst of horrifying news from home and trying to be employed, I stumbled into the world of South Korea. I watched K-Drama after K-Drama—probably the only time in my life I truly binged anything. I would stay up all night, lost in a world that felt far from mine.

And then, came BTS. 

It took one simply choreography video on my newsfeed. Bapsae. It was an old video.

But that day, I watched it, and kept watching it. It was the dance moves. It was the song. I looked for the live performance on YouTube, and I remember muttering, “No wonder. No wonder, they have ARMY.” 

It was the black suits; it was finally understanding the lyrics, the quiet rage, the art-work like choreography, a favourite moment being when RM walks forward with Jin and Suga. Moreover, I couldn’t quite move on from Jungkook’s sarcastic ‘You must be kidding me’.

For the next few days, I kept watching their songs and videos. Fire, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Dope. I started devouring their interviews—and for the first time ever, an interview was making me laugh, uncontrollably.

These were such chaos-ridden, joy-filled exchanges with RM hastily trying to steer the mic away from more pitfalls, while the others were just so unabashedly themselves. I had become an ARMY, and I just don't know when I did—somewhere between the interviews, tearing up while watching the rather painful I need You and Run videos, and becoming attached to their Run BTS episodes from their own variety show.

I didn’t understand the rules of the games like J-Hope, but I was in it just to watch them have fun. Life was suddenly a lot easier to handle, when BTS was around. The weight of homesickness was suddenly lighter—as if I had found friends in the UAE itself.

And, there was something different about being in the ARMY fandom. Quickly, my Twitter feed changed.  While doomscrolling continued, I was being fed clips after clips of the boys, songs and ‘threads’ of their little moments together—what I could not find online, I would see in these clips. RM protecting his team from intrusive questions. Jin taking care of his bandmates, especially Jungkook.

Suga, with his quiet affection. And each friendship between the members—there was something almost wholesome and powerful to watch in every video. I needed to watch more.

For the first time, a band wasn’t just a band.

I was falling for the brotherhood too. In the little waves of loneliness, it was comfort to watch them fight fiercely for each other. They were seven: And the world could not say otherwise. They made it clear, as V said, "Please love all seven of us, without leaving any out." An innocent statement. But in those days, that clear assertion of friendship and warmth was what I needed.

Another instance was when, Suga couldn't attend a concert or award show, because of a shoulder surgery, a cut-out of his was adamantly brought.

And in my loneliness of a new city, that felt somehow healing. The laughter, cheer, and warmth. I felt the strange rush to be protective. This was a new world, a quiet secret that you could cherish, and somehow, people mocking or laughing at you about it, didn't hurt.

I quickly found ARMYs. And, I loved the person that I became when talking about BTS with them. There was a rush of excitement to dissect each concert moment, Weverse Live, watch Run BTS together, collapse into laughter over recent antics. There's laughter, and there's laughter over BTS.

It always felt like a spring day, to be in this fandom.

How did I know that this was a different kind of devotion for a band of boys that I had ever felt before? I didn’t—till I actually teared up during RM’s honest, raw confession at the 2022 Festa, where he felt that the band had ‘lost its way’. They needed time, and they would return, better than before.

My friends thought that my dedication to the band would end now. They were going solo.

And that didn’t matter. I followed their solo journeys, from J-Hope’s Jack In the Box, to the last, Jungkook. I followed their military service updates, teared up each time, listened to their songs and waited for news, I cheered for songs that I wasn’t too fond of—only because they had hit Number 1 on the charts. It was a strange feeling—to be so absorbed in a band—that at some point, the music became secondary to the people themselves.

What is the feeling, when you just want to see celebrities happy and share in their joy? But you don't do that for celebrities. You do that for close friends.

And that's the thing about BTS.

They didn't feel like celebrities, distant and hidden behind the screen. They were friends to us, people who did their laundry while chatting with fans, cooked, shared their anecdotes about laugh, dissolved into laughter about inside jokes.

They've been a friend.

And it’s been three years since I became an ARMY, waited for them to return from their military service, streaming them every day. Somehow, it never came to my mind to doubt that I might not be a fan when they return.

I just knew that I would be.