Hey <333 thanks for prodding me to talk about this!

It’s been an odd time for me since Yeollie came back. I joined the fandom during his hiatus pre-enlistment and had never seen him be active, so, all of my Chanyeol thoughts were formed in retrospect. This is important to note because I know I had a way more visceral reaction to the changes in him than most of the old-timers I know. This is a meta that came out of a personal need to understand why I’ve been feeling like this, and it took a long time because of how much I was feeling it. Understand that this is not me negating the conclusion I came to before I come to it but explaining why a lot of this answer will be about my own experience watching Yeollie.

When he first came back, from the very first short livestream he did, it was obvious that something had changed. He was no longer comfortable on camera: his body language was closed off and stiff, and his expression was fawning and anxious. He was smiling but it wasn’t a comfortable smile. And he used Zzar like a little shield between him and other people. Considering this was the very first time he was talking to us in two years, though, it made sense for him to be this anxious. But then it just continued happening.

It felt to me at the time like he was putting on an act of softness, or reading from some sort of PR script; during his official first live stream to meet fans post-enlistment, and then in his new form of vlogs, and the messages he sent on bubble (always excluding his own face), those all felt so distant in comparison to his old spontaneous lives and his nng vlogs, which all had way more soul and personality in them. I just couldn’t understand why he’d choose this form of communication in public when we’d already seen him so bare and real before, and all that would occur to me as an explanation were words like: act, shield, pr, distance, choice.

And that was unfair of me, but in my own defense, I think I didn’t say much about it because I knew, even at the time, that it wasn’t fair to him.

Over that entire time, there’d be glimpses of the old Chanyeol, mostly around Sehunnie, in the fancon bts videos, but sometimes also around the Exos in Cream Soda era. But that only happened rarely, and I just kept feeling like I miss Chanyeol.

The problem was that there was such a large gap between who he was before he took a hiatus and then enlisted, and then who he is now, and the shape of that gap felt mercurial and impossible to define for me, and therefor, the new Chanyeol also felt that impossible to understand. It was as if I skipped ten chapters of a novel, and then continued, trying to piece together what I’d missed in the narrative. It was frustrating as fuck. [Cake shaking the bars of her cage: LET ME IN]

But the solution was so simple, and I could have thought of it ages ago were I not so emotional about the whole thing.

A few days ago, I watched some videos of 2020 Chanyeol, in his promo activities with Sehunnie for 1bv, and then immediately after, played one of the behind the scenes videos of the fancon, and everything just… clicked. The shape of the gap was suddenly so easy to read after being confronted so viscerally with the before and after.

Chanyeol has come back with crippling anxiety.

His body language is closed off because he wants to curl in on himself instinctively. His expressions are soft but uncomfortable, no longer as confident as he was before, because he is terrified. He no longer trusts himself with the very unscripted lives he used to do because he doesn’t know if he can do it without panicking. He’s doing scripted videos because he WANTS to communicate and come back to his job and remember how to be himself, but the scripted things that other people plan for him are all that he is capable of making, those are the safest things to make.

That’s why he hasn’t released his solo yet. Of course he doesn’t want to do it like this. He’s been wanting to release an album forever, it would soil the entire thing to do it while feeling this mentally unready.

He feels safer around the Exos, safer around Sehun. But even then, he doesn’t have the carefree confidence that he used to. He’s been stripped bare of it. I don’t know what his service was like, but I do know that he was deeply hurt by the scandal, and the combination of those two experiences have left marks.

The only times I have seen him be entirely himself again –and this is where it gets insane– is when Sehun pokes him enough to make him want to put Sehun in his place. For example:

When Sehun pokes him with a toothpick.
When Sehun pretends not to listen to him as he speaks, and instead scrolls on his phone.
When Sehun tells him to go get them drinks.
When Sehun is poking him with the sharp edges of a tree.
When Sehun is struggling with a game and whining to get Chanyeol to come help him.
When Sehun refuses to acknowledge that Chanyeol has won a bet.
Etc.

Whenever these things happen, and ESPECIALLY when they happen close together in the same conversation, Chanyeol’s shoulders relax, and he suddenly looks as big as he actually is in comparison to Sehun– whereas before he was so curled in on himself that they almost look the same size– Chanyeol’s sitting posture becomes more relaxed, leaning back, either arms or knees spread, ankle over a knee. His expression becomes less stilted and more animated, and his smile stops being so fawning.

And whenever this happens, Sehun is delighted with himself, almost always giggling like a maniac as if his plans have worked.

This suggests to me that Chanyeol simply feels too fragile and uncertain of himself to let himself stand at full height and trust his instincts in what to do, and being given permission to set his own boundaries within the game that Sechan play: the long-standing dynamic that includes all their in-jokes and private little language– The Bit™– this makes him feel steadier and more in control, like he can be certain of at least that decision, and knows without a doubt that Sehun will listen to him once he acts.

Seeing the ways with which Chanyeol recovers some of himself makes seeing what he’s struggling with so easy. If being given implicit permission to scold Sehun and make him apologize and then succeeding makes Chanyeol feel like himself, then what he’s struggling with is crippling self doubt and powerlessness.

Knowing the shape of his anxiety, and why it has transformed him in this way, makes him so much more legible to me. It makes his actions and his mannerisms make sense. It even makes Good Enough make sense. It makes a little connection between 2020 Chanyeol and 2022-2024 Chanyeol that I can easily follow along, even without knowing the specificities, and reach this new person, who is still Chanyeol. And that is all that I’ve ever needed.

I can now look at him without confusion, and appreciate what he’s doing for what it is: recovery, and an attempt at being himself again.

It saddens me that it’s so difficult for him now to be himself in public, and I hate that being with Sehun was helping him but then Sehun had to leave so now Chanyeol is facing the public on his own, but it all makes sense, and he is being so brave. I hope he beats his anxiety horrors soon.