4. Back then my parents' approval meant everything to me.
5. That was all that got me up in the mornings.
6. I wanted them to accept me, or at least let me off the hook.
7. I'd never given it any thought.
8. As for what I actually wanted for myself... I had no idea.
9. "I've got to get into a normal routine."
10. "Anyway,"
Carregando…Carregando…
1. I ate a little at a time, and they gradually went away.
7. If I could stop myself from feeling hungry all the time, the overeating episodes should stop...
8. It was hard for me to stay home, so I spend the days walking around.
10. "I... I did it...!"
11. Before long I'd found a normal routine (waking in the mornings, sleeping at night, three meals a day).
12. "It's such a simple thing... But I feel like I've come so far!"
14. "All right, next I need a new job!"
Carregando…Carregando…
3. At a bakery
4. I started working part-time, five days a week.
5. "Eh..."
8. "Look!"
9. "But it's only part-time, right?"
10. "It's not like you're actually in employment."
12. Who cares about real employment... I should go show her all the money I'm making there...
2. "Huh?"
3. "I'm gonna move into my own place!"
6. "I saved up a million yen!!"
8. I believed this for five years, but it turns out it's not necessarily true...
9. "Oh. All right then..."
10. "O..."
11. "Nobody'll rent you a place if all you have is a part-time job."
12. "Nah, you won't be able to."
13. "It was all for nothing..."
14. "What am I gonna use this money for...?"
15. "Eh?"
19. "Here, since I'm still living at home let me pay rent!"
1. "You can pay rent once you find yourself a real job."
2. "Dear... I can't accept that."
3. There's nothing I want. There's nowhere I want to go.
5. "What am I even earning this money for?"
6. "It'd be too hard to stay in that house all day though, might as well go to work..."
7. Never feeling happy or comfortable anywhere.
8. I was always rushing around somewhere, no matter what time it was...
1. And when I can't tell what it is I really want.
2. When out of a sense of inferiority I'm trying to pretend I'm better than I am,
3. Recently I've realized there are two things that make me really uncomfortable,
5. "I'm gonna try for a real job."
6. "...There's nothing for it..."
7. And so despite being a college dropout, I started going to interviews outside of the usual hiring season.
8. "Bleurhh"
9. I'd worked two years at the bakery, but in the end I lost all motivation, and couldn't wake up in the mornings.
10. All that mattered was what my parents thought of me.
11. "Your hair's all scruffy!"
13. "I'm going to the interview."
14. "I'm tired of this... We've done enough!"
15. I didn't have time to listen to my own feelings, or what I really thought of myself back then.
1. "My speciality is folding red bean jam into An-pan."
2. "I worked part-time as a baking assistant for two years."
3. At a different bakery.
4. "When you work social hours like these, you lose touch with the people around you. Everything becomes about work."
5. "The mornings are early, and you'll be down for the night as soon as you get home."
6. "You're sure?"
7. "I don't mind!"
8. "I..., I don't mind."
9. "Are you fine with that? I wouldn't recommend the job to my own daughter, is all."
10. I didn't get the job.
11. It felt good to talk to him...
12. For my parents.
13. It's gonna be early and busy, but the manager smiled at me... Seems like he'd be nice to talk to...
1. They spent a long time smiling and talking with me here, too.
2. An Osteopathic clinic.
3. "There used to be loads of osteopathic clinics around here, but now we're the only ones left, y'know?"
4. "But you can really tell when someone likes the job that they're doing."
5. "It's probably the same in the food business,"
6. "...Ehm..."
7. "So here at the clinic, what is it you really want to do?"
8. They'd ask what I really want to be doing...
9. Even here, I guess...
1. I accidentally gave him an honest answer.
2. "Probably manga."
3. "What are you doing here?"
4. ...and I was trying to hold it back the whole time... In the end I started crying.
5. He was so nice and friendly towards me,
6. ...He told me, and I went home.
7. "Why don't you give drawing manga a shot?"
8. I was supposed to be there for an interview, but after all that...
9. "So what are you doing here!?"
10. was the second bakery I tried.
11. The killing blow,
1. "But could you tell me one thing you like doing, or think you're good at?"
2. "It doesn't have to be to do with bread,"
3. "......"
4. "Ehm mm..."
5. "Eh?"
6. "I was short-listed for a newcomers award pretty recently..."
7. "I like drawing manga... I've even submitted some stuff to maga- zines..."
8. "Hmm, hmm."
9. "But when you were talking about manga just then, it was like your eyes lit up."
10. "Up until now you've been giving off these 'I'm just here cause I have to be' kind of vibes,"
11. "Listen,"
1. "And well, that's the kind of passion we want here."
2. That's how it ended (wasn't I meant to be there for an interview?).
3. "I think you should keep working hard on your manga."
4. Or whether I should've been thankful, or...
5. I wasn't sure if I should've apologized for wasting their time,
6. "!"
1. "Hey!"
2. "?"
3. "Good luck with your manga!"
4. "I really meant it,"
1. But then, nobody had really affirmed it either.
2. Nobody had ever rejected the manga I'd drawn before...
3. I don't know why they had connected with me so deeply...
4. "Uuhhh"
5. "Waa-hhh"
6. His voice, his grin, and the way he clenched his fist at me and just said it...
7. I was a mess, all the way through the station and on the train home.
8. But after a single "Good luck with your manga",
9. I didn't have any basis for thinking this, but I told myself things like these were totally fine for me to believe.
10. "He must have been speaking from his heart... I'm so happy right now..."
1. ...I thought to myself.
2. "I'm definitely going to try my best..."
3. "I'm so happy..."
4. Even now I don't think I can come right out and say "I like manga!", but...
5. "Good Luck!"
6. To this day when I'm working on drafts and I think back to his face, my back arches and I sit up.
7. But no matter what my interviewers were going through inside, they all smiled, and seemed so understanding.
8. I'd imagined being a grown-up to be so hard, and boring...
9. Something else I'd learned from the interviews I went to...
10. And I couldn't just sit around obsessing about what my parents thought of me forever.
11. "I'm back."
12. I wanted to be a grown-up like that.
1. "Why."
3. "I've decided to start drawing manga."
5. Since then, all I've heard from my parents are the same lines about 'real jobs' and 'real members of society'.
6. If I was to compare the feeling of 'trying to make myself seem better than I am',
7. But in terms of feeling uncomfortable,
8. I'd take the former, any day of the week.
12. and the feeling of 'accepting myself, but having the other people in my life completely reject the things that I'm doing'...
13. What do I do on new year's day when the family has to get together....
1. I'd spent around 3 years working part-time jobs, and sending in drafts to big magazines.
2. "I wasn't selected..."
3. But I really wasn't suited to working in a group (even just three people) so I quit.
4. "Welp, I'm off home."
5. "We're right in the middle of work!"
6. A friend invited me to join a circle who were making manga,
7. And we were all out of touch for several years.
8. "I only get the really basic stuff by sns."
9. That made it really hard to meet with them,
10. That the million yen I had in savings, and the occasional part-time wage I'd been earning ran out.
12. It was around this time,
13. "What do I do...?"
1. And so, I'd advanced one more level into the ranks of the 'unemployable'.
3. It'd been two straight years since I'd held down a part-time job,
4. or some, where I'd run away during the breaks, or just couldn't bring myself to walk in there in the first place.
5. "I'm done..."
6. First, aside from the twenty places I'd been rejected by, there were a few where I couldn't find the building (in which case I'd give up immediately),
7. It happened so often at all these places, I got scared of answering the phone thinking it'd be someone asking about me.
8. "I really don't have any choice but to die..."
9. "I can't go on living..."
1. "No, before I die..."
2. "I want to finish this manga, and make my debut..."
3. "Are you ok?"
4. "...hello?"
5. "..."
6. "Yes..."
8. Then, I won my first contest, and an editor called me up.
9. I need to be thankful to them.
10. "Whoa"
11. I might keep on about how tough it was having nowhere to belong, but I only managed any of this thanks to my parents letting me live at home the whole time.
12. In late August I was published for the first time, and got a little carried away.
1. Like I'd become a completely new person.
2. "Daylight!!"
3. It was like after so long in that dark cave, I was finally coming out into the light.
4. I couldn't think... The thoughts in my head would just keep slipping away, like I'd forgotten to close a latch somewhere. I found I couldn't read anymore.
5. "I can't re~"
6. "I can't read"
7. "Nothing"
8. But after two years passed the magic had worn off, and life was hard again.
9. I thought it'd all be smooth sailing after I'd gotten published but...
10. "What my parents think"
11. "My environment"
12. "What society thinks"
13. "Noise"
14. I felt like was being forced into this small and suffocating space... The outlines around what I was were getting blurry and indistinct.
15. I couldn't think anything anymore.
16. "Now we turn to the weather in kinki."
17. "Please turn left"
18. "Please turn left"
19. "Good afternoon then, cloudy, with a high of Northern parts of Nara will have sunny"
20. "Hello please turn left"
21. "Hello. Oh, of course, thank you for calling."
22. My empty mind was quickly occupied with all the noise around me,
2. It went on for several months, so I went back to the hospital.
3. Was that I found I could read again.
4. "I can read! I can read~!"
5. "...!!"
6. "I can understand what's written here!!"
7. I started taking medication, and one immediate improvement...
8. So I started reading through any books or articles that looked promising.
9. I wanted to know what had caused it, to find some hint to how I could fix my problems.
11. I stumbled upon this book called 'Children Undergoing Puberty, and Mental Illnesses' or something like that.
1. I've never been subjected to domestic violence, but...
2. "!?"
3. The illustration next to 'Trends in behaviour amongst children who've been subjected to domestic violence' gave me a start.
4. "Wait, isn't this whole thing based on me?" The thought literally passed through my mind.
5. It was an illustration sub-titled 'Excessively cling to their mothers'.
7. Sliding in between her back and the backrest.
9. "Move."
12. Even since I'd gotten bigger, I'd always clinged to my mother.
13. At school I'd cry at how much I missed her.
14. I hate my mother... Protest that I detest her and despise her and all the while I'm clinging on.
15. "Stop it!"
16. "Just let me touch your calves, anything!"
17. And well, here I am still clinging on at 28.
3. The book also said that "Contact like this can also cause sexual desire. This should be curbed and rejected." (though the picture WAS of a son and his mother).
4. a fair idea about this part, too.
5. I had,
6. But when my mother was about to get into the bath, I'd find myself watching her changing.
7. "Boobs!"
8. I think it's weird myself,
9. "Uwah."
10. "Boobs..."
11. There were also times I wanted to touch her so much, this happened.
1. I thought it might be one of those desires we all had as babies, and I just never got over mine.
2. "What happened to that rash? It cleared up?"
3. I was happy when she looked at or touched my butt.
4. Stuff like my desire to bury myself in her breasts were essentially a form of regression, right?
5. "Boobs! Boobs!"
6. Come to think of it, don't the desires of babies and sexual desire have a lot in common...? I don't really know, but...
7. I thought to myself.
8. "That's exactly what I'm looking for-!!"
9. "Ahh-!"
10. I saw somewhere on Twitter, that apparently women expect most men are just looking for "A mother who'll let them have sex with her",
11. What I was looking for was kinda more... The generic concept of a mother that everybody longs for... This great acknowledging and accepting presence...
13. Let me say here, maybe to some people maybe "A mother" is just "someone who does your housework for you".
1. "Hey... Stop it."
4. I want to do this to some girl who isn't my mother, and feel calm and safe with her...
5. "Ahhhhhh..."
6. As the name would suggest, it was about wanting to embrace (or be embraced by) a voluptuous mature lady.
7. Around then, I remember seeing one of Tabusa Eiko's articles, titled "I want to embrace a voluptuous mature lady".
9. I often saw people on Twitter writing "I feel the same way!"
10. At the end of the article there were all these stories from people who'd had similar feelings.
11. "I want to be held by an older woman..."
12. "I know! I feel you!"
14. "I wish my mother still hugged me."
15. "Wahhh..."
1. "And if we're doing them actually I'd rather she was young!"
2. "But I'd want to do things like that!"
3. "Aaah!"
5. "It's not like I want to do anything lewd with her."
6. "But I understand the feeling you're talking about! Feeling like there's this burning hole inside your chest, and only the embrace of an older woman could ever fill it..."
7. "I'm sorry (?) Maybe I was wrong after all!"
8. "Where is it!? That's all I want...!!"
10. "Accept me~"
11. "Ahhh... All I want is this idealized concept of a mother,"
12. In short, was this just my desire to have the same relationship with my mother which I'd had as a baby...?
13. The desire for a young woman (or at least pre-menopausal) who'd be like a mother to me...
1. "I just want to be hugged..."
2. "It can't be that hard, can it...?"
3. In any case, for once it was clear to me exactly what I wanted.
4. Now that I thought about it, I had a long history of wanting to be held.
5. I remember being 19, standing behind the register thinking "I don't care who... Two seconds. Even just a moment. I just want someone to hold me!"
6. I would think to myself.
7. "I don't care about any of this... Just give me a hug!!!"
8. I'd been to talk to psychiatrists and counsellors, but...
1. I didn't think this would be such a difficult feat to accomplish.
3. I don't care who it is, I just want to hold someone.
4. "Hey, what's that! There's something over here!"
7. Whilst my dream was still a long way away, I had all these intense expectations around the 'being hugged' part of the equation.
8. "Ya~y!!"
9. I thought just being hugged would fill the hole in my heart and fix everything.
10. "Is it cause I'm wearing the suit...?"
11. "Bye bye~!!"
12. "I got my wish, but it wasn't supposed to be like this..."
13. "...Eh?"
1. And having my back touched there made me happy and helped me relax.
2. Now that I think about it, back when I worked at the bakery I went to massage places all the time,
3. 40% was me wanting to be touched and relax during the massage.
4. "I want to feel calm..."
5. "My neck hurts..."
6. 60% of the reason was pain in my neck and shoulders,
7. Not that my neck or shoulders hurt or anything.
9. So I figured I'd just go to another osteopath,
10. I thought I could find them with Twitter, so I started searching for Free Hugs in my area every day.
11. "Maybe there'll be someone doing "Free Hugs"!?"
12. "Ah!"
1. And I never walked past any by chance either.
2. But no news of "Free Hugs" ever came.
3. "Aaa-hh!!"
5. I read an article recently, (admittedly about teenagers) saying that girls who try sex for the first time can be confused by the whole experience. What they were really looking for was someone who'd hold them, a safe and peaceful bed to sleep in, or food".
6. Just wanting to be held can make people hurt each other, and lead them into sexual relationships which they then come to depend on.
7. "I bet everyone wants to be held" I thought.
8. "How hard could that be..."
9. "I just want to be held by someone and feel safe in their arms..."
1. But anything above that, and I'd want to be with a woman.
2. Incidentally, I wouldn't be concerned about the gender of my free hugs,
3. It wasn't that I wanted to be a boy, more like I hated the whole idea of belonging to a gender...
8. As for why... I didn't want to admit that I was female.
9. Like I was scared of being overly defined by those expectations, I guess...
10. "You've grown into a woman!"
11. "So you're a girl after all, huh!"
14. That somehow before I was "me" I was a "woman",
15. "Fukken saved."
17. "He's totally naked, huh..."
20. And well, in any case there was also the fact I had more sexual interest in the female body.
1. Writing about it now, that's all I understand about how I feel.
3. But I didn't have some deep-seated lust for any specific woman or anything...
4. At the time I was clueless.
5. "...?"
6. "?"
7. As you can probably guess by "writing about it now",
8. At the time I'd fully expected I would live my entire life having absolutely nothing to do with sex.
10. Anything to do with sex
11. Or rather I'd decided I shouldn't think about things like that.
13. "I... I'd never thought of it like that...!!"
14. ...this really gave me a shock.
15. "I still remember deep down, the feelings I had back when I still treasured my life... (omitted) And so for my own sake, I don't want to become worthless."
16. Around then I remember reading in one of Taniguchi Natsuko's serializations,
1. "I..."
2. "Haven't been looking after myself at all...!!"
3. Now that I think about it, I'd always told myself...
4. "You don't have the right to eat food,"
5. "Don't eat anything!"
6. Or,
7. "You can't afford to sit around and do nothing!"
8. ...I would scold myself like this.
9. "I don't want to do anything!"
10. "I want to stop trying."
11. Because I didn't think anything of myself, the things I did manage to do were always nothing special.
12. "day..."
13. "That's nothing special!"
15. "......"
16. That's why I had no idea what I wanted to do, and finally I just couldn't think anything anymore.
17. I'd wanted to connect with people through work,
18. I'd wanted friends, or to be with people who were fun to be around. But i'd let it all slip away from me.
1. But maybe I was just trying to satisfy "The me trying to please my parents".
6. I'd assumed I was trying to respond to my parents expectations,
7. Wait, maybe...
8. I'd never been working hard to please them, I'd been working for "The me trying to please my parents"...
9. "Would you look at that! Whaddya think!?"
10. I'd always tried to be thinking of my parents, but they were never satisfied. After all...
11. Is that why I've had such a hard time figuring everything out...?
12. me>
13. I hadn't thought about what I wanted, I'd only prioritized "The me trying to please my parents"
14. "I want to know what I want...!!"
15. "I want to look after myself on my own,"
1. They should be in there somewhere.
2. I want to know my true feelings.
3. "I didn't think I was like this!!"
4. "I'm the real you~!!"
5. "Hey there~!!"
6. I don't care if it's something shocking or embarrassing or whatever,
7. Something shameful, embarrassing, and...
8. It was surely something I'd need to hide away, and never show to anybody...
9. At this point I didn't want any tiny details, I wanted to know what the huge shadow looming behind me was.
10. "It's sex."
11. "Ah,"
12. "I can't ever turn into a grown-up", I thought.
13. "I can't ever turn into a grown-up."
14. "I'll just be a kid."
15. I thought my parents would love me more if I was a child,
1. ...it felt something similar to this, didn't it?
2. "Don't grow up, stay a child."
3. "I don't wanna!"
4. The pain of being forced into a cramped and tiny space,
5. "At least let me think about it!"
6. Until then I hadn't even allowed myself to think about it.
7. I'm a grown-up already. It should be totally fine for me to think about sex, right? Or to be interested in it... Or even to have it...
8. "I'm going to sleep!!"
9. "I don't want to suffer like this anymore..."
10. "I want to be able to understand my own feelings."
11. "...I can't sleep!!"
2. "Ahh... Stop thinking and search!"
3. "There's a place super close by!?"
4. "Eh!?"
5. "My parents couldn't bear it if they knew their daughter had gone to..."
6. "...No no no no..."
1. "forget about my damn parents!"
2. "I thought I was going to,"
3. "...Ah!!"
4. ...With light self-inflicted injuries, a bald spot (Trichotillomania), were to just walk up to them.
5. But I figured they'd probably hate if someone prone to depression, sulking in with an eating disorder, bulimia and an inability to eat properly stretching back nine years...
6. "It might expand my horizons and give me something to write about (the magic excuse)...?"
7. "...But,"
8. You're dead right, 'past me'.
9. "Mnn hnn"
10. "Mm nnnh nnh"
11. By the way, my diary at the time read, "Perhaps experiencing this might let me find out a little more about my past".