Text and Photo by Yurina
Translated by Yurina and Vosot Ikeida
“I can torment myself even more”
The demand issued from the deep side of my body
echoes in my head
Whenever I find out some room in my heart
just to make the torment a part of my body,
immediately I fill it with follies
“I can't grow unless I feel painful
If I don't get hurt, I won't get anything
Only after I get hurt, I can get something.”
This stupid belief stuck in my mind
looks like waiting to make my view narrower and make my whole life “torment”.
Whatever I do
I drive myself
To fail on purpose
To lower my esteem
To disturb others
To be looked at with strange eyes
To get isolated from the surroundings
And
I am relieved that I have been hurt more than anybody else,
I stick to keeping it as my identity,
I wish to exist in this world with a worn-out spirit.
I always want to ridicule myself,
to laugh at the fact that the worthless human like me lives in this world
and to keep the isolation by making a gap in position with others with ridiculing myself.
Losing pleasure, joy, sense of superiority, intimacy to people, and self-esteem,
I desire to suffer
If I get a brighter mood or my pain becomes smaller,
my time of torment until now will have been wasted.
That is scary, sad, and “vexing”.
I have ever beautified torments,
so if I started to live more easily,
I would feel like denying the meaning of holding pains
denying the sense I acquired in torments
as if my existence had never existed.
Suddenly, I wake up from my self-consciousness.
How much will I want to hurt myself ?
“You will keep on living in such a hard state to live for life.”
Another person inside me
whispered in my head like other's affairs.
I knew that if I kept on living in the way I was, I would get more painful.
Nevertheless
my body took me in a direction that makes it harder to live.
There was no way to spare time
only with the pain and suffering that I could get immediately.
If I don't keep feeling pain,
If I don't keep making new wounds, I couldn't feel I was alive
Looking at the scars that wouldn’t be healed,
I thought I could compete in this world
only with the amount of torments on my back
I didn't feel guilty
to hurt myself.
To my fully-wounded heart that I can't find a part of to hurt
and can't be chopped anymore
still I pierce with a blade relentlessly
I do not give rest
to my exhausted and screaming heart.
I continue to impose cruelty on my heart.
I can't find any meaning to protect my heart
and can't reach any method to protect it,
I continue to scratch my heart
Why don't I try to get out of this difficult situation to live in?
I ask myself.
“Because I will be sorry for my past self who was feeling painful if I get easier to live.”
By continuing to suffer, I keep my painful memories of the past in myself,
At the same time, I protect my old self, and take care of it,
I save that way of life carefully in my body.
I did not come across anybody who approved
my way of living, my presence.
So, I always recalled my painful memories,
so that I could take care of myself on my own
so that I could understand the painful feelings of the others more than anyone else
I put my past self also in the vessel called “the present self”
by stopping the time, preserving,
as if I soak my whole body into formalin to keep as it is.
I want to delete my old self from my memories.
In my past, there is only myself I dislike.
However, I have to take care of both of my present self and my old self together,
otherwise I can't spend every day as I live every moment.
But,
one time I noticed after keeping on face the root of my guilt.
The truth was
I was not really feeling “sorry”
for the people other than myself.
If I am feeling sorry, I will be regarded as a good child
Because I knew that as far as I was humble,
I could barely secure myself, at least could keep my space to be in safely in the world.
After all
I was thinking only about “myself”.
I looked like thinking, “Sorry for being alive”
but I was having my blood boiling at the deep side with holding the contradiction,
“Why don’t you let me live more comfortably?”
“Life is always hard.”
“In the end, a human is going to suffer some time in one’s life.”
“I have this life now, just because I came through that hard time.”
“I obtained a lot of things because I got over the pain.”
The beautiful sayings that I used to hear when I was a child.
Many words spoken from the mouths of adults made me obey, brainwashed me, and obsessed my mind.
“It is just to hurt, when you grow”
This belief imposes me to hurt myself,
saying “Go for suffering”
Is this curse from myself in the past when I sacrificed myself…?
Voices are heard from the farthest edge of torment.
“My body can still endure to suffer, right?”
“Can you still go on like this?”
I can't stop being the believer in pain.
< Profile of Author >
Yurina I met Hikipos in February 2018.
“Why am I so much in pain...?” Perpetually submerged by hikikomori, anguish and ache, I became unable to look away from this pain of living. I'd like to assemble words in this gap between myself and society.
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