The Day I Found a Reason to Live

For someone like me who has had suicidal ideation since elementary school, living is not easy.

My parents, who ran a small shop about a 30-minute drive from our home, always left me at my grandmother's house on weekends.

I have a younger brother and sister, but for some reason, I was always the only one left there.

A small, old, two-room wooden apartment. Just me and my hunched-over grandmother. My grandfather, who she said had a large age gap with her, had already passed away when I was two years old,

and since my aunt, who used to live with her, got married a few years ago, my grandmother had been living alone.

My grandmother, who made a living working part-time at a cannery, could not be said to be living a life of luxury.

Even so, she would find ways to provide me with meals and snacks.

Sometimes there would be strands of my grandmother's white hair in the miso soup or rice, but I never blamed her for it.

There was a small park in front of the house where I would play by myself. I had no one to play with.

I would spend my time deciding on themes like, 'Today, let's make an ice cream cake.'

I would read the set of 'Chibi Maruko-chan' manga volumes my aunt gave me over and over again (to the point where I memorized which lines were written on which page of which volume. I learned what a family was and how to talk to classmates by reading Chibi Maruko-chan).

Those were my routines.

My grandmother was not a talkative person.

Time in the apartment was always quiet.

Whenever I looked even slightly bored, she would immediately offer me snacks, saying, 'Eat this.'

I wonder if she was looking for a way to start a conversation.

About once a month, my grandmother would take me out to the supermarket or the shopping district.

The place I always went to in the shopping district was the stationery store.

My goal was to buy stickers.

Of course, I liked stickers, but that wasn't the only reason.

At the time, collecting and trading stickers was popular (this gives away my age), and
it was the only way I could participate in conversations with my classmates
(when we went to school after the weekend, everyone would talk about things like 'I went to such-and-such place with my family,' but I had no such experiences).

There were times I bought characters I didn't even like just to trade them with friends.

When I received about 1,000 yen in pocket money from my grandmother,
the time spent choosing and buying something I liked
was, for me, who couldn't even get my parents to buy me a 1,980 yen piece of clothing,
everything that gave me the freedom of choice.

Before I knew it, I became unable to speak at school.

I suppose it was selective mutism.

Even if a classmate spoke to me, I would get nervous,
and I could only cover my mouth with my hand and laugh, 'fufufu'.

Saying trendy words like 'seriously,' 'that's funny,' or 'super' was an incredibly high hurdle for me to clear.

In the graduation anthology, there was a section for asking questions to the person sitting next to you,
and the question for me was, 'Why do you cover your mouth when you laugh?'

It goes without saying that I wrote 'fufufu' in the answer box as well.

Because every day was like that, I had no place to belong at school or at home, and I had never experienced connecting with someone's heart.

And when I was going through my set routine in that old apartment,
for some reason, I would suddenly start thinking about 'death'.

Sadly, by the time I was in the third grade of elementary school, I was already thinking concretely about wanting to end my life.

My daughter, who is currently in the fourth grade of elementary school and sitting in front of me, is in the middle of her rebellious phase; she is a healthy, cheerful, and lovely child who can be selfish with her parents.

When she was born, my parents said to me,

'Congratulations! It must look like the world has changed!'

It is a cliché expression, but at that moment, I found the meaning of life.

A small life connected to me—from that moment on, that became the meaning of my life.

Dear my daughter, thank you for being born. Welcome to this beautiful new world. Her name, "Sakura," holds the meaning of a beginning.

mana✿