Letter to My Daughter: Fitting In

~Prologue~

I didn't know why I was smiling.

The office restroom.

Me, reflected in the mirror.

Fifty-two years old.

The corners of my mouth are turned up slightly. My eyes are not smiling.

I don't know when I started wearing this face.

There was a meeting today, too. The department manager said something completely off the mark.

"You're absolutely right," Anne said.

A junior colleague made a clearly incorrect proposal.

"I think that's a good perspective," Anne said.

I didn't hurt anyone. I didn't make any waves. The work proceeded without a hitch.

That was Anne's job.

For nearly thirty years, that's how I've done things.

Before she knew it, Anne had mastered the art of "playing it well." Kill your emotions. Hide your true feelings. Match the other person's pace.

I don't hear my own footsteps.

I thought that was what it meant to "become an adult."

No, I had decided to think that.

On the way home, while waiting for the train on the platform, Anne suddenly thought to herself.

Did I say a single word of my own today?

I didn't find an answer.

That night, Anne stopped by her parents' house.

It was a house where no one had lived since her mother passed away. She came once a month to tidy up.

Her father's study was the last thing left to do.

A bookshelf. An old desk. Drawers.

Deep inside a drawer, there was a notebook.

Her father's diary.

Aged handwriting.

Anne gently opened the notebook.

Lessons from Father's Diary

1. The true nature of "becoming an adult"

In the middle of the diary, there was this sentence.

Anne's hand stopped as she read that sentence.

"I do not think that matching someone else's pace and silencing your own footsteps is what it means to become an adult."

She read it again.

For thirty years.

Anne had been doing exactly that.

She read her boss's mood and chose her words carefully. She swallowed her true feelings so as not to hurt her juniors' emotions. In meetings, she diluted her own opinions so as not to break the atmosphere.

She had called that "acting like an adult." She had thought of it as being "mature as a working professional."

But Father does not call that "growing up."

Anne felt a slight tightness in her chest.

Where did my own footsteps go?

When did I erase them?

I never intended to erase them from the start. I just, little by little, held back, adapted, and swallowed them down.

Before I knew it, I could no longer hear my own footsteps.

Anne turned the page of the diary.

(2) A Permit to Return to Myself

On another page, there was this sentence.

Father had written about the time he received a diagnosis of "adjustment disorder."

Anne read those words over and over.

"An admission ticket to return to the self I had left behind for so long."

Anne tried replacing it with her current self.

I am not broken. But I have felt that something has been wrong for a long time.

That sense of emptiness after a meeting. That faint nausea after saying, "You are absolutely right." The unsmiling eyes in the mirror.

Perhaps that is not a sign that I am broken.

Perhaps it is a sign that my true self, whom I have left behind for so long, is still there.

Anne looked out the window.

A residential area at night. Every house had its lights on.

My father called that time when he was cut off from society his "zero point."

Where is my zero point?

Where is the version of me that existed before I learned to silence my footsteps?

3. Someone who is happy for the existence of zero

Near the end of the diary, there was a sentence like this.

The "daughter" mentioned is me.

It took Anne a little while to process that fact.

When my father was cut off from society. When he was nobody. When he could do nothing.

The one who was there was me, at one year old.

The one-year-old me didn't understand anything. Not what my father was diagnosed with, not that he had lost his job, nor what his position in society was.

I just grabbed my father's clothes with my tiny hands.

The diary said that was all it took for my father's "today" to begin.

Anne's eyes grew hot.

I wasn't doing anything. I was just there.

That was everything to my father.

Fifty-two-year-old Anne thought to herself.

I have always thought that I had to do something, be useful to someone, or navigate things skillfully.

But the one-year-old me created my father's today just by being there.

I wasn't trying to be useful. I wasn't trying to navigate things skillfully. I wasn't trying to silence my footsteps.

I was just there.

That was all.

Anne closed her diary.

The study was quiet.

It smelled of old bookshelves.

Anne stood up slowly.

"I don't have to silence my own footsteps."

She didn't say it out loud. But she said it clearly in her heart.

For thirty years, she had silenced them. She might continue to silence them from now on. It might not change immediately.

But tonight, Anne knew.

That was not what it meant to "become an adult."

Her father had taught her that.

~Epilogue~

At the meeting the next morning, the manager said something off-base again.

Anne paused for a moment.

"There might be a slightly different way to look at it."

It was a small voice. It wasn't a clever way of putting it. The atmosphere in the room wavered for just an instant.

But today, Anne did not swallow that waver.

It wasn't a big change. She didn't even know if anyone had noticed.

But Anne could hear it.

The sound of my own footsteps, just a little.

[Afterword]

To my beloved

When you were one year old, I was nobody. I had lost my job, was cut off from society, and didn't even know how to handle myself. Yet every morning, you would grab my clothes with your tiny hands. That alone was enough to start my day. You weren't doing anything. You were just there. That was everything to me. So, please don't think that matching someone else's pace and silencing your own footsteps is what it means to be an adult. Please don't call forcing yourself to smile 'fitting in.' Please don't think that working means nothing more than consuming yourself completely. Just by you being there, someone else's day begins. You, at one year old, taught me that. The sound of your footsteps is the proof of the path you have walked.

From your father