"The 'Magic' Words My Beloved Cat Gave Me: How 20 Years with a Rescued Cat Led Me to the TEDx Stage" Episode 4

"My Worthless Self, My Valuable Fingertips"

The first time I arrived in Tokyo, the skyscrapers were so tall that looking up at them made me dizzy.

A high-rise building in Shinjuku.

My first job was cleaning the president's office on the top floor all by myself.
I was drawn to it by the good hourly wage and the freedom of not having to talk to anyone.

At night, the view looking down from the empty room was breathtakingly beautiful.

(There are adults fighting in such an amazing place as this.)

Fruit shops selling durians, celebrities passing by,
drama filming.
Tokyo was full of excitement.
However, the "curse" deeply etched into my heart
would not let me go, even in this glamorous city.

"I am the kind of person who deserves to be bullied.
It doesn't matter what is done to me."

The trauma of my childhood was unconsciously driving me
into "excessive endurance."

Even when I was yelled at unreasonably at work or blamed for a colleague's mistake, I would just smile sheepishly and swallow it.
At my part-time job at an izakaya, I once missed the last train because of customers who wouldn't leave after closing, and I ended up shivering on a park bench until the first train with a canned coffee in my hand.

'Living in society means enduring this kind of pain.'

I told myself this, numbing my heart.

However, my body was more honest than my heart.

The fifth year.

Finally, my limit was reached.

My eroded heart refused not only to work but even to get up. I fled back to the family home I had hated so much.

Life at my parents' house was like being an invisible person.

Afraid of meeting people I used to know, I deliberately chose a workplace that took over an hour to reach, and I stayed holed up in my room on my days off.

When I looked in the mirror, I saw my face covered in breakouts from stress.

(I have no value left anymore.)

One day, while I was in the depths of that despair, I found myself glued to the TV screen.

It was a special program about resin clay.

Flowers, fruits, and animals created as if by magic from fingertips. It was overflowing with the 'freedom' I had once discarded.

With trembling hands, I signed up for a correspondence course.

At first, I was so clumsy that I couldn't even wrap tape around a wire.

Seeing my mother handle it skillfully right next to me, tears spilled out from a sense of shame and frustration.

'I will absolutely be able to do this.'

The passion to 'express myself' that I had locked deep inside my heart on that day I gave up drawing, erupted with fierce intensity.

Every day, I kneaded clay without sparing time for sleep.
Even when my hands screamed with tendonitis, I kept facing the clay board.

By the time I was finally able to create a single piece of work,

'I want to become a professional.'

I began to have that thought.

'Don't be ridiculous! Face reality!'

My mother was vehemently opposed. Perhaps those words came from her knowing the harshness of that path, having lived as a craftsperson herself.

But to me at the time, it felt like a new attack.

Even when she turned off the lights in the room while I was working, or intentionally kicked up dust near my work, I did not stop.

The first blog I ever wrote.

The first handmade event I ever participated in.

"Is this even profitable for you?"
I was sometimes thrown heartless words like that.

I got caught up in trouble between fellow artist friends and for some reason was ostracized by the group,
and in truth, I found the human relationships more exhausting than the struggle of creating my work.

However, more than that, there were people who saw my work and said, "It's cute,"
"I want this," and even traveled from far away just to see me.
Besides my customers, I had another place where I could get energy.

That was the "Shokotan Blog."

The many cute cats and the sight of Shokotan fully enjoying the things she loved were dazzling.

The first time I ever went to see a live concert in my life was also a Shokotan concert.

I watched Shokotan shining on stage and the fans around me fully enjoying the "now."

"I want to become someone who can create such a wonderful worldview."

The blog I had been watching just because the cats were cute had, before I knew it, turned into my true aspiration.

My work sold.
The things I created moved someone's heart.

In that moment, the thing that had bound me for so many years,

"I have no value,"

that curse crumbled with a loud sound.

(To become someone who can make a living just from clay)

That was the light worth betting my life on that I, who had been at rock bottom, had found for the first time.