Hi there~! How are you doing~?
Within these 3 days or so, I am starting to discover a lot about myself in enormous speed and this is so much fun!
The change started gradually from October last year but these 3 days are really different.
What that was to me to become an adult
My niece means a lot in my life.
Although I LOVE small people aka babies and children, I never wanted to have my own children in my life, but I am so grateful that I have my niece in my life.
I found this song about 2 weeks ago. I rarely listen to song lyrics but this one caught my attention and I did. I thought the lyrics was very beautiful. So I shared this song to my niece via Line.
I thought it was very beautiful that his mother kept telling him that he was just wonderful as he was and she wanted him to be himself no matter what. Yes, we have moments that we feel like we need to become someone else, don’t we? It must be so comforting to have someone keep telling you that you are OK as the way you are and being yourself makes other people happy.
Anyways my niece looked at the lyrics in a little different way. She thought it is a beautiful family love song, this part wasn’t quite different but she also wrote that “I can relate to him because I get scared to become an adult sometimes”.
I kind of wondered why she thinks that so I asked. She said “I am so happy right now that I am afraid it will be changed”.
Then I remembered that I didn’t want to become an adult when I was younger. To become an adult seems to me that to become boring. Seems that people start to care about many stupid things when they become an adult.
I had no role model that I would think “Oh I want to become an adult like that!”
Niece as my drive
My niece has been a strong drive for me.
She is now 20 and turning 21 this April. She will probably be working soon or later full-time, and I thought I wanted to be someone who she can feel hope for growing old. Haha, just remembered I felt so miserable getting old a few months ago XDDD. I felt becoming old is all about loosing what I can do.
I have believed for some reason that money is not that important for my life, although I also wanted to earn much money so I will be more comfortable and safe. I also believed that I wouldn’t be able to make much money.
Guess I had many complexed feeling on money.
By the way, I have had very low self-esteem.
I will probably write on and off on this blog about my depression though, I have had so many depression in my life. The obvious one started the year when I entered a university.
I went to one of the very prestigious universities in Japan. However, I got depressed in the first autumn in the university. I was depressed three years out of four years in the university between autumn and winter.
The reason I was depressed
I am starting to understand what was happening.
Back at the time, my mother kept telling me “we don’t have money”. All of us her kids were out-of-town studying at universities in every different prefectures. I assume it was so much money my parents needed to spend for our universities, houses, food etc. per year. I don’t know how that was possible.
For my parents education was very important and “education” for them back at the time was to have us get a university diploma.
It was kind of funny that my mother said a couple of months ago that “we believed that ‘education’ was to go to university when you guys were younger”. The conversation didn’t go on but come to think about it, it would be an interesting topic to talk about with her. I am curious what she thinks now o(*^^*)o!
Although I went to a high school that was famous for many of their graduates go to so-called “good” universities, there was one teacher saying “you guys don’t have to go to university”.
So I thought, “yeah I don’t know what I want to learn in university. I would like to work first and if I find something I want to learn, I can probably go to university then. I would probably have more motivation to study that way”. So I told my Mom about it when I was senior in high school.
She doesn’t even remember that I said that (yes, that was obviously not important for her and the memory slipped out from her mind while it was important for me, so I remember it XDD), so we didn’t have proper conversation about it. She said “Oh you can just find what you want to learn in university” or something, that I decided to study for the entrance exam.
The study for entrance exams was pretty tough for me. Looking back from now, I was studying to enter a university but I was not very sure why I was studying and that led me the pain. I was probably depressed then too XDDD.
The sense of making own choices in life
Whether I decided to go to a university or not, if I had proper conversation with my parents about if I should go to a university then or not, things have been a lot different I believe.
There were so many things I chose without having the feeling that I CHOSE it.
This eat up our energy I think. Because if you are the one who made the decision no matter what that is, you won’t lose the goal. You know where you are going and why.
To me back then, hearing my mother saying “we don’t have money” over and over again and all the shitty stuff in her life, “me studying in the university” = “giving our family a burden”.
I was using a lot of family money and didn’t even know what I wanted to study. What fun was that, you know?
Does that worthwhile doing it?
I remember practicing throwing a ball everyday when I was 4th grade. When I came home from school, I practiced over and over so I could throw the ball exactly where I wanted.
Back then, I loved “dodgeball”. The dodgeball is something you play with several people in two teams. There are two courts like soccer and we throw a ball to people in the other court aiming to hit them and kill. If you hit someone with the ball, he/she die in the game. The team with more people left in the court win.
I was so good at dodging the ball that I was almost all the time the last person who was in the court, however I could not catch the ball at all so even if I didn’t get killed until the end, I couldn’t make my team win because all I did was dodging the ball. Needed to catch the ball and kill the opponents to win.
I remember asking guys to have special training after school so I would be able to catch the ball. Once I successfully caught the ball of Kankan, a boy named after a giant panda in Ueno zoo, Tokyo back at the time XD, he was chubby and big could throw the most powerful ball in the class. I caught his ball but it hit my solar plexus and got me not be able to breathe. I fell down the ground after throwing the ball I caught that Kankan threw, but it was so fullfilling. Oh my goodness, dogdeball was really everything in my life then. It is so sweet.
Anyways, let get back to the practice of throwing a ball. There is a park right next to my parents’ house and it has a wall that I can throw a ball and have it bounce back.
I throw the small ball we had in the house to the park wall everyday single day so I can throw exactly where I wanted to. I eventually gained the control. I don’t remember how long I practiced. But I kept practicing until I gained the control I wanted.
I think this is how things work.
I just realised while I write this, I was very lucky that no one told me “What the heck are you doing?” or “What the value of gaining control in throwing a ball” or “That isn’t important for you future”.
Back then, getting that ball control was probably the most important thing in my life. I can tell you this because I was practicing everyday until it got dark so I couldn’t see the ball. I don’t remember having fun over it, but I knew it was what I needed to do to get what I wanted. I was just doing the thing I needed to achieve what I wanted to achieve until I eventually do.
But as I grew older, my parents value started to be involved in my life. I can see now, that my mother lost her faith in raising her children while we grew older. She became not sure what was important. She thought she needed to guide and direct us to certain way so we could be happy. But we knew where we wanted to be headed. We did not need the guidance.
Those are not important
When I am depressed, I feel I am nothing. Of course that is how we feel when we are depressed.
I feel that the things I feel are important aren’t important for real. I feel some things are important because I am weird.
I hate working long hours. I never liked it and hardly did. It is kind of weird since I just heard a friend of mine who works in Japan mentioned about long hours in Japan. I have worked long hours short period of time in my life but usually shorter time even if other work long hours.
Anyways, I saw the fact that I don’t want to work long hours as one of my failures when I was depressed. But for real, it is not my failure. It is just my preference and my sense of values. What I need to do is keep and value that.
I somehow thought that I have to be OK to work for 9AM~5PM to be a proper adult. Efficient worker. I think that is what my parents believed and also most of the adults in Japan believe.
My parents thought that working at a so-called “good” company will lead us a good life. They believed it, but apparently none of us were interested in it, because non of us 3 siblings works at a corporation now.
I have never imagined myself working in a corporation and climbing up the promotional ladder. It have never attracted me. I wanted to become skillful so I don’t have to belong to any organizations. That appeared to me a cool way to live.
I did not believe that working in a big company lead us a happy life because my father worked in a really big company in Japan but I knew my Mom wasn’t happy at all. We were not happy as a family at all either.
Bucause of the fact my Dad was working at a so-called “good” company & us not being happy, I kind of misunderstood that “working in a big corporation is not good”, haha. My mother was telling us one thing but showing the complete opposite by herself. Ironic.
I know now that it wasn’t about the size of companies. Not even the company he worked for. It was all about my family.
The issue of my parents didn’t know how to communicate each other that my Mom did not understand some of the things my Dad did or said to her and to her children.
All the things happened in my life, all the fragments I could never be connected are becoming into one piece now. I feel like I am understanding a lot things in different depth than I did before. Starting to remember a lot of small things I thought, felt when I was younger, and kind of re-discovering myself.
The values I treasure
Freedom means a lot in my life and I kind of have forgotten about that.
No, that is not precise.
I knew freedom was very important for me, but somehow I thought I needed to do things in limited freedom. Most probably because I believed that that is how the life is. But now I know, that is not true. It was that way, because I believed that is how it is supposed be.
What is the most important thing in your life? It is fun to understand that it is OK to follow your heart.
In our educational system, certain things are taught to be good. I think that is the same in most of the countries nowadays. If not, that is great.
In many cases, evaluating things in limited ways discouraged a lot of us while we grow up. The worst part is that we start to believe that it is true. We start to believe that we need to be a certain way to be great as a person, while that is not very true. I think that is making a lot of us lost in our lives.
Is it really important for your life?
What you think is important for you is absolutely important for you. You know it. We all know it.
When I am depressed, I feel so unsure about everything. I cannot trust myself.
I am not sure what I like. I got even not sure if I loved my boyfriend, became not sure if my niece was important for me. All the things became uncertain, it may sound weird if you haven’t been depressed but this is how I feel when I am.
It was because I felt what was important for me was not important in REAL LIFE. I thought things appeared to me are important because I was the weirdo.
I now say to myself. No Nozomi!! What you think is important IS IMPORTANT for you! Remember that dogdeball practice?? You couldn’t catch the ball at all first, but after practice eventually you could even catch Kankan’s ball! You couldn’t throw well at first but eventually you could throw wherever you wanted!!
What matters
What you think is important matters to your life. Actually that all matters! It is all you have to care about.
It doesn’t really matter what someone else think about it, because we are all different from the beginning. We are all weirdo in the first place. We are all weird that means we are all special in our own way.
If someone tells you that something is important for you and if you don’t think that is. That means that is important for that person but probably not for you. If you are careful about what you feel, the answer is there. Your body, your feeling, everything are telling what is important for you. What is important for you now.
OK! That’s all for today. Thanks for reading!!
I have a open-mic at a bar tonight. It is one of the fun stuff I do now.
Enjoy your day too!! Oh and happy Valentine’s day!!
