TPA 48

I'm not feeling well again today. I think I shouldn't have ate all that food before bed. If I was younger, I would have bounced from that. Today, I'm feeling slow. I went to my psychiatrist today and we had a long talk. I told her how some days I don't feel worthy of love. She's upped my dossage and my dad said something interesting. He talked about how we're trying, together, to get me to a better place. He said that this is a team effort, always has been. We talked about other things like my trauma from highschool. I told her that I started taking my anti depressant pills when it became clear that everyone else was maturing but me. It was like they could accept my strangeness when I was younger but now that we were young adults that I wasn't allowed to be John anymore. I found something else interesting too, this requires a bit of a story. So I found out that one of my favorite developers released a game about Junji Ito, one of the greatest horror manga artists of all time. I'll get more into his work later, right now I want to talk about what I found. 

Junji has worked on a manga based on a book titled "No Longer Human." It's about a young man growing up in a transitional time in Japan when Western ideals clashed with tradition. The young man starts to act like a clown to avoid negative attention. And I said to myself "that was me!" I did the same thing to carve out an identity and avoid this prosecution from my peers. Maybe I'm more messed up than I thought. For years and even now, I think that I'm a failure of a human being. I judge others so harshly because I inflict the pain that was put on me. It's a nasty cycle isn't it? Hurt people hurt people. I don't know if I can turn this over to God. It seems like I'm stuck in a painful loop. Junji Ito based the work off of someone else's novel and let me say, the Japanese have a lot of sorrow in their society. There's pleny of suicides and this honor code system built into them that terrorizes them. They torture themselves. The story goes on from there but I didn't read the rest. I'm not in the right state of mind to read more. I not in any good state of mind. 

Right now it's a little hard for me to accept that I'm not a burden, that I'm loved. It's hard when you think of yourself as such a miserable creature. I'm not suicidal anymore but I'm surviving. That seems like all I can do at this moment. With my psychiatrist, we talked about increasing my doses so that I can be better and feel better. But I think part of this is something that needs to heal spiritually. I know that God wants to reach out to me, but can I accept it?

I redid the character test with my folks. It was different than last time because sometimes I write down what I wish I was rather than what I am. For example, I'm not good at keeping promises. That doesn't mean I have bad intentions, promises are hard to keep. But that doesn't mean I'm a bad person, my parents tried to assure me of that. I don't always follow through with things. I get it. I have a mountain of games I haven't finished yet. I guess I'll have some work to do tonight. Maybe that will make me feel better. 

Going back to Junji Ito, there are two stories of his that have always stuck with me, but for opposite reasons. One is ridiculous that it's almost a horrific comedy and the other is a terrifying for what it implies. First is Hanging Balloons. A girl named Kazuko sits alone in her house curled up in a ball while a voice calls out to her from her window. A voice that's just like her own. Flashback a few days ago when Kazuko's best friend Terumi was found hung by her throat on a telephone pole. Everyone wonders how she climbed up there and why there wasn't a note left behind. At the funeral, Terumi's boyfriend, Shiroishi is attacked by fans of Terumi thinking he pushed her to suicide. At home, Kazuko sees on TV that a strange apparition has been seen around town that looks like Terumi. Later, photos are released of Terumi's head floating above the houses, like a balloon. There's a rip under her neck. At school, Kazuko and Shiroishi talk about how the head has been near his house. He says it feels like it's calling him. Kazuko follows Shiroishi at night and sees him following the balloon. He climbs up to the top of a tree where a noose, unseen to him, awaits him. His neck is hung before Kazuko can stop him and a balloon with Shiroishi's face appears with the noose. The pair of balloons kiss as Kazuko watches in terror. The next day, Kazuko and her friends are attacked by the noose balloons. Kazuko and a friend escape into an alley. Someone pokes the balloon with a crossbow bolt which acts like a voodoo doll and causes the friend to deflate like the balloon. More balloons show up all over town and the world. The dad, like a fool, tries to go to work anyway. He assures his family that he'll be fine and there's this sick sense that he doesn't seem to be too perturbed by what is happening. He's so careless about this situation that it's almost funny. I think it means that he's ignoring the problem. He is caught and floats away. Kazuko's brother tries to get food and runs out with an umbrella. His balloon catches the umbrella and the brother is able to get away. Soon more balloons are completed and even Kazuko's mother falls victim after worrying about her brother. We come back to the beginning where Kazuko hears her own voice. She sees her brother's sillohette beconing her to open the window. Only she finds that her brother's body has been impaled on the umbrella as her own balloon reaches for her with the noose.

So what's the meaning? It seems to be this theme of grief and a desire to commit suicide. That's an interpretation I've heard but I've my own theories. Without too much thought, I think it's about peer pressure or how a terrible act can cause an avalance of terrible acts. One death can cause another to happen. I've heard of suicide pacts or these suicides that inspire other ones to happen. People commit suicide more often when there they know someone close who has committed suicide. At least that's my theory. It also seems like the Terumi fan club had some influence. There might have been pressure on the girl and suicide may have seemed like a solution, a way to float away from it all. It feels like there's a deeper meaning behind the story that I can't grasp just yet which frustrates me. Just a thought. I'll talk about my second favorite tomorrow.