Post by Tsukiakari on Mar 2, 2013 20:29:52 GMT
My name is Kanna Suzaku, and I am a useless person. That might seem like a very depressing or overdramatic way to put it, considering I'm talking about myself, but I'm not the only person who thinks that way. I only wish I was. But, like the proverbial man told to stand before the world and affirm that 2 + 2 = 4, only to be told by everyone that he's wrong, I guess I've ended up agreeing with the cruel consensus with which I'm faced. Does that make me weak, or a failure? I suppose so. But, it doesn't matter whether I'm weak because I was always this way and simply can't make a move to change myself, or because I gave up on believing that I wasn't. In the end, it all means the same thing. I'm a useless individual, exhausted by just trying to meet the unattainable expectations of those around me. I see my peers, meanwhile, happy and assured in their success. How could I ever hope to relate to such people? How could I understand others? I can't even bring myself to talk to them, and they just think of me as some sort of freakish loner. I'm not normal like them, not in body or mind. Nor could I ever hope to be, for that matter. I understand that. I understand that I'm just a burden, made an outsider forever by my inability to keep pace with my peers, and by my inability to approach them as a part of their own class. And so, I've stopped trying to. That might seem like weakness to you. That's because it is. I never said I was a strong person. I'm a useless, spineless coward who runs away from everything she can't handle. Eventually, though, I ran out of places to run.
I was born into a somewhat famous family in the city Kyoto, Japan. It might seem conceited to say that, but, then again, I doubt you'll think I'm at all proud of any aspect of myself after what I've just told you, so it shouldn't be a problem. My father is the owner of a large company that produces some sort of electronics. I think I was computer chips, but I haven't exactly left my room recently to check and see if anything's changed. Long story short, he made a bunch of great business deals, and managed to get some connections to major software corporations who sponsored his product, which ended up earning him a small fortune almost overnight. He reinvested this money, and continued to grow his company, which, in turn, produced even bigger profits. Or at least, I think that's what he did. He used to rhapsodize about his business successes quite often over dinner, but I stopped eating with the rest of the family about four years ago. I'm just telling you what I remember from when I used to go outside, but most of that is really more like quoting my economics textbook at you. I try not to remember the lectures on his successes and my failures he used to give me, at any rate. Old wounds don't take well to being open, no matter how long you let them heal.
At any rate, I wasn't exactly what my parents were looking for. Well, okay, I'll be blunt. I was exactly the opposite of what they wanted. Call it old fashioned of them, but my parents wanted a strong, charismatic, intelligent, diligent, and capable son. What they got was a weak, frail, and painfully average - at best - daughter, who was so inexperienced at dealing with people that she'd be too scared to even ask for directions if she got lost. In case you were expecting me to say, "And that was my older sister," please don't be insulted when I tell you that you're a very naive person. So, long story short, as my father would say, I'm a defective product.
I was born with several genetic disorders, most notably within my immune system and pigmentation glands. Chédiak–Higashi syndrome was what it was called, I think. It's a condition that causes partial albinism as a side-effect, and leaves the victim painfully exposed to infection due to a malfunction in the victim's white blood cells. Other symptoms include damage to the nervous system during adolescence, and intense sensitivity to light. It's usually fatal during teenage years, as the user suffers intense damage to muscles, nerves, and, eventually, their internal organs, causing them to bleed to death. Although there's no sure-fire cure for it, bone marrow transplants, even those from unrelated donors, can be effective at correcting the disease's major effects. I suppose I should consider myself lucky. I was diagnosed before the disease reached its accelerated phase, meaning, although I suffered from many illnesses during my childhood and even after I was "fixed," and my eyesight and musculature were permanently damaged, I ended up receiving a transplant around age 10 that corrected my malfunctioning immune system, for the most part.
So, unlike most sufferers of my condition, I survived. That didn't mean my life had to improve from there, however. I spent a great deal of my childhood in hospitals undergoing various therapeutic treatments, and, consequently, I ended up largely behind on my schoolwork despite the tutors my father hired to visit me in the hospital and teach me what I needed to know. I didn't know anything about anyone else, anything about the world, or anything about myself. I think that's the point at which I first started to fear reality. With the terrifying knowledge that my life could end at any time thanks to a condition I would have in at least some capacity for the rest of my life, I felt lost, like I was living in a different world from normal people my age. It seemed like the world itself was trying to push me away. My father was distant - I can only assume he was disappointed in the wreck he had sired - and my mother always coddled me, treating me like I was helpless. I suppose she had the right idea, considering how weak I was, and how almost any illness could have been a sign of my impending death, during that time. So, in those days, I took up an escapism of sorts to help me cope. I would dream that I was a princess, and that the hospital room I occupied more than my own room at home was my tower. I would look down from my prison at the people passing below me, and would hope at any minute to see my own knight, come to rescue me. And so, I would sit at the window, imagining all manner of adventures I would have once I was free. He never came, of course, but I never stopped dreaming.
Eventually, I grew tired of the predictable products of my own mind, and decided to seek out the stories told by my betters in the field of fantasy. Novels of all sizes and kinds lined the walls of my room, and, when I wasn't studying under my father's strict orders, or people-watching, I would read them cover to cover, often several in a single night. I hated the hospital, but I loved the stories. Even when I got sick and was afraid that I might die from it, if I just had a book in my hands, it seemed like all the misfortunes in my life were happening to somebody else. I could escape into the world of the story, even if it was just for a little while. And, even once I was deemed healthy enough to integrate into normal society, I never stopped reading.
In those days, I always thought that after I got out of the hospital, everything would be alright. Oh, how wrong I was. I struggled in school from the moment I emerged into reality, as, despite my efforts to keep pace in my studies within the hospital, I'd been more focused on understanding the plot of Wagahai wa Neko de aru - and sympathizing with the poor cat - than I had on memorizing my multiplication tables, the location of Prussia, or Newton's laws of motion. Add onto my apparent ignorance and childish obsession with the fantastic a crippling level of uncertainty when it came to how normal people interacted with each other and the fact that I was deemed too physically weak and unfit to attend more active classes like P.E., and the fact that my silver hair and purple eyes were tremendously unusual, and you have the perfect target for bullying. I don't want to recount what my middle school experience was like, nor do I think I need to tell you. Suffice to say, I was everything that my peers were not, and, in a society defined entirely by uniformity and a tremendous drive for success, that made me an outcast. It was in that time that I finally realized that my dream of being normal was an impossible ideal. So, I did, I think, the sensible thing, and I stopped trying. I was weak if I did and weak if I didn't, and I was tired of being hurt. I wanted to go on without feeling anything. If I couldn't understand the world, couldn't understand other people, then, I reasoned, all that was left for me was what I could understand: the many worlds of fiction that dwelt within my mind. I expanded my search, reading, playing, watching, or listening to anything that seemed interesting. Anime, manga, light novels, visual novels, normal novels, RPGs, Hack-and-Slash games, movies, drama CDs, miscellaneous video games, and countless other media became my world, what I lived for. I would simply zone out during the day, simply getting by for as long as I could until I could finally escape to my room, lock the door, and forget about the world in general until the next morning. Over time, I suppose, I just stopped leaving my room altogether. I had run as far as I could from reality, and, short of killing myself, I could go no further. So, I simply removed every trace of reality that I could from my room. I tore down the calendars and the clocks and the pictures, and cast everything of the real world out. What was left was the collected stockpile of all of my favorite fantasies, worlds in which I wholeheartedly lived instead of the real one. Most precious of all to me was my computer, the internet connection of which was the closest I ever came to interacting with other people.
For a while, my parents were angry at me. They tried all manner of things to get me out. They yelled at me, they confiscated my things, they tried to starve me into relenting and going outside to get food, at the very least. Eventually, they finally came to the same realization that I had - that I was a person with no purpose, and that I simply didn't care about anything at all. So, we came to a sort of unspoken agreement. They stopped bothering me about leaving my room, and dropped off the food and water I needed to survive outside my door, then left to allow me privacy so I could take my meals back inside and eat them before dropping off the plates outside to be collected when my next meal was delivered. In exchange, I stopped being a smear upon the family's reputation, made sure that I didn't accidentally forget to eat and starve to death, and, best of all, I gladly faded into obscurity and allowed them to pretend that I didn't exist.
It was kind of ironic, really. My solution to being odd by societal standards wasn't to try to conform. Rather, it was to snap and reject society as a whole, becoming three things that were even more loathesome to my peers than I already was. I was a Hikkikomori, a NEET, and an Otaku. But, despite the fact that I suppose I should have felt isolated, I could no longer bring myself to care about anything but escaping. I was at the point where the words "outside" and "reality" were enough to make me shiver, and I probably would have dissolved into dust if struck by direct sunlight. Fortunately for me, I had finally found a way to render these things, along with the rest of the world, irrelevant: Antiva Chronus Online. A world of fantasy, swords, and sorcery where one could be whoever they wanted to be, do as they liked and live as they pleased? Kawakami Yoshihiro might as well have dropped me off at the gates to heaven and handed me the key. I would spend whole months ingame before I finally logged out to eat. I grew weaker than ever before, but, in the same way as a drug addict doesn't care that he's destroying himself, I cared about nothing but getting my fix. I even abandoned my books, my games, and my anime to solely devote myself to this wonderful Virtual Reality.
And then, it happened. I'd always wished to escape from reality, and finally, I left the world I knew and hated completely behind, and I came to realize exactly how much I needed it. A world of swords and magic was all well and good if you had infinite lives to live within it, but what if you had just one? What then? Suddenly, the prospect of feeling the adrenaline course through my veins as I fought for my life didn't seem so pleasant. It seemed downright terrifying. This world, I realized, was even worse than the one I'd left behind. And, once again, I felt the dread of the grave settle over my very soul. It was like being trapped within the hospital a second time, knowing that any day could be my last. But, even though I'd lost everything, there was one thing I still had, no, that I still have left.
I envy normal people. I really do. But that doesn't mean I understand them. Rather, I envy them for being able to understand each other, something I was never able to do. I wonder if the awe I feel at Humans' ability to communicate with each other, an ability I've failed to inherit, could be called, like the disgust of those who shun me, a special type of hate. I don't think so, though. In reality, there's only one person I can blame for my inadequacies, only one person I really, truly hate. Yep. You guessed it. The one I hate more than anything or anyone else... is myself. And why shouldn't I? The only one who can take responsibility for who and what I am, for all of my failures and all of my faults, is me. But maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe if I repent, if I hate myself and the mistakes I've made, then I can somehow change for the better. Maybe if I take responsibility for the failures that got me to this point, I can become strong enough to pave the way for my betters, even if I die in the process. Maybe I can become someone who can stand and face reality on her own, without having to always be saved. Even if it kills me, I want to try again to attain the ideals I lost before. I know it's impossible, but I'm still going to try.
The hour in which my life will end is going to be decided by me. And,
even if this life has no meaning, I refuse to let it end yet. And so, no
matter how many battles I have to fight, I will continue to do so,
never once retreating, even if I know I will never live for anything,
and never be understood. Here I stand, always alone amidst a world of blades, yet unaware of the pain of death, just as I am unaware of the happiness to be found in life. I am simply a warrior, one who fights for the thrill of victory and for my own survival.
I am simply myself.
I am a sword.
I was born into a somewhat famous family in the city Kyoto, Japan. It might seem conceited to say that, but, then again, I doubt you'll think I'm at all proud of any aspect of myself after what I've just told you, so it shouldn't be a problem. My father is the owner of a large company that produces some sort of electronics. I think I was computer chips, but I haven't exactly left my room recently to check and see if anything's changed. Long story short, he made a bunch of great business deals, and managed to get some connections to major software corporations who sponsored his product, which ended up earning him a small fortune almost overnight. He reinvested this money, and continued to grow his company, which, in turn, produced even bigger profits. Or at least, I think that's what he did. He used to rhapsodize about his business successes quite often over dinner, but I stopped eating with the rest of the family about four years ago. I'm just telling you what I remember from when I used to go outside, but most of that is really more like quoting my economics textbook at you. I try not to remember the lectures on his successes and my failures he used to give me, at any rate. Old wounds don't take well to being open, no matter how long you let them heal.
At any rate, I wasn't exactly what my parents were looking for. Well, okay, I'll be blunt. I was exactly the opposite of what they wanted. Call it old fashioned of them, but my parents wanted a strong, charismatic, intelligent, diligent, and capable son. What they got was a weak, frail, and painfully average - at best - daughter, who was so inexperienced at dealing with people that she'd be too scared to even ask for directions if she got lost. In case you were expecting me to say, "And that was my older sister," please don't be insulted when I tell you that you're a very naive person. So, long story short, as my father would say, I'm a defective product.
I was born with several genetic disorders, most notably within my immune system and pigmentation glands. Chédiak–Higashi syndrome was what it was called, I think. It's a condition that causes partial albinism as a side-effect, and leaves the victim painfully exposed to infection due to a malfunction in the victim's white blood cells. Other symptoms include damage to the nervous system during adolescence, and intense sensitivity to light. It's usually fatal during teenage years, as the user suffers intense damage to muscles, nerves, and, eventually, their internal organs, causing them to bleed to death. Although there's no sure-fire cure for it, bone marrow transplants, even those from unrelated donors, can be effective at correcting the disease's major effects. I suppose I should consider myself lucky. I was diagnosed before the disease reached its accelerated phase, meaning, although I suffered from many illnesses during my childhood and even after I was "fixed," and my eyesight and musculature were permanently damaged, I ended up receiving a transplant around age 10 that corrected my malfunctioning immune system, for the most part.
So, unlike most sufferers of my condition, I survived. That didn't mean my life had to improve from there, however. I spent a great deal of my childhood in hospitals undergoing various therapeutic treatments, and, consequently, I ended up largely behind on my schoolwork despite the tutors my father hired to visit me in the hospital and teach me what I needed to know. I didn't know anything about anyone else, anything about the world, or anything about myself. I think that's the point at which I first started to fear reality. With the terrifying knowledge that my life could end at any time thanks to a condition I would have in at least some capacity for the rest of my life, I felt lost, like I was living in a different world from normal people my age. It seemed like the world itself was trying to push me away. My father was distant - I can only assume he was disappointed in the wreck he had sired - and my mother always coddled me, treating me like I was helpless. I suppose she had the right idea, considering how weak I was, and how almost any illness could have been a sign of my impending death, during that time. So, in those days, I took up an escapism of sorts to help me cope. I would dream that I was a princess, and that the hospital room I occupied more than my own room at home was my tower. I would look down from my prison at the people passing below me, and would hope at any minute to see my own knight, come to rescue me. And so, I would sit at the window, imagining all manner of adventures I would have once I was free. He never came, of course, but I never stopped dreaming.
Eventually, I grew tired of the predictable products of my own mind, and decided to seek out the stories told by my betters in the field of fantasy. Novels of all sizes and kinds lined the walls of my room, and, when I wasn't studying under my father's strict orders, or people-watching, I would read them cover to cover, often several in a single night. I hated the hospital, but I loved the stories. Even when I got sick and was afraid that I might die from it, if I just had a book in my hands, it seemed like all the misfortunes in my life were happening to somebody else. I could escape into the world of the story, even if it was just for a little while. And, even once I was deemed healthy enough to integrate into normal society, I never stopped reading.
In those days, I always thought that after I got out of the hospital, everything would be alright. Oh, how wrong I was. I struggled in school from the moment I emerged into reality, as, despite my efforts to keep pace in my studies within the hospital, I'd been more focused on understanding the plot of Wagahai wa Neko de aru - and sympathizing with the poor cat - than I had on memorizing my multiplication tables, the location of Prussia, or Newton's laws of motion. Add onto my apparent ignorance and childish obsession with the fantastic a crippling level of uncertainty when it came to how normal people interacted with each other and the fact that I was deemed too physically weak and unfit to attend more active classes like P.E., and the fact that my silver hair and purple eyes were tremendously unusual, and you have the perfect target for bullying. I don't want to recount what my middle school experience was like, nor do I think I need to tell you. Suffice to say, I was everything that my peers were not, and, in a society defined entirely by uniformity and a tremendous drive for success, that made me an outcast. It was in that time that I finally realized that my dream of being normal was an impossible ideal. So, I did, I think, the sensible thing, and I stopped trying. I was weak if I did and weak if I didn't, and I was tired of being hurt. I wanted to go on without feeling anything. If I couldn't understand the world, couldn't understand other people, then, I reasoned, all that was left for me was what I could understand: the many worlds of fiction that dwelt within my mind. I expanded my search, reading, playing, watching, or listening to anything that seemed interesting. Anime, manga, light novels, visual novels, normal novels, RPGs, Hack-and-Slash games, movies, drama CDs, miscellaneous video games, and countless other media became my world, what I lived for. I would simply zone out during the day, simply getting by for as long as I could until I could finally escape to my room, lock the door, and forget about the world in general until the next morning. Over time, I suppose, I just stopped leaving my room altogether. I had run as far as I could from reality, and, short of killing myself, I could go no further. So, I simply removed every trace of reality that I could from my room. I tore down the calendars and the clocks and the pictures, and cast everything of the real world out. What was left was the collected stockpile of all of my favorite fantasies, worlds in which I wholeheartedly lived instead of the real one. Most precious of all to me was my computer, the internet connection of which was the closest I ever came to interacting with other people.
For a while, my parents were angry at me. They tried all manner of things to get me out. They yelled at me, they confiscated my things, they tried to starve me into relenting and going outside to get food, at the very least. Eventually, they finally came to the same realization that I had - that I was a person with no purpose, and that I simply didn't care about anything at all. So, we came to a sort of unspoken agreement. They stopped bothering me about leaving my room, and dropped off the food and water I needed to survive outside my door, then left to allow me privacy so I could take my meals back inside and eat them before dropping off the plates outside to be collected when my next meal was delivered. In exchange, I stopped being a smear upon the family's reputation, made sure that I didn't accidentally forget to eat and starve to death, and, best of all, I gladly faded into obscurity and allowed them to pretend that I didn't exist.
It was kind of ironic, really. My solution to being odd by societal standards wasn't to try to conform. Rather, it was to snap and reject society as a whole, becoming three things that were even more loathesome to my peers than I already was. I was a Hikkikomori, a NEET, and an Otaku. But, despite the fact that I suppose I should have felt isolated, I could no longer bring myself to care about anything but escaping. I was at the point where the words "outside" and "reality" were enough to make me shiver, and I probably would have dissolved into dust if struck by direct sunlight. Fortunately for me, I had finally found a way to render these things, along with the rest of the world, irrelevant: Antiva Chronus Online. A world of fantasy, swords, and sorcery where one could be whoever they wanted to be, do as they liked and live as they pleased? Kawakami Yoshihiro might as well have dropped me off at the gates to heaven and handed me the key. I would spend whole months ingame before I finally logged out to eat. I grew weaker than ever before, but, in the same way as a drug addict doesn't care that he's destroying himself, I cared about nothing but getting my fix. I even abandoned my books, my games, and my anime to solely devote myself to this wonderful Virtual Reality.
And then, it happened. I'd always wished to escape from reality, and finally, I left the world I knew and hated completely behind, and I came to realize exactly how much I needed it. A world of swords and magic was all well and good if you had infinite lives to live within it, but what if you had just one? What then? Suddenly, the prospect of feeling the adrenaline course through my veins as I fought for my life didn't seem so pleasant. It seemed downright terrifying. This world, I realized, was even worse than the one I'd left behind. And, once again, I felt the dread of the grave settle over my very soul. It was like being trapped within the hospital a second time, knowing that any day could be my last. But, even though I'd lost everything, there was one thing I still had, no, that I still have left.
I envy normal people. I really do. But that doesn't mean I understand them. Rather, I envy them for being able to understand each other, something I was never able to do. I wonder if the awe I feel at Humans' ability to communicate with each other, an ability I've failed to inherit, could be called, like the disgust of those who shun me, a special type of hate. I don't think so, though. In reality, there's only one person I can blame for my inadequacies, only one person I really, truly hate. Yep. You guessed it. The one I hate more than anything or anyone else... is myself. And why shouldn't I? The only one who can take responsibility for who and what I am, for all of my failures and all of my faults, is me. But maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe if I repent, if I hate myself and the mistakes I've made, then I can somehow change for the better. Maybe if I take responsibility for the failures that got me to this point, I can become strong enough to pave the way for my betters, even if I die in the process. Maybe I can become someone who can stand and face reality on her own, without having to always be saved. Even if it kills me, I want to try again to attain the ideals I lost before. I know it's impossible, but I'm still going to try.
The hour in which my life will end is going to be decided by me. And,
even if this life has no meaning, I refuse to let it end yet. And so, no
matter how many battles I have to fight, I will continue to do so,
never once retreating, even if I know I will never live for anything,
and never be understood. Here I stand, always alone amidst a world of blades, yet unaware of the pain of death, just as I am unaware of the happiness to be found in life. I am simply a warrior, one who fights for the thrill of victory and for my own survival.
I am simply myself.
I am a sword.
