except from "Blood & Water" by Banana Yoshimoto
...I had not yet become my own person, even though I'd been living apart from them...
Just because you get married or live on your own doesn't mean that you're independent from your parents. Not at all. I've seen many people, not only living apart from their parents but also married and with children of their own, who are still carrying around their parents' legacy. I'm not criticizing them, just saying that they've never really grown up.
I found that out after I met Akira. And no, that's not because he and I joined together to create a wonderful new family or something soupy like that. It was because only after I met Akira did I truly understand what they mean when that say that all you really have is yourself. That's a terribly lonely realization. Despite my mother and my father and the village, despite the apartment I share with Akira, I am the only one in the world who knows what's best for me. I'm just here, deciding things I need to decide for myself.
It's difficult for me to explain.
I am my own home, and this is where I belong, and things keep going forward, endlessly, just as the blue of the sky before the dawn turns into a bright sunrise, each with its own beauty. That kind of thing...
Just because you get married or live on your own doesn't mean that you're independent from your parents. Not at all. I've seen many people, not only living apart from their parents but also married and with children of their own, who are still carrying around their parents' legacy. I'm not criticizing them, just saying that they've never really grown up.
I found that out after I met Akira. And no, that's not because he and I joined together to create a wonderful new family or something soupy like that. It was because only after I met Akira did I truly understand what they mean when that say that all you really have is yourself. That's a terribly lonely realization. Despite my mother and my father and the village, despite the apartment I share with Akira, I am the only one in the world who knows what's best for me. I'm just here, deciding things I need to decide for myself.
It's difficult for me to explain.
I am my own home, and this is where I belong, and things keep going forward, endlessly, just as the blue of the sky before the dawn turns into a bright sunrise, each with its own beauty. That kind of thing...