my fellow hikky! do you know her?
"She's been confined in her room for 3 years. A Hikikomori Writes... "
(08/04/04)
...About A Case
Good morning :) It's already evening here though.
If you are going to shopping with friends or having a date, just go, go go go, have fun, and skip the article, because it's not really a pleasant topic that I'm going to talk about. It's not even interesting, unless you are already interested in genetic psychology or hikikomori phenominon, or else, looking for a good example of rambling in broken English!
I woke up very early, started to check news portals as usual - brizzling cold outside, needed quite a lot of hot green tea for warmth - and the top story on Mainichi Daily caught my eyes: 20 year old beat his 76 year old grandfather to death, and apparently he's been a hikikomori (er, not me, using it as a general noun). What directly triggered him into such a disgusting extent of violence was that the his granpa scolded him for not attending university, which enraged him to hell.
It gave me a bit of jolt in my heart - because that very thing happened to me many times. Ugh, not homicide, no no, but it might be only because I was female that I did not resort to physical beating-up of parents. I can never tolerate what the guy did, god I love my grandma, yet I can picture how things were storming around in his mind at the very scene.
To-go-or-not-to-go-to-univ topic had sticked around in our house 24/7 too, leaving both sides of us very upset, exhausted and confused. It's obvious that righteousness lies in the parent side, yes. And it's damn immature to fret about whatever parents would do or say when you are old enough like the said culpret or me, yes. Yet as you might often experience, sense and emotion can act adverse directions.
I can only speak personally here, for I don't know any of other hikikomoris (As I said, hikikomori want to keep low profiles, nobody but me would be so stupid to put a picture of his/her own. Nah, I will no longer have been a hikikomori an year later anyway) In my case, I always felt enormously guilty naturally, constantly accusing myself of dropping out, to the point where my brain got totally fucked-up and out of order. Why did not I go for a better rational resolution, I wish I knew. I guess it's like when you are having orgasm, you can completely blow away your usual senseful you, and go crazy. Doh, no, it's not. It was more like completely suppressing your conscience, like when your hand automatically reaches to another sack of chips and you know you're on a diet. You do realize what you ought to be doing, yet you can not have a control over yourself.
From hikikomoris' point of view, there's nothing that can bring out as much destructive emotions as intrusion by parents - to whom hikikomoris' are feeling guilty - would. When my parents' accusation joined my already turbulent conscience in blaming me, I felt so impossibly bad for them I could kill myself any moment. I did not hate parents like teenagers, it was myself I felt most repugnant against.
I'm imagining that it was not just his non-sympathetic grandfather, but also the self-abbhorrence within himself that he was repulsing. Personally I believe parents' aggressive intrusion would make the situation only worse, especially when they can not imagine these guilty hikikomori's mindset.
..I'd better read Dostoevsky. Or Harry Potter.
Well that's for today, I can rant on and on forever, but can you believe it, it took me four hours to do this article. Partly because my mouse acted up weird, pushing buttons that i did not push, resulting in the whole writing to be lost, twice. I hate writing in English.
The original Mainichi Daily article can be found here (the link may have been obsolete): http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040320p2a00m0dm006000c.html
Have a great weekend!
I am miss her..