In the end, we must admit that one person's feelings never truly reach another. Even though we rely on that illusion to live. To sympathize with someone is to feel as they feel—but who can truly feel what another person feels? We are destined to be ourselves, not someone else.
When I'm sick. It makes me think of my mother's suffering. Perhaps she too felt embarrassed by her own coughing, and used the same strong loquat syrup.
Suffering in this world is my way of drawing near to my mother. How unfortunate that I watched, helpless, as that death—spreading through the fabric of daily life—took command of her final days.
Now I can accept seeing pain as a thing. It is merely some physical and chemical process happening inside my body. It's nothing—beyond a touch of sadness, it's nothing. I will recover. Given that premise, it is simply a way of exercising the senses. And if I were dying, I wouldn't much care either. Beyond a lack of preparation, it would be nothing.
There is much to prepare. The most important thing is to tell you: I love you. I wanted to borrow a passage from Murakami, but then I thought perhaps I should come up with something of my own.
What is it like?
It's like the end of term exams at elementary school, the school deserted, you standing in the shade while across the way the sun blazes. I emerge from a gust of wind, skipping and hopping, looking for you.
It's like the deep of night, when you climb out of bed alone and feel your own loneliness and your heartbeat. I am somewhere else, lighting a cigarette, its ember flickering and fading.
It's like you stepping out of the evening and the noise, out of the hot wind, the world cooling down, and beside you walks the young me.
If one day I don't get the chance to say it—remember that I love you.
(Currently at zero risk of dying. Writing it down early means one less thing to worry about.)