Ibara-chan Wakes Up
There lies a space between wakefulness and slumber; a confusing endless region with no anchors to tie one neither to serenity nor to an ordeal. This numb non-territory is often visited by the depressed and traumatized; it has become their new home, their sweet aching habitat to thrive despite strife. Here, in this non-territory, Ibara-chan brushes her teeth, mentally, while waiting for that split-second when real eyes shall stroll again. All residents are asleep, their life is an existential slumber where no emotions crush, they only float. Better asleep than suffering the blow. This sentence, Ibara-chan, heard it a billion times, reiterated by her silly thoughts endlessly, as a mantra. However, she realized… it cannot be so since whatever you say, no matter how, it can hurt others. One is responsible even for utterances during one’s sleep. Dreams can scream so loud that they damage the waking world. There is hope for a new morning; a morning where eyes shall genuinely awake, feet shall move again on real soil, and the sun, or the rain, will greet her once more.
Hope, hope no matter how low one drowns, remains, Ibara-chan told herself, since time passes new fresh-starts await each morning. Dawns are real, not figments of delusional optimism. Many residents belief that there is only night, that morning is an outdated theory, even a conspiracy built by positive thinking gurus to seduce the populace. Ibara-chan lies in her bed, as always, waiting, aching, for that moment, for awakening. She bursts into song, screaming her burning wish to be alive. She wants to be hurt by existence again. She wants to feel, to embrace it warts and all. She prays, to her heart, to the thorns deep inside that they hit her, and, thus, she shall breath real air once more. Her prayer is that the “seductive pain that penetrates the future [will] […] surely shine a brighter light on the mornings to come”. Her deep rage’s seductive pain-aching shall crush the façade; propelling her in the wild. Her hope turned into unyielding resolution. She waits no more… She finally sees, strength was in her all this time, she must do it.
…
The thorns impaled her with the same wish that induced sleep. Yet, when this wish integrated the real nihilistic side, the pain, then the wish no longer secreted shudders. No need for fake modesty, the choice has been done, now she opened up to the unknown excitement horizon. Even if sleep has hidden the truth, it also had its healing power. Time as it passes passed, what was was, what will be arrive. The pain was stronger than expectations, and, thus, enabled Ibara-chan’s clearer view of morning. The unreal, the unconscious, the dream is the symbolic realm of fantasy. Yet, the shudder, shock, the trauma produced by the wish’s refusal to be gratified, can be healed precisely through amor fati, through embracing this very pain. How can one ever embrace unbound suffering? By knowing that suffering itself is in flux, that its value, that its intensity, form, and force alter, that new possibilities arise, that there is an arrival of morning. Is this not a running away from pain by converting it into its opposite; when positing pain’s flux? Yes, but Ibara-chan did not see that. She believed that the morning’s announcement is hope’s horn, that pain has already cleared her view, that a passionate burst of will would awaken her.
…
Opens her eyes, the same room feels alive, everything is new. She looks in her tiny mirror, sees her sadness and agony still there but she shouts to her feelings ‘so be it. In any case, I will have a wonderful day!’. The window tells to her, once more, stories about billions of tiny other worlds floating through Tokyo. Her cloths invite her to wear new garments, to walk honest, humble, and also dignified; to take her time to listen, to empathies with others while keeping a healthy distance when required, to be authentic. She brushes her teeth, tangibly now, she gets her cloth, her backpack, rushes to the door, opens it, and she is free…
She woke up due to her will, to a passionate burst, but also to a complex intertwining of neurobiological, behavioral, social, contingent, and chimico-quanto-physical properties. I do not understand what is will, what is authenticity, I thought, and read on such stuff… but yet I am far from versed in this art called living
Lyrics: here
