No Longer Human

by Osamu Dazai

I have lived a life of much shame.

The more I think about things, the less I understand and the more I’m overwhelmed by the anxiety and fear that I alone am different from everybody else.

When someone rebuked me, I would think Yes, it’s true, and feel that I had made a grave mistake; I always bore the attack in silence, gripped by a terror great enough to unhinge me.

I nearly lost all hope for my own existence when I thought that such brutishness might be something else that humans need to survive.

Things I liked, I tasted with bitter fear, as if I were a thief, and then endured nameless dread.

Being respected also scared me no end. To me it meant pulling the wool over the eyes of everyone around me only to be seen through by someone all-knowing and all-powerful who would blast me to smithereens, subject me to humiliation worse than death: that was how I defined the state of being respected.

A lovable scamp.

Since it was no use turning to others for help, all I could do was keep my mouth shut and endure, go on playing the clown. I felt I had no choice.

Human life is, it seems to me, rife with vivid examples of an insincerity that is pure, happy and serene––people deceiving one another without, amazingly, inflicting pain, without even realizing their mutual deception.

I myself deceive people from morning till night with my clowning. I can’t get excited about textbook morality, the notion of doing what’s “right.”

If I had only known that one thing, I would never have experienced such dread of human beings or felt such an urgent need to get on their good side. I wouldn’t have been in such conflict with human life, wouldn’t have gone through the torments of hell night after night.

people around me shut down my ability to trust anyone.

In that moment, the world seemed to be engulfed in the flames of hellfire before my very eyes. It took all my strength to keep from crying out in a burst of madness.

Throughout my life, I have wished any number of times for someone to kill me, but never have I felt like killing someone.

However solemn the occasion, once this expression rears its head, the temple of melancholy crumbles before your eyes, leaving a flat and featureless terrain.

On the surface, I laughed cheerfully and entertained people, while all the time my heart was dark and brooding––so naturally the self-portrait was, too,

What he said was no doubt true, and yet I knew the human heart was far more unfathomable, more terrifying than that.

People speak of “outcasts,” a term that apparently refers to wretched losers and rogues. I feel I have been an outcast since the day I was born. Whenever I encounter someone whom society has branded an outcast, my heart softens, becomes so tender and mild that I could swoon.

In time the pain has come to resemble the wound’s emotion at being alive, even its whispered endearments.

When fleeing didn’t make me feel any better, I decided to end it all.

To the weak, even feeling happy can be frightening. We can injure ourselves with cotton balls, get hurt by happiness. Anxious to end things before disaster struck, I put up the usual smoke screen of buffoonery.

Why am I like this? Though I was tied up like a criminal, I felt relieved, and even now, as I set down my recollections of that day in a calm, reflective state of mind, I am enjoying myself, perfectly at ease.

The way he talked—or rather the way everyone in society talked—was convoluted and murky, so subtly intricate that it sounded weak;

It’s just that I have a suffocating dread of sudden changes, the sort that spoil the atmosphere. I am so desperate to please that more often than not I add a word of embellishment, however warped, feeble or stupid it may be, and even knowing that doing so will work against me in the long run.

I knew what it was to be liked, but I seemed to be deficient in the ability to love.

I suffered from a listless sense of loss, as if my heart were hollow. An unfinished glass of absinthe.

I more than anyone wanted to pray in supplication: Grant me an icy will. Grant me understanding of what it is to be human. Is it not a sin to push others aside? Grant me a mask of anger.

That is, by avoiding great, savage joy You avoid great sorrow as well,

I’m the sort of person who’s unafraid of dying but can’t bear the thought of hurting myself, bleeding, and becoming disabled,

SO Dazai coded holy shit