Goodbye Tsugumi

by Banana Yoshimoto

getting worked up really doesn’t take you anywhere.

For some reason it had occurred to me that love doesn’t ever have to stop. It’s like the national water system, I thought. No matter how long you leave the faucets running, you can be sure the supply won’t give out.

And since I thought I could understand some of what she was going through, I ended up becoming an adult without ever having passed through a rebellious stage, the way most adolescents do.

“Whenever you get something in this world, you lose something too—that’s just the way things work.

I’d always manage to muddle my way through the loneliness by forcing myself to be very boisterous and cheery.

It’s perfectly obvious that letting yourself focus on that area is what makes you get all sentimental and lonely, so the more opportunities you have to experience these goodbyes the more skilled you should become at distracting yourself, and thus at coping with these little lonelinesses.

The sort of family where you all feel really close to one another.

when I think about all the different shades of loneliness I got to know during those years, I can really understand how crucial friends and family and people like that are.

The senbei for my mother remained on the table after everything else had been cleared away, an unobtrusive symbol of our family’s happiness.

No matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.

All her life Tsugumi has had to live with problems in one part of her body or another, but she hardly ever tells you where the pain is, not even as part of a joke. She just keeps it to herself and then takes her anger out on the people around her, or says things she knows will make everyone mad and then goes off to lie alone in her bed. And the girl never gives up.

On nights like this when the air is so clear, you end up saying things you ordinarily wouldn’t. Without even noticing what you’re doing, you open up your heart and just start talking to the person next to you

The knowledge that as long as I went on living I would always have chances to feel these nights made it possible for me to have hope for the future.

You spend a little while talking and everyone starts to feel this conviction, you’re all equally sure that you’re at the beginning of something good. That’s how it is when you meet people you’re going to be with for a long time.

When you spend a lot of time with a couple, even two people who seem totally mismatched at first glance, you usually end up discovering some aspect of their relationship that makes their being together seem perfectly logical.

she and my father and I would set out on a cheerful walk. The time we spent walking together like this—two parents and their daughter strolling along a shore that seemed to rise to meet the twilight—those moments were the happiest we knew.

You feel really lonely when someone keeps coming and going all the time. And I had a hunch that somehow the loneliness I suffered in my father’s absence contained a vague shadow of death.

Love is the kind of thing that’s already happening by the time you notice it,

Sooner or later people are definitely going to give up if you don’t give them back as much as they’re giving you,

This world of ours is piled high with farewells and goodbyes of so many different kinds, like the evening sky renewing itself again and again from one instant to the next—and I didn’t want to forget a single one.

people can’t help coming into contact with new things all the time, one thing after the next, and so bit by bit they just keep changing on you, you know? They forget all kinds of stuff, whittle stuff away, and there’s nothing you can do about that—they’re bound to do it. I guess it’s because there are so many things for us to do, but still . . .