Before Your Memory Fades (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #3)

by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

“Well, surviving alone is much the same as dying alone, don’t you think?”

But there was nowhere else for her to go. There was no one she could talk to, and it chipped away at her heart. Her gloomy feelings affected how she thought of her parents, and she came to see them as the real reason she was condemned to such a life. Isolation. The wound in Yayoi’s heart, chiseled by how she felt during her childhood, warped her personality significantly. To her, the words to live life alone were tied to the disparaging notion that nobody needed her. In other words... She couldn’t see the point of living.

There was just one thing that was important. How could she bring about a level of suffering greater than she herself had suffered? No matter what she did, her bitter reality in the present would not change. And so, this was reprisal. She had a score to settle with her parents, who had left her alone in this world.

“You should be proud of yourself for sticking with it and never giving up. You were impressive in your persistence. It didn’t happen by magic! Remember when I called out to you on that day? Your life didn’t suddenly transform by itself, did it? None of your problems suddenly fixed themselves, did they? But you looked to the future and persevered. You have what you have today because you never gave up telling yourself that you had to be happy.”

Burnout syndrome is considered by some to be a type of depression. But while depression begins with stress or fatigue or a large shock like an accident or a loss, burnout syndrome originates with the thought that all of one’s efforts are in vain. It strikes right at a time when life is not turning out as expected, despite devotedly pouring one’s soul into a certain activity, usually one’s work.

think that too,” he muttered. “I’ve never thought that death was the end.” He mulled over his words, and then continued. “She is always inside me. She’s living inside us both...”

People’s true feelings are not in plain sight. The other person might not be thinking anything, but there is a tendency to just assume what the other is feeling without reaching out and asking. Yukari, on the other hand, was very much the do-and-see type of person, willing to intervene, like in that case, to see for herself what was going on.

Inside every person is an inherent capability to make it through any kind of difficulty. Everyone has that energy. But sometimes when that energy flows via our anxiety valve, the flow can be restricted. The greater that anxiety, the greater the strength needed to open the valve and release the energy. That strength is empowered by hope. You could say that hope is the power to believe in the future.