A Missing Piece of September Tenth

I want to fill it in. I once told myself that I would leave a trace of every day. If a day was missing, I could come back and write about it later. When I change my mind, I’ll stop. Of course, except for correcting typos, I won’t revise anything I’ve already written. Today is September 13.

A few days ago I saw a work whose main character liked to quote Osamu Dazai to express how they felt. When I was in middle school, No Longer Human was so popular that I bought a copy too. I remember posting one of its lines on social media: “Only a day apart, and I am a different person.”

That describes how I feel about socializing rather well. Sometimes I want to talk with people, whether by short messages or letters. But the next day, or some time after that, I want to disappear for a few days, perhaps forever. I simply have no energy. It isn’t weariness either; I just have no energy, and I don’t want to. Maybe it is because I am genuinely in a bad mood. Maybe it is something else. Perhaps I shouldn’t have too many close relationships. It would cause trouble, and I don’t like the feeling of disappearing on someone without warning either.

What do I mean by “forever”? When I say I want to be together forever, do I mean with that perfect other side of myself in my head? Life seems to circle between apparent extremes. So many contradictory things can exist at once, and each can make sense. If I can calmly accept someone else’s departure, can I also calmly leave? Is that an exercise of my own will to power, or am I being self-centered? Then again, being calm is difficult. Like everything else, none of it is clean.