You Are My Daughter.

Sometimes… No, frequently from a certain point on.

When I woke up, I often felt an overwhelming anxiety.

My heart would race due to mood swings that came without warning, and my chest would feel so tight that I’d breathe excessively…

Unable to endure days of spending hours just trembling without being able to do anything, I had no choice but to visit the hospital.

The score I received on the 40-point psychological evaluation at that time was 32 points…

The person who counseled me then said that if it’s 24 points or more, there’s a high probability of suffering from severe depression, but when I heard that, the first thing I felt was none other than relief.

I realized that although the symptoms I had couldn’t be resolved by time alone, there was still a clear solution.

But…

‘You bastard, you dare raise your voice at your father!?’

The person who blocked my efforts to escape from such a situation was the one who shouted at me in reverse and even struck me.

It was a time when I hadn’t even properly explained the reason.

Just the fact that a child had raised their voice to their father…

That single fact had touched his reverse scale.

‘A bug of a kid who just stays cooped up at home every day, now you’ve even lost your conscience and dare to talk back to your father. You who can’t do a single thing properly, what have you done right to raise your voice in front of your father?’

‘I, I got a prescription for that reason. But you…’

‘Medicine, you idiot, it’s because you depend on things like medicine just because you’re having a bit of a hard time that you’re not making any progress. That’s why I’ve told you many times, right? If you’re born a man, you need to have guts and spirit.’

‘It’s not just me. Other people too…’

‘Other kids? Yeah, you said it well. All of your dad’s friends’ kids lived exactly like you but they’re living well off, you pig. Do you know how embarrassed I am every time I talk about you in front of them? And now you’re even pretending to be mentally ill… Sigh, why did I give birth to such a thing as a child.’

‘……..’

Someone who considers rebuttal as defiance and doesn’t hesitate to use violence.

If we weren’t family, I would have just thought of him as a dirty and irritating person and retreated, but ironically, I was tightly bound to such a person by blood thicker than water.

I had no choice but to consistently receive the same attitude from him until I was over the age of an adult.

‘Comfort? From you?’

When things I wanted to do didn’t go well.

I thought that if the person I faced most often gave me comfort, my feelings might have changed a little, but…

‘Do you think I didn’t go through hardships at your age? Dad knows because he’s lived through it, you can endure if you just bear with it. If you can’t endure, it’s just because you lack grit. If you can sleep in a warm place with a full stomach, what can’t you do? Do I have to support you even more than that?’

Even such a modest desire as wanting him to listen to my concerns and share some words of encouragement seemed to be perceived as pathetic by that person.

Does worry become meaningless as long as there’s no problem with just eating and living?

I wasn’t even asking for him to provide answers or solve my problems for me.

I just wanted family, the people I face most often in my life, to be someone I could share the knots in my heart with, but…

‘If you don’t like it, get out of my house, you bastard!!’

Faced with such extreme statements the moment I harbored even a slight complaint, I had no choice but to choose to retreat in silence without saying anything.

In my boyhood when I had neither the strength nor the will for independence.

Because the instability of self that inevitably comes with puberty was seen as the rebellion of an arrogant child, and the act of shutting that mouth had been repeated countless times.

When emotions ran high, he didn’t hesitate to use his fists to the point of breaking my nose, so the only solution to such conflicts was determined to be silence.

‘Why is this child so lifeless? Stand up straight and puff out your chest, you rascal. Straighten your back too!’

Is it because love exists despite treating me with such a harsh attitude?

It might be his way of trying to comfort me, but ironically, I felt the hostile atmosphere that accompanied such words and thought it was ‘scary’.

Education through fear not only teaches self-restraint in behavior but also instills fear towards the educator.

Even if he himself had no malice, every action of that person felt frightening to me.

‘You should try to understand. Dad has lived a very hard life, that’s why.’

And my mother was a person who had been with him even longer than I had.

If I had learned fear towards my father, she was already in a state of accepting that such things accompany her life.

‘When you were born, the country was in a really bad state. Debts piled up at the national level, everyone was out on the streets, and we were even collecting gold to try and solve it somehow…’

Of course, it must have been unavoidable when a financial crisis hit right as their child was born.

Being kicked out of a hopeless workplace, and trying harder than anyone to protect the livelihood with the remaining money by starting a business to save the family he had built.

Not abandoning the responsibility he had to shoulder, but persistently.

Even turning his curses against the world into a driving force for himself.

‘Now that you’re an adult, you should understand.’

I could understand to some extent.

That the position of being the head of the household, especially for someone who has nothing, inevitably leads to such a personality.

But couldn’t he be gentle at least at home, if not in society? Couldn’t he afford to listen to concerns and offer words of encouragement…

At one point, I hated my father for such thoughts, but as I grew older, I gradually realized one fact.

That no matter how bitter the resentment, in the end, they are human, and humans cannot be free from desire.

It might seem contradictory for someone who has lived only on bitterness, but the desire I’m referring to now is closer to a compensatory psychology than simple pleasure.

Because humans are animals of learning.

Just as we try to find solutions to immediate problems and preparations for the future from our learning and experiences, the foundation of the desires we wish to fulfill inevitably stems from the years we’ve lived through.

We hope for grades guaranteed by how much we studied, hope to enter universities and jobs befitting that.

If we can’t even start properly from such plans, we hope to be rewarded for the hardships we’ve gone through, even if it means retaking exams.

It’s the same logic that applies not only to the route everyone calls orthodox, but also to continuing to challenge civil service exams for over 10 years despite failing, or to the psychology of trying to make up money through the same means when someone who lost money through investment or gambling can’t forget the experience of when they made money.

Even the so-called “rice-eating” act of making money through gaming applies to this logic.

If we could convert the dissolute and wandering time I’ve spent so far into money, what else would feel as valuable?

Besides that, whatever the type, no matter how big or sordid, the desire that becomes the driving force for action is invariably based on past time.

Since time that has already passed doesn’t return, the fact that I suddenly have leisure now can’t be the trigger to suppress desire.

I, who have lived a life without leisure, should now be rewarded. I should be able to enjoy many things, I should be able to be generous to myself in this harsh world…

As such thoughts become fixed as a philosophy of life beyond learning as age goes by, it might be impossible even if a lifetime passes to expect the person who is my father to become gentle.

It’s inevitable.

That children raised by those who have gone through generations without leisure.

Consider the attitude derived from already completed values as sadism and fall into deviant paths.

‘You’ll understand when you grow up.’

Yes, adults don’t explain.

They already consider the path they’re taking not just as right but as truth, so they believe without doubt that if they emphasize only the answer they’ve found, the child following behind will live a better life.

Without realizing that this method is like throwing only the answer sheet without explaining the formula.

Without being aware that they are like an insincere teacher who says “Just memorize it” to a student asking why such an answer comes out.

‘You try having a child like yourself and suffer like me once.’

Nevertheless, to children who don’t listen, adults express their frustration while reading a future where they will regret.

As if hoping they would feel a sense of crisis from that and correct themselves.

But unfortunately, the world progresses faster than their thoughts, and individual experiences are spread to many people, arousing empathy and instilling strong persuasiveness to the unfairness they feel.

And the atmosphere formed from this comes as a fear of a future that hasn’t yet arrived.

Before long, I have a child like myself, and that child is also swayed by the same feelings as me, and afterwards, this process is endlessly repeated…

The moment when the thought that it might be better to end such suffering in my generation goes beyond individual anecdotes and appears as a significant figure in the statistical data presented by society arrives.

Yes, if it goes that far, we can no longer define just one person as the perpetrator.

Because people can’t go against their environment, and are bound to be swayed by the harshness of the world.

I was a person living in an era where such trends had taken root.

A generation whose self is suppressed by the previous generation lacking gentleness.

A generation where the world recognized through informatization expands and the ceiling gets higher, but in reality, those who stand at the top are always limited to a very small number.

A generation that despairs at the reality that emphasizes being left behind if you can’t reach such positions, and yet unable to shake off the foundation of desire wanting compensation, increasingly depends on one-dimensional pleasures.

If it’s a life that won’t leave anything behind anyway, isn’t it better to enjoy and go? Getting steeped in such thoughts, looking back at oneself as one ages and spending each day in regret…

And yet, not knowing where to start correcting, feeling self-loathing, and repeating days of indulging in luxury and pleasure to forget even such feelings.

Even attempts to break this vicious cycle are forbidden for reasons of lacking grit and passion, so the deteriorating mind ends up not being understood by anyone, and even gives up on being understood.

And if it goes that far, one’s desired desires even deny reality, and gradually enter the stage of delusion.

If I could go back to the past and change regrettable things.

If there comes a time when the entertainment I’ve enjoyed gives meaning to my life or creates an echo. If someone who troubled me feels the emptiness of my absence and regrets…

And if by any chance I were to live a completely different life, for example, if I were born as a different gender.

Wouldn’t I be able to live a better life than now… Dulling the pain in my heart by making such ridiculous imaginations.

‘Honey, look at this child. It’s our daughter.’

Perhaps that’s why?

Not only was I drawn into the game I was playing without thinking, but I didn’t feel much rejection at becoming a woman.

‘Yes, you are my daughter.’

And perhaps that’s why.

‘Thank you so much for nestling in my arms, Seine.’

The gentleness shown by the one who became my second father.

It resonated particularly strongly with my worn-out heart.