Day 324: Yookoso!

I thought I was done posting Japanese books but I forgot that I lent this one to my friend when he was planning a trip to Japan. It turns out I have a never-ending supply of them.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my childhood and my youngest sister lately. One of the difficult things about having a sister with severe mental health issues is I feel guilty for not keeping her more present in my thoughts but at the same time it would only serve to depress me and certainly wouldn't improve her quality of life.

My home situation was unusual in that I have incredible, supportive, parents but an incredibly difficult atmosphere due to my sister. I was lucky in that I am eight years older and more distanced than my middle sister but it was a big influence on my life.

I was in the dorms for my first year of college but I didn't get along with my roommate and ended up moving back in with my parents. The year I was in the dorms was the most difficult one for my family and I would frequently get phone calls about her threatening to jump out a window or overdosing on tylenol, benadryl, and prescription meds.

It took years to un-train myself from thinking something bad happened every time I got a phone call from my parents. My mother recently left a voice message telling me to call "as soon as possible, it's urgent!" I started using google voice recently so rather than listen to the message I just read the transcribed version. I freaked out and called my mom only to find out she was calling to tell me they were playing a board game with my grandma and everyone wanted to say hi. I went back and listened to her message and it was completely upbeat and she was laughing the whole time. Damn you, google voice!

This is all a little relevant to the textbook because I was originally just going to post a quick memory from college. I was getting ready to take my Japanese oral exam and my sister threw a spoon at my face. It's likely other things were thrown as well but I distinctly remember the spoon. It was scary because it was close to my eyes and I showed up to my final completely freaked out and in tears. I blew the final but I still got like a 3.2 so at least my teacher was nice about it.

Status: Donated