This series has shaped up to be one of the most painful things I've ever read. I feel almost like I was tricked at the outset, in a way that elevates the story far beyond what it would have been otherwise. I failed out of college, and have been doing part time things to survive. I've spent a long time running away from my failure, doing part time work and trying to live the best I can. But that cloud of anxiety born from my failure has never left me.
Picking a direction and going, driving until my car broke down, walking until my legs gave out, leaving it all behind for good, finding happiness away from it all; it was a fantasy, yes, but that sort of dream is what gets you through the day sometimes, you know?
Starting this series, I felt the core of everything I'd been through in it, but with the dream played out. I lived vicariously through it every update, in a way. Escaping into a manga that was about the escape I dreamt of so desperately... but all dreams must end.
The manga that was my escape tricked me. It showed what I dreamed of, promised it was about that. But then, almost gently, it told me that my dream must also end. The events and anxiety and agony of the characters are anything but gentle, but in a way, the manga feels like a firm kindness. "You can't run away forever," it says. "And it will hurt. You will cry. But you need to get back up. And there's nothing to be embarrassed about. You can get through it too."
I've been dating a woman ~5 years older than me for the past year and a half. She failed out of college herself, but after a few years of self-destructive coasting, she went back and finished. She makes good money now, and has a stable life. While visiting her and talking about potentially moving up there (we're long distance), she gently asked me whether I'd want to try to go back to school or get a job in the industry I was in. At the time, I said I didn't know, and that I could always get a part time job if needed. But even while I was saying those words, my mind had leapt unbidden to this manga. And I realized that, for the first time in a decade, I had already accepted that my dream had to end, and that I was ready to move forward.
And I don't know whether I would have thought that if not for this.
So as much as the anxiety of this story hurts, as much as I also wish it could have been a happy escape forever — as many of us do — I think this is what the story is meant for. And for at least this gay mess of a girl who spent years running from that anxiety, it came at a time that mattered. I'm going to tell my girlfriend that I'm ready to move on next time I visit her. That I am ready to put in the work and build a life with her, as long as we catch each other when we stumble.
And that's something far better than any story of happy forever escape could have been.