It wasn’t the bright lights of the city that changed things for the country kid, though.
With summer vacation winding down, kids across Japan are headed back to school. Some of them will be happy to see their classmates again, swapping tales of sun-bleached fun from their days off, but others, the ones who are targets of bullying, won’t be looking forward to seeing their peers at all.
Statistics have shown the end of August/start of September to be one of the most emotionally trying times for Japanese teens, and so Japanese Twitter user @tenjikukitan took a few moments to share an uplifting story from his own difficult childhood, when he was growing up in a rural community in Ehime Prefecture.
中学生のとき教室でも部活でも大掛かりなイジメ受けてたことがあり、なんかもうキツくて死にてえなあって親に相談したら、東京に連れて行ってくれたんだよね。出張のついでとか言って。新宿や渋谷の雑踏歩きながら「誰もあなたのこと気に留めない世界がある。田舎を出て世界を見なさい」って。
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インド神話の天竺奇譚@インド神様の本出したよ (@tenjikukitan) August 20, 2019
“When I was in junior high, I was severely bullied, both by my classmates and the other people in my extracurricular club. It got so bad that I wanted to die. I talked to my parents about it, and they took me to Tokyo, making up some sort of excuse about needing to take me with them on a business trip.
As we walked through the crowded streets of Shinjuku and Shibuya, my parents told me ‘There are parts of the world where no one is focused on bullying you. Leave the countryside, and go see the world.’“
The trip helped @tenjikukitan realize that as ugly as the part of the world he was currently stuck in was to him, that didn’t mean the whole world was like that. “Sometimes you get so depressed that you can’t see anything else, but if you can take one step outside of that environment, you find a better place. The people who will become your real friends are waiting in the place beyond that step,” he continued. “The world you know [as a teen] is like a mere grain of rice. Don’t fall into despair alone. Talk to your parents, and when you’re old enough, go out and bask in the broader world.”
The story from @tenjikukitan, who’s now a writer specializing in Indian religion and folklore, elicited reactions including:
“Your parents are wonderful.”
“It’s touching that you trusted your parents enough to talk to them, and that they were open-minded enough to help you.”
“In a small community, people’s way of thinking becomes narrow-minded. That becomes the basis of their world, and they bully people who are different from how they imagine they should be, but the realty is there are lots of different people in the world.”
“A single school really is just a small slice of the world, but for the kids who’re attending it, it feels like the entirety of life to them.”
“Go to Tokyo. If Tokyo still isn’t a good place for you, go overseas. It’s a waste of your energy to stick with a depressing, narrow-minded part of the world.”
@tenjikukitan is quick to add that he’s not trying to push his experience on to others as the one and only way to cope with bullying-based depression. With summer vacation ending, though, he wanted to give some sort of message of hope to teens who’re going through the things he did. In the end, every person has to weigh the pros and cons of living in a small community (where everyone knows who you are and what you’re up to, for better or worse), an anonymity-offering big city (where most people don’t know who you are, and don’t care either) and decide what sort of place they want to live in on the sliding scale between those extremes, but the important thing is to remember that once you grow up, you do get to make that choice, and you’re free to pick someplace where the sadness of your old corner of the world is far, far away.
If you or someone you know is in Japan and having suicidal thoughts, there are people here to help. Click here for more info.
Source: Twitter/@tenjikukitan via Jin
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso (1, 2)
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