Out of Africa

so i have been even less happy with life when i was told by boss last week that i needed to do a big presentation next month in front of all the bosses in a service completely strange to me. :$$$$ I am no good at presentations even on familiar grounds (and even when the audience is only 2-3 people) and just thinking about what's going to happen in that packed room with unfamiliar bosses was enough to make me hyperventilate.

not to say a big part of the presentation is going to be on the controversy of Exit international. :$$$$$ i must confess i don't really have a strong sense of social justice... i feel very honoured and happy when smart friends invite me to join their vigorous intellectual ethical debates... but my own views often go no more than the universal basic understanding that the more you ban people from doing something the more people would want it so what is the point...
anyways i am having a week off and tried to look up stuff on Exit International and felt very poisoned in many ways...
maybe i just need to chill and have some valium. :(

hence the procrastination and denial start and I went back to read old mangas. I first read Tokyo Love Story when I was 15 and then watched the more famous TV adaption some years later and over time the two somewhat different storylines merged a bit, until recently via someone else's reviews I suddenly realised what was really going on...

Rika Akana... the altruistic gregarious smiling goddess loved by everyone in the series, was actually a fulminant borderline in the manga.
reading back i managed to spot even the parasuicidal gestures...lol  there was this bit when she had an argument with Kanji and ran out in a thunderstorm and purposefully clipped her hair with a metal clip showing everyone she wanted lightening to strike her because Kanji was not being nice... -_-|||| (this is textbook stuff!!!)
...and the reason why Kanji went out with her in the first place, and why she was somewhat accepted into their little friendship circle since high school, had a lot to do with their high school borderline friend who suicided at the age of 17.
when I first read it I completely failed to see the relevance of the dead friend and mentally skipped chunks of people's flashbacks about events from high school (probably found it really boring too)...
and now they finally make sense... *sniff*

Fumi Saimon is a brilliant storyteller and has a philosophy degree but probably hadn't studied much psychology by the time she came up with borderline Rika:
and because of that she never had a condemning tone about Rika and her impulsive unjustified actions. she attributed her BPD to her desire for authenticity and freedom, 2ndary to her early upbringing in the primitive carefree vibrant environment of Africa.
Now moving on to the TV series, instead of primitive Africa, Rika came from America.
So borderlines are from Africa and goddesses are from America.
...
....
......this is so racist even racist me cringed.

so, back to the manga, i ended up crying almost non-stop when I got to the last volume.
playboy Mikami:
Overall my life is a success: I became a doctor, I am popular with girls, and now I have a beautiful fiancee, but only one thing lacking...
I have had no happy childhood.
successful people often want perfect success, but there is no way to change past misfortunes.
I want to give my son perfect happiness, only in this way my success will be complete.
He can play by the river until the sun goes down. and when he is hungry, he comes home, his parents would have made him a warm dinner, smiling as they welcome him back...
哭成狗……

Satomi as a teenager arguing with the rest of the class after the borderline girl committed suicide and left a note on the class blackboard saying "I hate all of you."
-What she told us by her death, i think, is just that we cannot buckle under such unjustified violence.
-Is suicide a form of violence against those who are left behind?
-I think it is, and such an angry suicide note is an act of cowardice.
-How can you say such terrible things about a friend who passed away?
at which point the majority of the class became indignant about Satomi's attitude and left the room but only Satomi, Mikami and Kanji stayed. Each of them were affected by the borderline suicide more than anyone else:
Mikami had a one night stand with the borderline girl not long ago-
Borderline girl tried to ask Kanji out just days before she died and got turned down by Kanji who said he liked Satomi--
Satomi's family ran a love hotel and she saw the borderline girl walking out with a man a week before she died and the girl accused her of reporting it to the teachers while she didn't-
Mikami tried to console Satomi:
-These people are just indulging in their sentimentality - "the noble me who is really considerate about my friend". Everybody used to hate her, didn't they?
I really don't think we can take dead people's last words too seriously. In crime shows we often hear the criminals saying before they die "i did it"... but if I am the criminal I will definitely say "I didn't do it".
Humans are all fallen. Who knows how true people's words are before they die?
and Satomi continued... crying:
-I thought she died hating me, but I am not going to admit defeat.
With people who really dislike me, who dislike me to the point that they wanted to go and die...
I am not going to run away. I am going to accept it.
继续哭成狗……

and Rika Akana meeting Kanji for one last time in Ehime, when Kanji told her about their high school borderline classmate who died and how much she reminded him of her:
What a joke. I am just Rika Akana. I am not going to be like anyone else.
and I am not dead yet. I want to live and live and live well.
I want to live and definitely not waste my life.
这次哭成polar bear没救了……

So... Tokyo Love Story is actually Tokyo Borderline Fairytale, good antidote for people, shrinks or not, who are troubled by the fact that others had in some ways, wanted to make them responsible for their own demise. There is a very borderline girl in the story who upsetted many people along the way with her borderliney actions, but in the end with an amazing twist of fate, graciously turned around, took responsibility for her own actions, left things as they were, and salvaged a few people haunted by the memories of a past borderline suicide, by their more positive experiences with her.

and I feel salvaged too by you, lovely Rika Akana.
and you really didn't have to look as good as this. *hearts*