BGM: John Lennon - (Just Like) Starting Over
Today was a day off. This morning I met the facility manager of my group home. I did the payment and talked a lot. The manager praised my efforts every day, and I was really thankful for that. Last year I made a failure about payment and felt terrible depression from it. Now, the care from the leader and other staff enables certain growth I think. Even now I almost buy something passionately, and I admit that I use wasteful money for various things. I also accept that the desire for alcohol is still alive in me. It would be the key to my life how to face that addiction. I believe that it is never possible to overcome the feeling of drinking or wanting. I can't overcome my desire, and that means that I am addicted. I accept my weak will and try to live.
This afternoon I attended the "danshu" meeting at the city office. After talking about my episode, I listened to our group's newcomer episode. At the "danshu" meeting, we always learn that the newcomers are basically teachers. Because their episodes remind us of the memories we have at the time we were just beginners, and they also let us learn how we have recovered from there. Me, at the time I just started quitting alcohol and couldn't understand the meeting, I thought certainly that"how it would work that attend such a meeting?" suspiciously, or even fishy. I remembered that feeling again. The newcomer showed her smiles and also seemed to start trying to live again in her new life and recovering from the bottom. I am glad to see her positive figure. It is really rare that people connect with this kind of self-help group, so I hope my figure would help her a little.
After that, I took a nap and read Yoshio Kataoka's "Thinking Japanese in English". In this book, Yoshio Kataoka tries to translate various Japanese expressions into English and suggests the results (in some cases, he does contrasting work as translating English into Japanese). Not translating Japanese into English automatically, he "crushes" those Japanese expressions into a lot of pieces of essence and rebuilds English drastically. That work from him is really great and I learned a lot. We often translate every word of Japanese into English bit by bit. That might be because that mechanic translation often ends to show strange results. Translating something into foreign languages means learning those languages' basic ideas as ours I guess. Kataoka's work told me that.
The evening I attended the "danshu" meeting at night. I met the newcomer who had met my afternoon. I guess she had made her will to live her life seriously, and it made me impressive certainly. I, Spring is a difficult season to stay calm. As I wrote about this in this diary, once in Spring, on fine days, I just had enough to stay alone and drank a lot during other people enjoyed watching Sakura or doing outdoor activities because I can't drive a car. I remember that miserable memory... but I can't stop the time so I try to rely on the connections with the "danshu" meeting and other groups through the season moving from winter to spring. And the anniversary for me that I started quitting alcohol, on the 3rd of April comes again. It has been eight years... I am still learning or studying to live my life, and it has no end. After that meeting, I returned to my home and read Yoshikichi Furui's "Asagao" a little.
