BGM: Dragon Ash Feat. ZEEBRA & ACO - Grateful Days
At last I started a draft for the presentation I will do as a host for the meeting on the 13th of this month. The theme is simply "My Tokyo life". It's about how I had adored Tokyo when I was a teenager. After those teenage days, I started a new phase in my life. I entered Waseda university actually and started that "My Tokyo life"... But it was really a hard period for me. Up and down like waves. Reflecting that teenage period, I enjoyed a Japanese mixture band Dragon Ash's banger "Grateful Days" again. This song has a great line by a Japanese rapper ZEEBRA. I translate it into English. "I was born in Tokyo, raised by hip hop music". Me, I was born in Shiso, raised by city pop or "Shibuya-kei" music. You can see that I am never as cool as ZEEBRA, but I want to be proud of the fact that I was born in this city, and also am alive actually until now. I have been lived my reality/story. ZEEBRA says "Almost all of bad guys are my friends". I had no friends in my teenage days. But now I can say that these days are also my "Grateful Days".
This morning it was raining. Starting ZOOM, I had a meeting about English conversation we have always been enjoying every Wednesday morning. Today we tried to make various sentences by using the phrase "used to do". Although this is just a "readymade" idea, I made "I used to drink a lot of alcohol once" as my example. I showed that, and confessed how I could quit drinking alcohol anymore in my life. About this, a member on another Discord server had said to me that "Great decision!". Yes, of course I'm glad to read that. But for me, I have never quit my drinking. Headache did that. I just thought that "I can't live this drinking life anymore" and "This seems the end". There is no great story you are expecting... This must sound strange, but the feeling of "being tired of drinking" stopped me/my drinking. I didn't want to worry about my money anymore (everyday I had bought alcohol a lot... EVERYDAY!), and also I didn't want to worry how terrible my health could be, either. In a way, I "gave up drinking anymore"... What a strange story!
This afternoon I enjoyed another meeting of English conversation on ZOOM. There, we talked about "doing diet" a lot. "Diet" is also a popular (frequently used) Japanese word. But I noticed that this word can have various ways of talking about actively, therefore the meeting was really great opportunity for us to enjoy/learn. We referred to "fasting", so I said I have never experienced hard fasting. But recently I did fasting because I had to do health check at my workplace (I need not to eat anything to do that check). Me, now nobody say I am fat. But once I was a little bit fat so other people treated me as an uncool dude. They even bullied me. "Do you know this? In America, being fat means you don't have any skill of managing your figure, and you can't control yourself" so "It means you must be a lazy dude" (I want to ask about this to my American friends). About that meeting, the host cared about us (she gave us to say each other's opinions equally), and other members also welcomed me. I could enjoyed a pleasant time... It was a "Grateful" event.
This evening I had the "danshu" meeting. This time, I couldn't go to the meeting place actually so used LINE from my group home (in other words, I enjoyed it by remote). There, I talked about how I had felt frustrated when I quit drinking. As I wrote in this journal once, at that time I felt the feeling "Kuyashiidesu!" from somewhere (probably it was my inner voice). Just living this life with a lot of alcohol in vain, and dying with huge frustration from drinking. It was really frustrating for me. Therefore I decided to quit it and started diving into another phase of my life. It was completely unseen/unknown phase for me, and also meant that I had to go out of my "comfort zone" by that. Yes, I must be a lucky guy. Now, I never want to drink again. Sometimes I feel that there is a hole in my mind/heart. It still needs my action of drinking... But now I can feel various connections (I want to use a Japanese word "Kizuna") save my life by putting that hole. The connection with the members of that "danshu" meeting, and also with the members of our server (I don't want to use "my server"), and also with you (because you are my precious readers). Yes... I can live my life without any drinking, any suffering every day eventually. I am living really "Grateful Days".
