Life Gaiden

Yes, I did just quote Ulquiorra. Did I mention that I like him? But, all of that aside, I just wanted to say that true despair does not look like Ulqiorra's 'Segunda Etapa resurrecion'. Or, if it does, it looks like many other things too, like a hospital bed after three months of illness.

Oooooh my God, mere weeks after walking away from life-saving surgery, expecting to be able to resume normal life, I'm back hospitalised, albeit, this time near university. But, I swear, that, on the day that I came into hospital (last Wednesday), was on nil-by-mouth for a day, was in pain all day, had a painfully failed CSF tap (read, 'needle inserted into head to draw fluid') and was told around 9pm that I was going to have to stay in, I literally freaked out. I just burst into tears, saying, 'The only thing that got me through the last illness was the belief that I would have my life back at the end of it.' I knew that I was being selfish. Someone, at one point, tried to calm me down by saying that other people had it worse. This did not help. Because, as much as I accept that there are people who have it worse, the only experience which I had at that time was mine, and, in that moment, my mind grappled with the sheer existential terror of everything I'd ever hoped for in my life possibly being torn from me. I had no idea what was wrong with me, and, for all I knew, I would never live a normal life again. I would be constantly bed-bound and would be fed regular drugs for the rest of my no-doubt foreshortened-due-to-lack of exercise life. Call this hysterical, but to the people who do, I contest that our sense of self could well be called an extra organ. It is SO necessary to our lives. And, the person who I am, to me, has always been a fighter. Every morning in the latter half of the seemingly endless two months of my last illness, no matter how depressed I felt, I woke up and said to myself, '3...2...1...FIGHT!' But, last Wednesday, that part of myself went AWOL and the related part of my sense of self crumbled. I did all kinds of things which I never used to: I took painkillers which I could have managed without and I flinched at needles. I hated the person I had become.

But, if there is a God, then He has saved me somehow. He put a song in my head, and it's the one that I mention below this post. Mulan was always an inspiration to me as a child, embryonic feminist that I was. (And, before it’s pointed out, I understand the massive irony of the song: that its supposed to juxtapose unironic endorsement of traditionally masculine traits with a context and story which shows how flawed our understanding of those traits is if we see them in exclusively gendered terms. I get that. It doesn’t make the song any less bad-ass, though. Or any less inspiring when, if you’ve seen the film, in your mind’s eye you’re seeing the heroine reach the top of that pole like a boss after being written off.)

Stories like that one, and Bug's Life shaped my moral development. They taught me my baby’s first lessons on how to be a fighter. That song in my head brought me back to my true self. Suddenly, I could take any amount of pain. I suddenly realised that my mind was the sovereign of my body. And so, I got up and I marched, five times the length of my hospital cubicle, before stretching up on my toes seven times. This hurt like hell. But I could fight it, and right now, I feel like I can fight anything.

And this has taught me that, no matter how depressed I feel, how apathetic, how afraid, I am NOT a coward. What I am is the King of my existence. Every illness that I have, no matter how much I may at first succumb, I will fight it.

Now, I want to end by posting a video which has also partially inspired this line of thinking. The clip is from the film, Persepolis (if you haven't seen that film - fix that! This clip is more inspirational when you know that Marjane has lived every word), which also makes fighting a metaphor for life:

As I said in my mission statement/profile bio, the intended aim of this blog is to psychoanalyse the reiatsu out of my love of Bleach and various other Bleach/Japan-related things. I thought a good place to start with this would be to talk about my recent re-reading of Bleach Vol. 40, titled 'The Lust'.


Now, I think it would also be useful to talk about the circumstances which led to this re-reading. I had bought this volume while visiting the London Forbidden Planet for this very purpose. I went in for the one book and left with four (Bleach volumes 25, 32 and 40, along with the second Scott Pilgrim volume - darn you sales!). The emotions that I went through while browsing and buying and in the aftermath, though, were intriguing. For one thing, I got the feeling I always get in Forbidden Planet - a slight feeling of fear and being out of one's depth. However, unlike when I've gone in there before to buy Hellsing volumes or Umbrella Academy comics, I was satisfied that my purchases were to be mainstream enough to be unobjectionable to the staff, whom I am always, always, always sure judge my taste. Yet I felt different when deciding which one to buy. I was talking in what I hoped was a knowledgeable manner to my friend next to me in a bid to look like I belonged there, but inside I felt like ... You know that one bit in Kill Bill Vol. 1? The bit where Uma Thurman's character goes to see Hattori Hanzo and he shows her his collection of swords, and there's that lovely, almost holy music playing in the background and she goes up to the wall of katana in wonderment, yet she hesitates before touching one of them, silently asking the creator's permission?



That is exactly how I felt when looking at those Bleach volumes. It was something else. But then, having chosen and bought the books, I found that I was sweating and felt slightly sick. I was simultaneously feeling overwhelmed by my positive emotions and feeling the same guilty thrill as if I had stolen the stuff.

However, the guilt I felt was explained later when I showed my purchases to my mother, she pronounced it to be 'trash' which wouldn't get me a degree (more on why she's wrong another time, perhaps). I must say I found her choice of word ironic, considering the word to be Ulquiorra Cifer's main catchphrase early in his Bleach appearances.

But, when actually reading the books - just before I fell asleep at night - my feelings were more akin to the Hattori Hanzo scene. It felt like my soul was being fed by something lovely. Strangely, Bleach is one of the few books which I would definitely say I consume as I read - it has that sort of feeling - but it isn't like fast food, tasty but bad for me. Reading Bleach when I'm in the mood makes me feel like all is right with the world. I think the feeling comes from both the beauty of the art (I have never seen a better aesthetic in any other manga) and just that release of watching an honourable fight. Violence in itself is never beautiful - movies like The Expendables show us this - but the idealised violence of Bleach, which can never truly exist in this world, acts as a sort of antidote to my soul's ills, to be taken, not frequently, lest its effects wear thin, but certainly in times of need.