I recently finished the novel No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. I had no idea what the book was about when first jumping into it, but I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with its contents.
(Source: The novel centers around the protaginst, Yozo, an individual who struggles with fitting into society and connecting with other people. From a very young age, Yozo has seen himself as abnormal, and the book documents the trials and tribulations he tries to overcome while facing this great dilemna.
Right at the beginning of the book the reader is greeted with the information that Yozo has been sexually abused throughout his childhood by the servants of his household:
"Already by that time I had been taught a lamentable thing by the maids and menservants; I was being corrupted. I now think that to perpetrate such a thing on a small child is the ugliest, vilest, crudest crime a human being can commit. But I endured."
Something we can all universally agree on, I'm sure. But having personally been in nearly the exact predicament... After experiencing an unspeakable trauma such as the one Yozo does -- quite literally "unspeakable" when your abusers instruct you to "Not tell anyone! This will be our little secret..." -- a piece of you is left infected. Even before recognizing that the act is sinful, you go through life as though you are cursed. A terribly heavy, suffocatingly gloomy shadow that hangs above you... I used to choose the term "damaged goods" to convey my experience.
This abuse becomes the pivotal factor for Yozo's inability to maintain relationships, deal with his problems, and for all of his future suffering.
Not only has it left him feeling alienated from other human beings, but he is also left to cope with it entirely on his own. "Cope" is not even the right word because he never properly addresses the situation, informing the reader that because of his preexisting disconnect from humanity, Yozo doesn't think anyone would believe or help him. As a survivor myself, I'll tell you right now that Yozo was probably right (unfortunately)! Sexual abuse has been a huge issue of denial since the dawn of time, and if my modern-day, liberal Western family didn't believe me, I have a difficult time thinking that a post-World War II, traditional Japanese family would believe Yozo...
"I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity—of people deceiving one another without any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another."
Because of this perspective of life, more specifically of human beings, Yozo leads his own life of deceit. He masquerades as a clown, joking his way through life, hoping that this will please others and they will "leave him alone," as in they will not try to manipulate him. He has no true friends, no real relationships. The only women he keeps company with are prostitutes. Although he loves art, Yozo struggles to make a career out of it, simply works as a magazine cartoonist. At one point in the novel, he attempts to commit suicide with the one person he does manage to connect with, a female friend from college. He survives; she does not.
"Unable to suppress such reactions of annoyance, I escaped. I escaped, but it gave me no pleasure: I decided to kill myself."
At the result of his failed suicide attempt, Yozo's family disowns him (you know what Japanese culture is like!). Yozo does end up marrying a young woman later on, and for awhile it seems as though things are going well! However, Yozo's own wife has an affair due to her childish trustfulness of others, her inability to question others' motives.
"It was on account of that rare virtue she possessed that my wife was violated ... Is immaculate trustfulness a sin? Now that I harbored doubts about the one virtue I had depended on, I lost all comprehension of everything around me. My only resort was drink."
Yozo gives into drink; his health drastically deteriorates. He has a second suicide attempt, this time via sleeping pills, but still manages to survive. Upon being released from the hospital, Yozo becomes addicted to morphine, and it is at this point that his family -- his brother -- decides it is best for Yozo to be committed to a mental health institution.
"And now I had become a madman. Even if released, I would be forever branded on the forehead with the word 'madman,' or perhaps, 'reject.' I disqualified as a human being. I had now ceased utterly to be a human."
No Longer Human really resonated with me; I saw a lot of myself in Yozo throughout the book, as I have endured similar experiences and thoughts. Again, having experienced sexual abuse throughout my childhood, I grew up feeling a similar alienation from other people, and while I was able to get people to "like" me, similar to Yozo, the relationships felt unfulfilling, hollow...
However, I will tell you what the difference is between Yozo and myself: I have come to terms with my past. Unlike Yozo, who simply accepted his suffering and let it define him, I confronted my trauma. I realized that it wasn't my fault, that my abuse is not a reflection or representation of who I am as a person or what I deserve.
Unfortunately, Yozo never undergoes this type of development and allows his trauma to shape his entire world; thus, he lives a life of misery while he continues inflicting pain onto himself and others...
Returning to my main point of familiar experiences... While I have never attempted suicide, I have been suicidal for a portion of my life. Growing up abused, alienated, disowned, and unable to derive happiness the same as others, I contemplated ending my own life often. After Yozo's second attempt, he says something that greatly resonated with me:
"I am told that the first words I murmured as I began to recover consciousness were, 'I'm going home.' It's not clear even to myself what place I meant by 'home,' but in any case these were the words I said, accompanied, I was told, by profuse weeping."
Too often, from my relationships with people alone, I have felt like I was "not made" for this world, and that if this is all that the world is, I don't want to endure another half century of it. I do not believe in heaven nor hell either; I believe in eternal, unconscious darkness. The same sensation that we experience while asleep, no awareness of what's occurring... Again, similar to Yozo, I used to take a great sense of relief in this possibility, to the point where I would happily cry while thinking about leaving the world...
"I craved desperately some great savage joy, no matter how immense the suffering that might ensue."
Rather than depart, similar to Yozo, I partook in drug usage as a means to escape. I had become so devoid of genuine happiness that I just wanted to feel something -- even at the expense of my health and loved ones. I ended up enduring an extremely toxic, abusive relationship, losing what little family that I had left, destroying my body, as well as my morals, in the process.
It should go without saying that none of it was worth it! The "happiness" that one receives from drugs is shallow and short-lived. After a certain point the happiness stopped anyway, and I was only doing it for the paranoia, terrified to so much as even breathe.
The novel ended with a final passage, and it was one that I found absolutely horrifying...
"Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Everything passes. That is the one and only thing I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell. Everything passes."
Horrifying in the sense of how entirely accurate it is -- again, this is a quote that I have lived by for many years, my personal mantra. Everything passes. Nothing lasts forever, both positive and negative. I remind myself that the terrible times have to end eventually, and the good times cannot last forever either. It's why it is so important not to dwell on either experience! If you're going through hell, you need to take solace in the fact that you will turn out on the other side eventually. If you're on cloud 9, you cannot grow anxious over the fear that something will come to steal it away.
Again, from here was where Yozo's problems stemmed. He gave into the delusion that he was subhuman and let that belief dictate the rest of his life. He believed that he deserved terrible things and was always dreading their impending arrival.
There is truth to another quote as well: thought turns into energy.
Constantly thinking negative thoughts will eventually manifest into real-life negative experiences, people, etc. The same way positive thoughts will manifest into your life as positive experiences. If Yozo had simply stopped giving into his negativity all the time, perhaps there could have been a much better outcome...
As soon as I stopped focusing on the idea that I wanted to die and started manifesting my thoughts positively, I finally started a healthy relationship with a man who treats me the way I deserve. I immediately became pregnant -- something that I had never dreamed of happening -- but we welcomed a beautiful girl into the world regardless and she has now become the whole purpose of my life (as well as her sister).
I have gone from seeing no meaning in life, to realizing that starting a family, more specifically having children, is the entire purpose of life...
