Daily, breathing experiences

Till couple of years ago, deep inside me I felt I did not deserve to live. This is because I had to deal with violence of the mental illness of my family member. I felt always so sorry that I was born. I felt perhaps if I was not born, the mental illness may not had triggered and my family would had a "normal family life". I also felt guilty of living my life far away from my family, which I escaped. At the same time, I wished also I could have lived a family life rather than growing up majority of time without my family. yet thanks to that I made many friends and it made me who I am today.  For most of my life, I made sure I did not stand out too much (even I do as I am who I am.), and acted awkward when I was in the spot light when it lasted longer than I expected and I tried to shut off from any successful recognition. Yet basic education of my mother was the opposite, probably the most important thing she taught me. It happened when I could not read the alphabet and struggling to understand why "tip" "tap" was what it was. She was furious that I could not read such simple words yet said  "To built my own personality and thinking." The only thing from that moment on wards I kept practicing is thinking. Thinking brought me to many grounds and taught me also not to believe in hype and make that my opinion. As the internet generation shapes the mentality in the world, some people in France who are not used to different kinds of people seem to have a hard time to deal with someone like me. Some people say I am "special" which in french not always positive.. It is a word that contains the double meaning. Couple of my old and close friends used to joke and still jokes "You are going to evolve and be less mean right?" and we laugh. We can laugh because it is half truth, I am nice to a real context and not in an illusion game playing with pretentious people. My friends are also in this way like me, they don't like pretentious stuff that are fake values. I try not to be a hypocrite and honest as possible to others and myself of what ever I do. I made many mistakes too and I do regret couple of things. I will most likely keep making different mistakes to learn from it. I can now finally understand the song "my way". I feel content of being who I am and stand in my place and being alive. What changed me was when I decided to get out of this deep seated melancholy of guilt and work towards the idea that I have right to exist and remain where I am. I am almost alive since half of the century and seeing loved ones passing away. I still love going to cemeteries because I find that it is the place of expressing love. Evidently each tombs are like short stories and the fact I was that person who believed I should not live, it comforted me to be in the space where I felt that there was still love even after death. In cemetery, I felt the love expressed by others who were alive most comforting and gave me a reason to live. This is why I used to photograph cemeteries and infected others photographers to photograph the same cemetery. I used to go to cemetery not to only photograph but to resource myself. I am a small cookie sometimes when it comes to these issues. I could almost say " How dare you walking into my space by seeing what I do and do the same?" but my friends who work on non-boarder movement taught me that these spaces are not specific to a person or another. Cemetery belongs to everyone who is alive like every country on the earth. It is hard to think how quickly the time passes. When I was in my 20's and 30's I did not see it as fast as today. How many people who I loved as a child, who had given me kindness are now gone. They still live inside me, they pop up in vivid imagery in color as I remember them. In fact, memories are like mobile cemetery for living. To love, to appreciate and be touched by the kindness given, good times together that existed with the loved ones who are no longer here.  Daily, my life has been full of meetings that I want to remember. I have too much memories inside me that I want to keep and by attempting to trying to maintain, I recreate over and over the memories of what I liked and input into the memory. This week and last week there were remarkable meetings. I like it when people, especially children speak to me spontaneously. Clement who has a speech difficulty (which I did not know), looked into my eyes and repeated the Japanese words for the days of a week. We were saying the words together and this togetherness of the moment, voicing felt great to me. Naomi took my hand and showed me the sign language of " how are you?" and  "buttering" and went back to the notes and kept teaching me new words. Hugo who seem not to be very confident about drawing spontaneously pointed out at his drawing asked me if this was art. I answered that everything you do with the intention of being art is art. The most important thing is to try. They all gave me a possibility of recognizing important things even they are still young. Children often teach me the most essential things in experiencing life. To B who appropriated my words which is fine as you written it and made my word part of you. This is much more meaningful to me. Your recognition of our commonness is what I cherish and difference is also evident in the book I received today. Your book felt as it was your testimony to life, your Yui-gon, legacy. Thank you for such a beautiful gift that you left to all of us. I will come back to it when ever I want to hear your voice. (very well written with many vocabularies which I will simply in conversation form.)