Graduation
As graduation day approaches, the topics in all the classes have focused on attitudes toward entering society with a handicap and possible places of employment. When I entered Higashi High, I studied with the goal of going on to a university. When I was a second grader at Okayo, I could still walk and thought I could find employment. But everything became impossible when I became a third grade student.
**-kun = ## Company
**-san = a vocational training school
Aya-Kito = staying at home . . .
That's the route fixed for me.
For the last two years, I've been taught to 'acknowledge being disabled and start from there.' I've had to suffer and fight a great deal. Every time some bright light came into my life, I had to experience a burst of heavy rain or a typhoon . . .followed by more fine days. I've reached graduation always carrying a feeling of instability. How much longer will I have to suffer and fight until I can find my life? I wonder if the disease gnawing away at my body will refuse to release me from agony until I die - as if it doesn't know the destination?
I wanted to be useful to society in some way, making the best use of the knowledge I've acquired from twelve years of school life and all the things I've learned from my teachers and friends. However small and weak my power might be, I'd have been so pleased to give something. I wanted to do something out of gratitude for all the kindness I've received from everyone. One thing I can dedicate to society is my body, for the sake of medical advance: I can ask for all my usable organs, such as kidneys and corneas, to be distributed to sick people . . .
Maybe that's all I can do?
YOU ARE READING
1 Liter of Tears (Ichi Litre No Namida)
Non-FictionKitou Aya is a young highschooler who finds out that she has Spinocerebellar Atrophy. This disease causes the person to lose control over his or her body. Because the person retains all of her mental ability, this disease is like a prison. Through h...
