#but now that it's january i can't bring myself to write anything that could potentially be published

[sob-dylan]

realistically i'm probably only happy with 30% of the dribble that comes out of my mouth.

[mir-mape]

lil ramble about hnk, and me, and change, because it's 1:20 am and i can't bear to be alone with my thoughts so i'm going to scream into the void of the internet for comfort

hnk is a story i started reading a few years ago. i didn't get past the start. sooner this year, maybe around january or so, i gave it another try, and i finished all the available chapters in the span of like two days. And i think i did so because it's fundamentally a story about change, and as a dumb child about to start college, i really need a story to cling onto that deals with that topic

don't expect me to make a lot of sense, but like,, i've always struggled with handling change. i've always been the top of my class, mom and dad's pride, the friend you can always rely onto at any given time to help you with anything. so if my life's been that great why on earth would i want to change who i am. people already are happy with who i am. changing anything about myself is unnecessary at best and an inconvinience for everyone at worst

and so when adolescence hit, instead of trying to figure out who i was, it became a game of balancing what i wanted to be and the image other people had of me that i couldn't let go of because i didn't want to disappoint them.

then the lockdown happened, and turns out having a lot of time for myself without having to take into account anyone else was really enlightening (albeit also very maddening). that and also my closests friends now have helped me realize that if i ever want to be happy, i really need to start accepting that i'm no longer who i was as a child.

But that realization didn't "cure" me of my fear of change and dissappointing people around me that knew that old version of me. I was scared that being the person I wanted to be would inconvenience them, and they'd want back who I once was, and would I really be loved then? Like, of course my close friends and family would still love me in some way or another, but everyone else? How would I go on with life knowing I had everyone's approval and I threw it all away?

I went on an impressibly long personal tangent there and I'm sorry, but going back to my relationship with houseki no kuni—

phos is like. the completely opposite thing to me. they want to change for other people because they don't feel like they're good enough as it is, and i want to change for myself, but the fear of no longer being good enough for other people has always stopped me. And tragic as hnk is, it somehow manages to give me a bit of a cathartic feeling.

i'm terrified of change. i'm going to uni in like, what, two weeks? i'm going to live independently from my parents. i'm going to meet new teachers that know nothing about me and don't expect anything from me. same goes for my new classmates!! i can make new friends that could love me, and not old me!! it's a whole change of everything!

it's literally the opportunity that i always strived for. and yet i've spent the whole summer with this heavy feeling in my chest because gosh im TERRIFIED of growing up. what if i become nothing but wasted potential. i fear that i've spent so much of my life trying to live up to my older self that i no longer can make decisions in benefit of my own, current self

and yet... it's a bit like little phos, isn't it? i've always been alone with myself, and i will always be alone with myself. and i'm taking this out of the hnk story context, but I, myself, is the only person that I can assure will always be with me. So I should always be by her side in whatever she needs.

Hnk is an interesting story with incredibly complex character arcs and story,,, and yet, I feel like I will always hold it dear to me not only for that, but mostly because of it's core concept of change. This summer's been a tough one for me, I overthought my life way too much, and hnk has managed to bring me a strange comfort in the middle of all that. In the middle of the pain of becoming, as the last comic/fanart I reblogged before writing this post (accurately) called it