Schoolgirl

Whenever I let the slightest thing make me forget myself, I can't help but be disappointed.

Now, even when I make an outfit for myself, I wonder what other people will think. The truth is that I secretly love what seems to be my own individuality, and I hope I always will, but fully embodying it is another matter. I always want everyone to think I am a good girl. Whenever I am around a lot of people, it is amazing how obsequious I can be. I fib and chatter away, saying things I don't want to or mean in any way. I feel like it is to my advantage to do so. I hate it. I hope for a revolution in ethics and morals. Then, my obsequiousness and this need to plod through life according to others' expectations would simply dissolve.

They scolded us for not having any real hopes or real ambitions, but if we were to pursue our true ideals, would these people watch and guide us along the way?

I go about saying how pained and tormented, how lonely and sad I feel, but what do I really mean by that? If I were to speak the truth, I would die.

Excessively passionate characters have a tendency to behave poorly.

I sat there agape, looking at the flowers, and thought to myself, There are really good things about human beings. I mean, it's humans who discovered the beauty of flowers, and humans who admire them.

A mere smile can determine a woman's fate. It is frightening. Fascinatingly so. I have to be careful.

I yearned for everything long gone.

Tomorrow will probably be another day like today. Happiness will never come my way. I know that. But it's probably best to go to sleep believing that it will surely come, tomorrow it will come. [...] You wait and wait for happiness, and when finally you can't bear it any longer, you rush out of the house, only to hear later that a marvelous happiness arrived the following day at the home you had abandoned, and now it was too late. Sometimes happiness arrives one night too late. Happiness...

It made me miserable that I was rapidly becoming an adult and that I was unable to do anything about it.

In time, when we became adults, we might look back on this pain and loneliness as a funny thing, perfectly ordinary, but—but how were we expected to get by, to get through this interminable period of time until that point when we were adults? There was no one to teach us how. Was there nothing to do but leave us alone, like we had the measles? But people died from the measles, or went blind. You couldn't just leave them alone. Some of us, in our daily depressions and rages, were apt to stray, to become corrupted, irreparably so, and then our lives would be forever in disorder. There were even some who would resolve to kill themselves. And when that happened, everyone would say, Oh, if only she had lived a little longer she would have known, if she were a little more grown up she would have figured it out. How saddened they would all be. But if those people were to think about it from our perspective, and see how we had tried to endure despite how terribly painful it all was, and how we had even tried to listen carefully, as hard as we could, to what the world might have to say, they would see that, in the end, the same bland lessons were always being repeated over and over, you know, well, merely to appease us. And they would see how we always experienced the same embarrassment of being ignored.

It's not as though we only care about the present. If you were to point to a faraway mountain and say, If you can make it there, it's a pretty good view, I'd see that there's not an ounce of untruth to what you tell us. But when you say, Well, bear with it just a little longer, if you can make it to the top of that mountain, you'll have done it, you are ignoring the fact that we are suffering from a terrible stomachache—right now. Surely one of you is mistaken to let us go on this way. You're the one who is to blame.

Heaven forbid if beauty were to have substance. Genuine beauty is always meaningless, without virtue.

Really, I don't know which is the true me. What ever will I do when there aren't any more books to read, or when I can't find another role model to imitate? Probably just wither away, helpless and sniveling profusely. Anyhow, these aimless thoughts I have on the train every day don't do me much good. The unpleasant warmth I still felt in my body was unbearable. I felt I had to do something, somehow, but would I be able to fully grasp what that was? My self-criticisms seem basically pointless to me. I would start to judge, and when I'd get to my negative or weak traits, I'd immediately begin to indulge or wallow in self-pity, and then decide it's no good, why not just leave well enough alone, so I've given up on criticism. It would be best if I just didn't think of anything at all.

To break free from this vexatious and awful never-ending cycle, this flood of outrageous thoughts, and to long for nothing more than simply to sleep--how clean, how pure, the mere thought of it is exhilarating.

I want to love everyone', I thought, almost tearfully. If you stare at the sky, it changes little by little. Gradually it turns bluish. [..] I had never seen anything as beautiful as the translucent leaves and grass. Gently, I reached out to the touch of the grass.