Taking it too far

I apologise for the length.

 

I was first introduced to anime through fanfiction and roleplaying.

 

But, unlike a lot of stories featured here, this isn't about what somebody elses weeabooism did to destroy my life, it was my own weeabooism that did so.

 

I was 14 years old and had moved to a new school, my entire class disliked me, I was bullied everyday to a point that I was almost suicidal, and my mother had just fallen pregnant to her abusive boyfriend (Now, unfortunately my stepdad.) We had no money, I had no friends and I felt as though I couldn't confide in my mother any of the horrible things that were happening at school without causing her to stress and she was already under a lot of pressure.

 

So everyday I talked to a girl I had met through fanfiction before school, she told me to call her "Onee-san" and told me all about yaoi and cosplay and all these beautiful and strange new things that seemed almost like a dream of fantasy compared to my actual life. I hung off her every word and soon, she showed me my first (and last) anime. Death Note.

 

Needless to say. I became obsessed. It was my escape from the real world. I fell in love with everything about it. At school, my life was hell, it actually hurt to walk to school each day, as I dreaded what was coming, I was humiliated and physically and verbally assaulted on almost a daily basis. When I got home, my life was hell. My mother and stepdad were constantly fighting and argueing, the police were continually being called to our house on domestic violence counts and I had nobody to turn to except for a girl who lived on the other side of the world to me.

 

And Death Note. Heres where it becomes... Scary, at least for me. And it hurts to admit that this was me.

 

I began to think that "Kira" was testing me, and in order to have a complete a happy life, in order to defeat my demons, I would have to become the person Light was before he got the Death Note. I thought that if I studied hard enough, got through my grades I would be rewarded. It doesn't sound so bad right? It sounds like something positive? Studying and achieving highly.

 

No. It wasn't. I wanted the Death Note. Each day I dreamed of having a real one and each day I would intricately plan how I would murder each of the girls who tortured me in school with the Death Note by making it seem like an accident. My friend from America told me how cool my plans were and how smart I was for thinking of ways to make it look accidental and how I would make an excellent Kira, all I needed was the tool to kill them.

 

When I didn't achieve above average in school, I fell into a deep depression. I began desensitising myself to the prospect of death. All the while I also told myself the Death Note existed and I had to have it and I had to BE Kira. I scared people away who could have been my friends because I was "That weird girl who talks about anime and death". I hated myself and I hated everybody around me.

 

I did other typical weebish things too, yes, but not merely as destructive as what I did to myself. I began becoming paranoid. I began thinking somebody else deserved the Death Note. Not me. That I would instead of being the hero, be the victim, as always. I kept thinking somebody was going to write my name down and there was nothing I could do about it. And I imagined everybody laughing at my funeral. I imagined my mother thinking it was a relief off her chest for me being dead. I imagined my classmates mocking my death and repeated this idea to myself every night constantly. I called myself unworthy. I kept comparing myself to those Goddamn anime characters. I cried every night for a year, wishing that somebody with a death note would kill me so I wouldn't have to do it myself. I sort of fell in love with the idea of dying. But at the same time I was so scared of death, and mostly, what others would think of me after death.

 

I confided all of this in my weeaboo friend from America, but instead of providing solace she instead told me how cool it would be to kill all my enemies and create a new world for just me and people who, as she put it "Understands death like us. It's not a bad thing. We're freeing them from themselves". She began ranting and raving about the Death note. And how it would be justified to be a serial killer if you used the Death Note.

 

This is when I suddenly shook myself out of the dark hole I'd dug myself into. I mean what she was saying was like serial killer talk. And just like that I realised just how far I had gone with my obsession.

 

I realised that we were glamorising death with our obsession.I stopped talking to her, I moved away from anime, I began to feel happier, I gained self confidence, I eventually did make friends and got better, I got into my dream uni and although my family is still suffering from domestic violence, I move out of this place soon.

 

But the point of my story is that weeabooism is destructive to everybody. Even the weeaboo.

I still check the girls facebook from time to time. She's still a major weeb and it's obvious she is extremely bitter, and, like I did, takes her escapism way too far still. I feel sorry for her, but at the same time, I felt sorry for myself for a long, long time- and that didn't help me at all.