Chapter Ten – Feeling Helpless and Hopeless

KUON

I feel so ungrateful for everything that I've been given and all of the people who have cared about me but I just feel completely empty inside. I've been attempting to be as positive as I can be but I feel that all of that energy has just evaporated and I'm left trying to figure out what to do next in my life.

I can't see.

That's the problem. I can't see literally because of the damage which has been done to my eyes but I also can't see figuratively in terms of which way to turn in life. I take slow breaths in an attempt to center myself but even that isn't working. I just feel completely lost and that I am literally struggling to grab hold of things in the dark. I don't want to ask for help. My parents asked for me to leave at seventeen so I could take an independent journey and get better and now I'm terrified that I won't be able to do anything without help.

I fall onto my bed and imagine that I'm just staring in one direction but that is a word which shouldn't be part of my vocabulary anymore. Stare, gaze, look, see. I'm disabled and now I can't quite get that out of my head. I thought that I was always standing up for people who were disabled but I never thought that I would be one of those people.

Saying that or at least thinking it makes me feel like a jerk and a fake. I really do care about others but I didn't know I was unknowingly putting a divide between us. It doesn't matter if everyone does it subconsciously. I was always on one side of that bias and now I'm on the other.

I hate being helpless. I hate not knowing things. Yes, I relied on looking up words in a dictionary if I didn't understand them and when I was younger that included a lot of foreign Japanese words because I'm a foreigner but I always relied upon myself. I always depended on myself. Now I just feel like a boy a quarter of my age who needs to rely on their Daddy for everything.

I appreciate Dad, I really do. I know that this has been tough on him as well but it's as if I'm sucking all of his time and energy from him and he can't even tell me that I'm wrong. Maybe if he said that I was causing him difficulties, I could apologize and find some other way of helping but this isn't the same and it isn't right. I just want for him to leave and occupy himself with his own work.

I can't lie on this bed forever. No matter how much I might want to escape from this world, lying down on this bed for the rest of my life is not an option and the sooner I get up and take as much charge of my life as possible, the better.

I get up and walk out of the room, putting my hand on the wall to steady myself. I need to do something simple. I need to walk down this hallway and go to the fridge, pick up a rice ball, unwrap it, and eat it. That's something simple that I can manage.

As I walk down the hall though, I stumble and fall and find myself nearly having a panic attack as I catch myself before I hit the ground. I feel the air in my lungs tighten and I'm finding it hard to breathe. I feel claustrophobic. The room around me is growing tighter and I can't breathe. I roll onto my side with my arms around me and I hear footsteps approaching me.

"Kuon," I hear Mom say as she tries to put my head on her lap and checks my temperature, my pulse, my breathing. "Baby, what is it, darling? What's wrong? Deep breaths, okay. Deep breaths."

"I've got some water," I hear Dad say and Mom places a damp cloth on my forehead. "He didn't hurt himself, did he?"

"I don't know yet," Mom says as she tries to soothe me and I eventually calm down. I'm making a huge mess of this. I don't know how to take care of myself and I feel guilty to put my parents in the role of taking responsibility for my care.

JULIE

It is such an incredibly hard thing as a mother to see your baby crying and that's what I have here but to see someone strong like Kuon in this position is like throwing an axe at my chest and striking my heart. I just want tor him to be okay but I know he'll never be okay without accepting his disability. As he falls down I feel as if I've failed as his mother. He is trying so hard and I hate to say this but it might be better if he tried a little less.

"Kuon," I ask him, my heart hurting to see him in this much pain but there's not much that I can do to change anything. "Baby, what is it, darling? What's wrong?" I ask him as I let my hand go through his soft, silky, blond hair and I try to get him to relax. He's had it rough for so many years already and if his disability is permanent he might have it rough for the rest of his life.

"Deep breaths, okay." I tell him knowing that that would help him. "Deep breaths."

Kuu comes to our side and tries to press a damp cloth on Kuon's forehead. He's asking me if Kuon has hurt himself and I don't know. I hate that I don't know. As a mother I am supposed to know and yet I can't even answer that one question. I take a deep breath in as Kuu tries to make sure Kuon hasn't gotten hurt. It would be so hard for him to get hurt these days.

"I don't know yet," I reply to Kuu as he asks me whether Kuon's hurt himself. I wish I could take every bit of the pain which Kuon is feeling, roll it up into a paper ball, and toss it away. Kuon deserves so much better than this.

"I haven't," Kuon finally says and he attempts to get up but Kuu very delicately holds him down. "I haven't hurt myself." He tells us and I feel my heart sting. I know that it means that he hasn't physically hurt himself but it must be so difficult for him. He has always been so incredibly strong and hard working and independent and now even the smallest and easiest of tasks causes him pain.

"Okay. But for your own health, you need to stand up slowly and you can use me for support, okay," Kuu offers and I watch the two most important men in my life. Kuon rolls onto his back and takes a deep breath in. I feel my heart racing a little, did he hurt his back? Did he somehow fall on it? I thought he had fallen on his side but I could very easily be wrong.

"I'm so sorry to…to both of you," Kuon says and I can hear the pain in his voice.

I reach for him and take his hand in mine, squeezing it a little. I bring his fingers to my lips and kiss his hand softly. "Sssh, it's okay. It's okay."

"Kuon, I was the one who suggested for you to come to Japan alone," Kuu tells him and I take a breath in. I don't want to talk about what happened all those years ago and how hard it has been for me not to see my baby growing up. I know that both Kuu and Kuon feel guilty and I hate myself for Kuon ever thinking we didn't love him when all that we wanted was for him to be safe and happy and healthy. I love my baby. He never needs to apologize to me.

"I'm taking you away from careers you love," he says before trying to stand up again and Kuu beats me to helping him. Kuu takes him to the sofa where he can sit.

"We want to be here," Kuu tells him and I agree with him on that. Nothing is more important to me than Kuon, even if my reputation gets worse and worse, nothing is more important to me than Kuon.

KUU

I wish I had listened more when doing those medical roles. Of course most of the time, I was a doctor of things like the heart, the lungs, the brain, and I don't even know how much of what they had written down in those scripts was right but I wish that I could have learned enough for my son. They're having him do tests right now but I don't know how these tests work or what they're supposed to measure and I feel like such an idiot. Why couldn't I have listened more during those roles? I'm supposed to observe and learn from everything when acting but I became too narrow focused, I just never expected for him to be here and blind.

I see Kuon come out with a cane and he looks even worse than usual which makes my protective parental instinct and need to protect flare up.

"We had some success," Kuon tells me with a small smile and I stop. I look to the optometrist who nods and then back at Kuon. I don't know what he means but I'll take progress .I want nothing but the best for my child. "I was able to see light," he says and I turn to the doctor again.

"It means that, although it might be slow, Kuon's treatment is certainly possible that he'll be able to see but it would be over a very long time of healing," he says and I smile widely. Okay. So we're a long long way from healed but it's possible and Kuon is one of the absolute hardest workers I know. It's going to happen but the question now stands as when is it going to happen.

End of Chapter Ten

Thank you for reading

Thank you to those who left a review on Chapter Nine

C.O18, H-Nala