The burden of being blessed with wonderful friends and family

Here I sit at my desk in Plum Valley JHS with nothing to do.  I've finished my classes for the day, some good, some bad, and now I'm just...killing time.

Today's lunch was carb-tastic.  Pan-fried noodles (yakisoba), a potato-cheese croquette, mayonnaise burdock salad, bread and milk.  They must be trying to kill me...

But let's move beyond work.

I do believe I've lost most of my time for introspection, which is a very sad thing, but recently, I stumbled upon something that has been stressing me out to no end.  I'm a person with a pretty good memory.  It completely bails on me from time to time, but I tend to hold on to a lot of information.  One of the worst applications of this is debts owed.  See...I don't really like when people help me, because I will always remember it as something I must repay.  And in Japan, people help you all the time.  I've got people all over this country to whom I owe a lot...and it kills me.  I probably don't have to remember it all, but I just can't let it go.  Of course these people we're kind to me because they wanted to be kind to me, and not because they wanted anything in return, but...I can't just let it end like that.  I've even got people in America who I feel like I owe.  Every little meal, every bit of help they gave me just makes it all heavier.  And yes, of course, I feel like I need to repay my parents for bailing me out one particularly painful year, and for all those things they did that I took for granted.  Any wrong doing, any disrespect, any unintentional bullying...all these things weigh on my conscience pretty heavily.  And the worst part of it all...that heaviness actually makes me pull away from people.  Like, if you do me a huge favor, I honestly can't look you in the face until I can pay it back properly.  I can barely pick up the phone to speak to you, and even e-mails will start to dwindle.

So, I have two choices,  I can either find a way to somehow mentally set myself free from debts I'm pretty sure no one expects me to repay, or I can go out, make the most of myself, and use that heaviness for more momentum to push forward, and attain the means to repay all those people.  Actually, there is a third choice of "pay it forward"...

Let's aim for #2, yeah?  Yeah,  that sounds good.  With a healthy mix of #3.  K?  K.

J