The Canned Mackerel in Miso Guy
(Saba no Misoni-kan kun)

It was around the summer of my second year in senior high school when disability caused my life to fall apart. This is the story of how my life fell apart, and then of how I became able to dream, while also keeping reality firmly in mind. Some omens of this collapse began to be seen around my second year in junior high school.

In junior high school, I joined the brass band from my first year. However, I did not get along very well with the other members in my year. After a while, a rift appeared between the older students (then in their third year) and those in my year (then in our second year) and, since I got on well with the older students, I was caught in the middle. This situation apparently caused me a lot of stress, because I gradually began self-harming from this period. At that time, the self-harm was not yet serious. Perhaps I was able to contain it because I liked music and the club activities.

In my first year of senior high school, I was a class representative, but things gradually started to fall apart from the club selection. I originally wanted to join the brass band, like in junior high school, but they would not let me play the same instrument as before, and there were many club members, so I disliked it and quit. For the chorus contest between classes, too, I was not allowed to be the conductor as I had wanted, and I started to become tired of almost everything about school life.

Immediately after moving up to the second year, it became difficult to go to school. From this period, my apathy and self-harm became worse.

In my third year, I did not go to classes, let alone school events. I had been going to a mental clinic since the autumn of my second year, but I did not know clearly what all my symptoms so far were, and I was later introduced to the hospital where I go now by a member of staff at the child guidance centre. This led to my first hospitalization, and I was in and out of hospital for the next three years or so.

I am currently living in a group home and attending a workshop providing support for transition to employment. I have been diagnosed with “disinhibited attachment disorder” by my doctor at the hospital where I am an outpatient.

“Attachment disorders” are conditions in which attachment with carers does not form, for some reason, and problems with a child’s emotions or interpersonal relations arise. “Disinhibited attachment disorder” is one pattern within attachment disorders. It is a specific pattern of abnormal social functioning which appears by five years old, and shows a tendency to persist even if the surrounding environment changes markedly. My symptoms are to show attachment behaviours towards anyone indiscriminately, acting in a friendly way without distinction in an attempt to attract attention but lacking interpersonal exchanges which are coordinated with my companions, and to become emotionally unstable depending upon the environment. These symptoms have eased now, and no longer appear pronounced.

Recently, I have been editing game videos that I recorded. However, rather than always making the same videos, if I want to turn this into a job I think it would be better to become able to make various different genres of video, and I am editing videos to put on the website of the employment transition support workshop that I attend. These videos make use of footage I shot during events and programmes held at the workshop. Until now, my daily rhythm had been out of synch for a long time, alternating between nocturnal and early rising patterns, but since attending the workshop, I have become able to get up in the morning. I would like to get a job around summer 2023. Recently, my symptoms like emotional instability and self-harm are no longer appearing, and I feel that I have grown. My current goal is, of course, to get a job, but I have a dream beyond this: to start and build my own company. I would like to build a company where diverse people, with or without disabilities, can display their various abilities to the full.

I have written about various things at length, but I will finish with what I want to tell people. There really is meaning in making an effort. You can change yourself according to the amount you try. If you make efforts within what is possible for you, I am sure that these will accumulate and you will find what you want to do.