Lately, I have found myself needing to escape the confines of my small space in order to feel something other than the touch of my fingers on my keyboard and focus my gaze beyond the 20″ LED monitor I spend the majority of my life in front of. I try to do this at least once a week for the sake of my mental and emotional sanity. Often times, this is highly therapeutic for clearing my mind, offering me time for reading a book, or discovering a piece of myself that I am subconsciously aware of and yet consciously unaware.

The feeling of being alive…

Whether we actively or passively seek this, we all seek this in some respect. Some find it through their jobs. Others through their loved one. Many through devoting their energies to an online Player Character. One way or another, this is something none of us can seem to convince ourselves to live without.

.hack//G.U.+ Vol. 1

Upon reading the Author’s Note at the end of this manga, Tatsuya Hamazaki wrote something that jolted me into an even deeper awareness of my existence.

“Regardless creating and working on the .hack franchise, in both past and the present, has made me feel alive. – Tatsuya Hamazaki, //G.U & //G.U+ Scriptwriter

Those underlined words immediately made me realize how much I desire to feel alive again. Becoming an adult has made me long after the carefree life of childhood – doing as I please, yet within limitations. Even with those limitations, I still could move through life. However, despite that capability of simplicity and lack of responsibility, the moment I came to understand who I needed to be was the moment I no longer could feel truly alive.

Coming to this conclusion led me to the next question: Why haven’t I been capable of “feeling alive.” The irony is that I had already answered my own question. My life has been such a mental and emotional struggle for me for so many years, and has only increased the older I became. Spending my days working, keeping myself accountable, managing finances, and constantly plagued by something needing to be done every moment I’m awake has brought me to a place of simply living to achieve an end result in the hopes that I will be affirmed through said result.

Madness…

Now two weeks from turning 23, I now understand that I have been so busy trying to survive that I have no time to feel alive…This should not be, and yet the most vivid recollections I have of “feeling alive” is when I encounter anything .hack related. The themes, the characters, the delving into the digital fantasy of living for the sake of another, more capable being has never failed to engross me time and time again. In those moments, I no longer feel like a lifeless being fulfilling a singular purpose. In .hack, I feel as though I can transcend my current circumstances and be released from the chains of reality that bind me every single day.

Key of the Twilight…

Is this pitiful? No…because at least I am honest enough to come to a conclusion for my own sake: The closest thing that one such as myself can attain in this reality is having someone complete that fantasy in my reality. Simply put, one whom I can live for in this life. That singular individual who can affirm my way of living according to isshoukenmei and faith in the unseen is what will allow me to finally feel rightfully, deservingly alive.

Purpose alone is not enough to affirm our existence…and yet few consider when their existence shall be affirmed by anyone other than themselves and their actions.

Related entry: Live.Move.Breathe. [Ikiru.Ugoku.Tsuku.]