I don't really know what to say. I'm not okay. I've just learned that on Saturday, one of my former students decided to take her own life. Her name was Shizuka. She was in class 2-1 when i last taught her, but she was a 3nensei this year. i guess that would've made her about 18 years old.
Shizuka was a really pretty girl. She had lots of friends and a boyfriend, and was always super cheerful. She didn't really like school, but she always tried to do her best in my class. I'd always see her at Kawase Station, and she would wave across the train platform at me. When she was a 1nensei (and we first met) we got into a huge argument over her using her phone in class. i totally took it away and took 10 of her hanko points too, and she hated me for like 3 months. it seems pretty silly now, in retrospect. But she got over it, and soon became one of my favorite kids. When she was a 2nensei, she switched into a different homeroom, and she seemed to do a lot better with those students as classmates. I just saw her in march. She came into the office and was hanging out with Katie & myself...asking Katie if she thought one of our coworkers was hot. Heh. I was very fond of her. And she liked me too.
No one knows why she did it. She spent the day with her friends, went home, updated her blog about how grateful she was for her friends, family, & teachers, and then she hung herself.
I can't quite process it. I just keep crying and crying. I mean, it's Shizuka. So much potential. She always seemed so happy. Not Shizuka. Shizuka wouldn't do that. But she did. And she's gone. And I don't understand how or why. And I'm just so sad. Katie sent the mail and I think I was in denial about which Shizuka it was (not that any of them would have been better). I had to mail the photo and ask Katie if it was this Shizuka. It was. I wish I could be there to hug Katie, and Chinatsu, and the rest of Shizuka's friends and cry with them. I wish I could have told Shizuka so many things. It feels so unfair that she didn't realize how important she was. How valuable she was. I keep alternating between being sad and just being pissed off. It just doesn't seem real.
I went down to the basement this morning, and tore it apart looking for the messages my kids wrote me when I left Japan. I found Shizuka's. I don't know why i needed it, but I did. It's just three sentences. I keep holding it, thinking how she once held this scrap of paper in her hands. How it's the only thing I have. And how she's gone. She won't ever eat strawberries again, or kick rocks with her school loafers. We will never know who she would have grown to be. And I can't stop crying. I miss you already, Shizuka. I wish you weren't gone.
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cheerful
nostalgic
frustrated
