As much as this is a manga, this is more of a love-letter to anyone who feels out of place. Be it in a similar situation, or just truly feeling like they do not understand themselves, who they are, why do they need to be who they are or why even they are. (Pretentious ass short summary am I right? Stick with me.)
The story or autobiography as a lot of people like to call it follows a 28 year old, which has never had any sexual information outside of adult media, in our case Yaoi media, hence the Non-genderification of our main character, the mangaka. Telling a story like this would be seen as absurd, perverted and uncoherent and yet it connects with you deeply just because, well, it is real.
Working in a supermarket after being a college drop-out and suffering through severe depression, our mangaka inflicted pain on themself in many ways. They would go numerous days without eating which developed a severe binge-eating disorder. Feeling like nothing matters at that moment, stopping their work to go binge on food that would in fact inflict more pain, be it dry ramen or out of date food due to being in a constant state of starvation and fight or flight mode, from depriving their body of nutrients. Another, would be fine lines across their arms, which will stick with me as it truly is portrayed just perfectly. Quoting from memory, "Being able to see the scars, brings you that sense of comfort that you can still feel." Indicating that well, even pain or depression can still be the body's way of reminding you that you are not dead. You are still breathing.
As the managers see their lack of work they fire their. Moving from one part-time job to another, to developing an increasing alarming sense of social anxiety our mangaka goes years without being able to land a job, becoming unemployable due to social norms. Being seen as lazy, uncapable in the judging eyes for everyone around them.
Their parents? Comforting, a little too much as they depict. They doesn't blame their parents, in fact at their age they still let them live at their home after all and their mother was all they head to cling onto to the point where they developed a love interest or rather what they thought was a love interest. Wanting to be held just the same way a mother does when her baby first comes out of her. It's unrealistic unattainable. What was they truly looking for? The ability to be able to rely on someone, the ability to be held to be babied in a sense and not in other ways.
So they breaks down, no friends, no love, no job, savings were just sitting there as they had no desire to go anywhere, do anything spend them on anything. So they hire a female prostitute which leads them to insanity in the upcoming research about sex. Hell a 28 year old whose only experience is Yaoi and Boy's Love media is not a hell of a lot of information to go off and neither would it give a good impression on the other person, right? But what if, truly, you were not taught? What if, you never had interest however still curious? Could someone really grow all these years and yet not understand their own body and how it works?
Her self-development is immersive, is real and on top of all is human. It's a short read and to anyone reading these last few words, you are not alone, you will never truly be alone.
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