Quotes I'd get tattooed on me if I wasn't in nursing

"He was an angel."
- From Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human

Not the lyric from Ariana Grande's hit song, Thank U Next, mind you.

It's a quote from a woman who was asked about the main character from No Longer Human.
I feel like I constantly struggle with the same thing that the main character, Yozo, struggled with. The main character constantly worries about being seen as a "normal human being", he worries about whether or not he is a good person and he feels as if it's difficult to act normally.

I felt this way when I was younger, I think I still feel this way a little. I felt like everyone except me got a guidebook on "How to Act Like a Person". I was constantly worried about what other people thought about me. I was worried about whether they thought I was weird or mean.

This first part of this book was from Yozo's perspective. The entire time, he seemed like the worst person on Earth. In the final part of the book, we finally get an outside perspective on Yozo, from a woman who lived with him. You'd think that she'd say something about how awful he was, how psychotic he was or how evil he was. The entire book made it seem like he was the worst person ever.
Instead she says,

"He was a good boy, an angel."

At that point you realise that he was just constantly being self-deprecating. Only he thought he was evil.

"I want it to hurt."
- From Mae Borowski in Night in the Woods

Sometimes, things are meaningful because we find them at the right time. I played Night in the Woods when it first came out in 2017.
I was suffering from a big period of depression. I had depression for as long as I could remember but in 2017 a bunch of things happened, so I was in a particularly horrible state of mind.
These events made way to pain, pain made way to numbness and numbness made way for nothing. My grades were fine but I wasn't even going to school anymore. I wouldn't see my friends and the worst part was that I didn't even care.

The main character of Night in the Woods, Mae Borowski, was in a similar situation when she said this line. The full quote reads like this,

"I get it.
This won't stop until I die.
But when I die, I want it to hurt.
When my friends leave, when I have to let go, when this entire town is wiped off the map, I want it to hurt.
Bad.
I want to lose.
I want to get beaten up.
I want to hold on until I'm thrown off and everything ends.
And you know what?
Until that happens, I want to hope again.
And I want it to hurt.
Because that means it meant something.
It means I am something, at least... pretty amazing to be something, at least..."

This is a really lovely topic for me so I'm just going to add in some other quotes that have a similar theme.

What is grief, if not love persevering?
- Vision to Wanda, Avengers: Age of Ultron

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
- Winnie the Pooh

"But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste."
-Elio's Dad to Elio in Call Me by Your Name

"You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead."
-Emily to Emily in World of Tomorrow