ψ(｀∇´)ψ

When I was a little kid, my cousins and I would stay up late to watch anime. We arranged our pillows and blankets on the floor in front of the biggest rptv, that at the time seemed to take up the entire wall (I’m realizing now they weren’t that big), and get settled in. Eventually, when my cousins fell asleep, I would stay up and feel an incomprehensible loneliness only exacerbated by what we had just stayed up to watch. Ghost in the Shell, Wolf’s Rain, and Serial Experiments Lain moved me in ways I didn’t fully comprehend at the time. I was only seven years old in 2004, but I was having the most dramatic, existential thoughts, crying quietly to myself. I remember feeling like I was the only conscious person on Earth, and that the hours between then and when the world would start moving again were endless. In that time, it was just me and my thoughts, and it was a feeling that completely unsettled me. A weird loneliness you can only feel when you’re a child and the only person awake in a house full of over a dozen people.