Blythe likes nagisa shingetsu a normal amount

And, to address the elephant in the room, the reason I am writing about a character no one cares about as opposed to my beautiful and wonderful beloved is because if I wrote about her, we’d be here all year.

Also: The note contains four paragraphs, but I have them broken up to make this easier to understand and comment on.

Title: “I Shouldn’t Have Had Him”

Little commentary here, but just note how she is saying “him”, meaning she is addressing herself or another, not Jataro directly.

“There's so much I can do if my son didn't exist. So much I could have done if I never had him.”

The clear things we can make out from this are that Jataro’s mother views him as the sole obstacle in her way. She doesn’t say she wants to kill him, but rather, she wished he never existed at all. Keep this in mind for later. It’s less clear what the circumstances are behind his birth.

While you can interpret this as Jataro being a mistake, it is also possible she wanted Jataro, only for events to lead her to regretting him. Personally, I’m inclined to believe the latter. When she says she “shouldn’t have had him”, she’s specifically referring to giving birth to him, not conceiving him. She doesn’t say she shouldn’t have had sex or shouldn’t have gotten married, she says had him. It implies that Jataro was conceived on purpose, only for his mother to realize it was a mistake afterward. She also named him Jataro, meaning “snake son”. We don’t know if this is a name she liked or if she named him this out of hatred.

There’s no mention of Jataro’s father from either him or his mother, so it’s safe to assume he’s completely out of the picture or not present enough. It’s possible she was formerly in a better situation and something happened. She says something that can be used as a clue, but that’s not until the next lines.

Another thing, she doesn’t just blame Jataro for existing, she blames herself for allowing him to exist. She could have said “So much I could have done if he didn’t exist”, “So much I could have done if he wasn’t here”, “So much I could have done if he died”, but she inserts herself into the blame here. Jataro’s mother says if “I never had him”, meaning she accepts responsibility for being the one to ruin her own life.

“I could have obtained qualifications and licenses, taken lessons, worked more.”

Now here’s that clue I was talking about. Of course, anyone can take lessons, but the combination of these things sounds, to me, like she was fairly young when she had Jataro. These all sound like her youth, which includes twenties, was cut short. She still had time to be something bigger. Jataro’s mothers starts this off saying there much she “can” do, but follows that up with saying there are somethings that are now in the past that she “could have” done. I’ll stop with my theories for now.

It is also known that his mother is likely a workaholic. On top of this sentence, Kotoko refers to Jataro as a “latchkey kid”, which is a child who returns home from school to an empty home because their parent(s) are working.

“Instead, my entire life is just a platform for my son's life.”

Jataro’s mother says that she now has no life separate from her son. There is no time for herself. This further implies that she is now a single parent. She previously stated she wanted to work more, but it was for her own goals. She wanted to work and have her own achievements, but now she feels her purpose has been reduced to merely providing for someone else. She can’t go back and get an education because now she is too busy providing for Jataro. Why can’t she get an education after he’s out of the house? Because at that point she feels like her life is done. She now exists only to care for Jataro, which is why she cannot imagine a future in becoming something greater.

“I think about it every night before I go to sleep. If I woke up in the morning and my son was dead, how splendid would that be?”

Here’s where it’s clearly starting to get to her. She thinks about it every night. She desperately wants to wake up and see that she is free again. If Jataro dies, she now has one less person to keep alive and gets back her personal life.

She also sees his death as nothing but good news. But, like I mentioned earlier, she hasn’t expressed any desire to kill him. She just wished something else would come in and fix her life for her.

“But every time I wake up and see him, I sigh. Why are you still alive? Why do you have a normal life?”

Now, this isn’t really important to her character, but the way Jataro’s mother phrases this could mean that Jataro gets up earlier than she does. She says “see him” but if he was dead he’d still be visible. She could mean it as “seeing living”, she doesn’t wake up and go to his room, she wakes up and sees him at some point.

She asks herself a question that is obviously towards Jataro, but she’s not asking him this. Jataro says his mom hates him, but only says what she told him, never what she asked him.

“Why do you have a normal life?” Holds two statements in one. First, she’s showing jealously. She’s asking how come he has a normal life, but I don’t? Why is he living as if he isn’t ruining her life. Second, she thinks his life is normal. Rather than acknowledging his toxic environment and his mask, I think she says normal as in happy. She knows she mistreats him, but wonders why he still wakes up and lives another day, because to her, it’s exhausting.

“I yearn for the day he stops being healthy and stops growing and just disappears. That's all I want. Why can't you just do something that simple for me?”

Another example of Jataro’s mother wanting him gone but not saying she’s going to harm him. The term yearn also cranks up the desperation tenfold. She then acts like his death or disappearance wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

Personally, I think it’s apparent she still has a sense of responsibility towards her son. While being outright abusive, she still never attempts to physically hurt him. She is the provider of his food, but doesn’t attempt to stop him from being healthy. She just waits for it to happen someday.

It could be feelings of weakness. She feels like it’s her sole purpose to provide for him, so the idea of killing him never even crosses her mind.

“I want him to die so badly it makes me cry. And the fact that he has such a worthless face just makes me even more sad.”

At this point, she’s overworked and tired. She’s become depressed from how badly she craves a new life.

Notably, she still doesn’t mention his father. Her hate for his face comes purely out of hate for him and it’s because he looks happy. When she tells him that he’s ugly and all these terrible things, it’s because she can’t handle the idea that he could have any success in life. The idea that he could have a good life after being what ruined hers.

Another thing not commonly known is that Jataro actually made his mask himself, but his mother is the one forcing him to wear it. It’s a bit unclear how this happened but my ideas are that she forced him to make something covering his face. Jataro is genuinely convinced there’s something wrong with his face and asks why she would make him wear the mask. The only way I can think is that he made it at her request and wore it.

“It makes me think I'm the one who's wrong. I shouldn't have had you.”

When his mother looks at Jataro’s face, she shows empathy for a second. She looks at his innocent face and thinks that she’s the bad guy for hurting him. However, she quickly ignores that thought. Again, she says I shouldn’t have had you. Despite addressing him previously, this “you” feels more direct. She isn’t asking rhetorical questions, she’s asking outright. Now, it still might be a secret from Jataro, but it’s clear she had a piece of her that wanted him to see this.

She closes this off with calming down from talking about him dying and reverting to simply seeing him as a mistake she made. She shouldn’t have given birth to him.

Conclusion (with Theory)

I think Jataro’s mother is someone who had a relationship and got pregnant when she was fairly young. Eventually, the father became absent and Jataro’s mother realized the life she had ahead of her if she didn’t have a child. She started to crave this dream and it led to her resenting her son, but also herself.