Everything will be all right.

※This is a repost of an article originally published on Dec 2, 2021.

　“Everything will be all right,” Sakura-chan in my head says, smiling at me.

　But… okay? Really? My life—like this—everything will be all right? I keep asking that, over and over, checking with the hallucination my brain has made.

　Am I okay?

　Is it really fine for me to go on living like this?

　Can I smother this vague anxiety by washing down my psych meds with alcohol, pretend I don’t see anything I don’t want to see, shove everything onto my future self, and keep sleeping through the daytime—can a life like that still somehow work out?

　“Everything will be all right,” Sakura-chan says anyway, greeting me with that innocent smile. What a wonderful thing. Something this beautiful—of course you’d want to preserve it for even one second longer. Now I get why Tomoyo keeps the camera rolling. Because there’s nothing more important than this. Not a single thing.

　Ever since I was a kid, my pride has ballooned for no good reason. Maybe it’s because I was never really scolded by adults. I became more afraid of failure than I needed to be, and by repeating self-deprecation, I picked up a habit of putting up a barrier—so nobody could touch the delicate parts.

　As I’ve gotten older, the bar people expect me to clear keeps rising, and I live with the fear that this pride could snap at any moment.

　“Everything will be all right,” the hallucination of Sakura-chan laughs. Every time she smiles, her long bangs sway softly. She looks like she believes it from the bottom of her heart.

　Of course she does.

　Because she’s a hallucination that’s convenient for me. Because if someone doesn’t say it, I’ll break.

　“Everything will be all right.”

　Sakura-chan keeps smiling at me—right up until the meds wear off.