The Name Zetsubou

My Internet name is a constant source of mystery to some. What does it mean? What language is it in? Why did you choose it? I'm going to answer those questions in this post.

Zetsubou, or 絶望, is Japanese for “despair.” I am not Japanese. If I was going to use my ancestral languages for my name, I would be “Neviltis” (Lithuanian, father's side), or “ochtayanie” (отчаяние – Russian, mother's side).

I chose the name Zetsubou because within my lifetime, I have had to work extremely hard to overcome a variety of circumstances, and I spent most of my teenage years in despair. My mom was dead, my great-grandmother, the woman who raised me, was dead by the time I was 14 years old, my dad worked all the time, and I didn't have many friends. I was “that creepy girl in the back of the classroom.”

So most of my life, I've been alone. I developed a bit of a warped personality because of it, but I promise that I'm usually a good person. I'm not going to bite you if you talk to me, and if I like you, I'm pretty friendly. I have a well-paying job, and I've grown comfortable in my own skin. But occasionally, that old despair creeps in, and on those days, it's almost impossible to get out of bed. I've been told by doctors that I have dysthymic disorder, but I don't really care what it's called. All I know is that it's difficult for me to function on days that I feel that way. It's gotten better since I got a job, and I have to say that I'm quite grateful to my boss and coworkers for making every day a lot more fun.

I call myself "Despair" not so much because I am in it constantly, but because I do not want to forget my roots, where I came from, and what motivated me to become what I am today. If it hadn't been for those times where I felt lonely and empty, I might never have been motivated to become what I am today.

Blind Rage

There are very few things that piss me off more than people making fun of the disabled. They can't help their situation, and people who don't get that and think that it is acceptable to launch personal attacks on them make me physically ill. Don't do it in my presence, if you're smart.

There is a very sweet teenage girl who comes to the store sometimes. She happens to have Down's syndrome. Everybody around here likes her, since she's just a very pleasant person. Well, today, we heard a bit of a commotion outside, and R and I went to check it out. At first, we thought it was just your typical scuffle between a boyfriend and girlfriend. And then we realized what was going on.

Two disgusting little lowlifes who I hesitate to even call human were picking on this girl. She obviously didn't know what was going on, and these two "boys" (and I use that term loosely- cockroaches would be more appropriate) were following her around, throwing little pebbles at her, calling her names, and just generally being disgraces to the human race. As soon as the two of us realized what was going on, R ran inside to tell G and the boss, and to call the police, while I went outside to break it up before anything escalated.

Let me tell you- these troglodytes weren't pleased that their "fun" had been interrupted, and turned on me. Big mistake. I grew up in a "if they attack you, attack back" society. Before I could do any real damage, though, G came charging out there and started swearing at them, and the boss called the police. The boys ran off, we made sure our customer was OK. The police took her home, and we went back to work.

Those sub-humans probably won't be coming back around this way anytime soon, though.

Growing Up Motherless

Many people will go through a time in their life where nothing seems like it's going right for them. This can be triggered through a variety of reasons, but the most common are due to other people.

I was thinking about this today, mainly because I have struggled with this in the past myself. I'm not going to go into details here about my life, but I grew up without a mother, she committed suicide when I was two. I was never more aware of this than when I was in high school. All around me, people would either love their mom and think they were great, or they would think that their mom was this horrible evil ogress who wanted to see them suffer.

Me? I never got to feel that. I had my dad and my great-grandmother, but it wasn't the same. My dad worked all the time, and my great-grandmother was a bitter, angry old woman who didn't speak much English. Don't get me wrong, I love my father and I loved my great-grandmother. She taught me everything I know and understand about the world and the people who inhabit it. If it hadn't been for her lessons, I don't know how I would have survived. Thanks to her, while other girls my age were getting involved in romantic relationships and ruining their lives, or focusing more on finding love than making money, I was working two jobs and going to school. It might have seemed depressing at the time, but now I see that it was the best thing I could have done. I don't have baggage from previous relationships. I didn't end up pregnant at age 17. And I developed my work ethic, which serves me well today. Thanks to my father, I learned how to program and build computers, which has severed me incredibly well.

Because of those two important people in my life, I'm a productive member of the global workforce. But I never had a mom. I remember when I reached the point of physical maturity for the first time. Aunt Flo showed up for a visit, and no one had told me anything about it. I panicked and thought I was dying, so I ran to the school nurse and told her to call my family and ask them to call the funeral home and make arrangements for my death. Of course, the school nurse wanted to know why I was so convinced that my time on the mortal coil was drawing to a close (most twelve-year-olds don't suddenly die randomly with no apparent cause), so I told her I was bleeding. When she realized what was going on, she asked me, "Didn't your mother tell you?" Well, no, I didn't have a mother, and I really wanted to know what the flying foot was going on. So she explained it to me and made me call home to tell whoever was there what had happened.

So I had to call my great-grandmother and try to explain to her what had happened. Of course, an hour or so later, I get called down to the office because there was an extremely excitable elderly lady yelling at the office staff in broken English. Yep. It was my great-grandmother. So that day I got pulled out of school early, taken to a really fancy restaurant at 1:45 in the afternoon, and given THE TALK.

Everyone knows what THE TALK is. Usually, it's that awkward time where the parent of the same gender as you stumbles through the facts of how we get more humans. But no, I didn't have a mom, so I got the whole "Romantic relationships are evil and will ruin your future chances of having any kind of life. Don't make the same mistake I did, Zetsubou! Do not get married! Save yourself while you have the chance! Oh, and only have sex if you want a child." Yeah. So while most people got the whole discussion about when is the right time, and how babies get here, I got a rant about the evils of signing over control of your life to some guy who's main goal in life is to make you miserable.

I'm sorry to say that most of my teenage years, I believed that. I still do, to some degree. But while other girls were thinking about their boyfriends and how to make them happy, I was locked up in the computer lab or my apartment, thinking about ways to get the most money possible. While other girls were looking at fashion magazines, I was looking at stock market trends.

I'm not saying all of this to complain about my upbringing. Overall, I'm very pleased with the way I turned out and wouldn't trade most of the things I learned for all the tea in China. But sometimes, I wonder if I might have been served better if my mother hadn't taken her life.