Not Depending on Anyone or Anything: Not in Fandom, Not in Love

Some time ago I met a few Facebook friends I hadn't met before. They chatted about the Korean groups they like and all kinds of fan culture, and the more I listened, the further away it felt from me. Not long after, through work, I came into contact with a music creator. Before we met and worked together, I listened to their work over and over and read interviews, quietly becoming a fan, and after the aura of their live performance I was utterly captivated. Yet inside the sweetness of being a fan, I felt afraid.

It's not that I've never been a fan. It's just that when I got happiness out of it, spending days and weeks immersed in collecting information about an idol, I became aware that this kind of dependent craving wasn't appropriate, and chose to cut off the obsession during one "saint mode" episode. I was afraid that "expecting them to work hard at performing and creating to repay your support" would end in disappointment. Fandom is especially one-sided: an idol doesn't have to take responsibility for the feelings you invest, and a hurt heart predictably has nowhere to claim compensation.

I've seen quite a few one-sided, dependent relationships: people who make their partner the centre of their life and their top priority, who give their all and sacrifice themselves to maintain the relationship, and who, when they're finally dumped, are left with nowhere to put their resentment. How could they bear the blame of "you put your effort in the wrong direction"? As a friend on the sidelines, I often find it hard to bring up the facts and the problem. Although we say "it takes two to tango" and "every pot has its lid", I still ache for friends whose relationships end sadly.

Kusakabe: "(I) can give you everything."
Sajo: "No... half is enough."
— from Asumiko Nakamura's Sotsugyosei (卒業生)

I think it's not only because everyone is an independent individual who can't carry all of the other person, but also because the reason we admire someone is the way they shine, living as themselves, when I'm not around.

I'm not free of desire either. I still can't help falling blindly in love; I'm completely an ordinary person with wants and needs. I just consciously avoid putting the centre of my life on someone else. I think a healthy state is that a person can find happiness all on their own: knowing what they need, knowing how to be with themselves, and knowing how to take care of themselves.

And going from living alone to living as two should be "1 becomes 2", getting greater happiness, or a different kind of happiness (from being on your own), not "0 becomes 1", where one person isn't happy and only two people are.

As Panai said when she sang 〈You're Happy, So I'm Happy〉:

Although I've always sung "you're happy, so I'm happy", if one day there's a love that's built on the other person, I mean, that I can only be happy after you're happy. Is that good? I feel it isn't happiness. I feel... maybe it is, I don't know.