Akari Ueoka

"Miss Ueoka is already doing enough,"

said Mrs. Sotoura, who was my senior year's homeroom teacher.

She said it to my mom at a parent-teacher conference.

Halfway through my junior year, I was unable to go to school. There were probably a few reasons, and what I was aware of then was I had eating disorders and was not able to be around many people. (The high school I went to had 900 to 1,000 students, and once a week or so, we had a school assembly at the gym. Surrounded by that many people, I felt dizzy, and my heart palpitated faster.)

I was thinking:

"I don't think going to a four-year university and getting a good job is the only way to happiness like the teachers say."

"I wonder what would happen if I listened to them and followed their guidance without giving it any thought. Would I become one of society's well-oiled gears that I couldn't escape from?"

"Of course, I wanted to contribute to society even in a small way, but what I wanted to study did not seem to be written in any of the college brochures."

"I wish I could take time to think more, but the school doesn't give us any time to think by bombarding us with so many quizzes and exams."

Some classmates said, "I'll go to a college and then think more about what I want to do."
"I see, and that's one way to go about," I thought.

"But going to a college or university costs money, and I don't want to waste my parents' money by going without a clear reason."

I guess I needed to slow down, and the desire to do so seemed to appear as my inability to attend school, although I genuinely tried to go.

I cried every day, feeling badly - and guilty - for not going to school, dealing with eating disorders, making my dear parents worry, and blaming myself for not being "normal."

At night, I went to bed thinking, "Tomorrow, I will go to school!"

When I woke up, I said to myself, "Alright, here I go!" I changed into my school uniform, ate breakfast, and got ready. However, when I stood in front of the door, my legs got fixated, and my hand would not turn the doorknob.

My younger brother left for his middle school, passing by me who was crouching down. For him, my frozen stance was a familiar scene.

"Oh, I know! When he opens the door, I'll follow him and go out with him. Oh, it's a good idea. Yeah. I'll do that!"

But one glimpse of the world over his shoulder, and I winced and froze.

I sobbed, feeling pathetic, "What am I doing? What has become of me?"

My dad was living in the next prefecture on a company job assignment. (It's common in Japan for the rest of the family to stay behind and let children finish school - or for other reasons.) He came home over the weekend to see us.

My parents did not give me a hard time and held the space for me. My mom woke up early every morning to make lunch for me, although there was no guarantee that I would take it to school.

My lunch box was the size of a preschooler.

"Would this be big enough?"

my mom asked me once.

"Yes!" I answered adamantly as if to disallow any further inquiries from her.

Probably, she thought it was better than quarreling and making me not eat at all, so she packed as much nutritious food and love as possible in that small lunch box every morning. (I ate the whole thing every day even though I didn't eat much else.)

By the way, I brought the lunch box to Maui; I use it regularly to store leftover food and such.

Occasionally, I managed to get outside the door. I pushed down the bicycle pedal, which felt heavy as lead, and rode about halfway to school. Each way was about 20 minutes. When I couldn't go any farther, I turned around and came home crying, feeling defeated.

Then my mom would call the high school to let them know I would be absent that day due to my not feeling well. (Otherwise, it would be recorded as absence without notice, and it would be a problem.)

I managed to get to the school one day, but my feet kept pushing the bicycle forward and passed the school gate. "Oopsie," I thought. It was too late. It was a beautiful day, and I hadn't felt that good breathing in the air. So, I kept riding the bicycle along the Kagami River of Kochi-city, heading toward Ino-town. I found a nice field on the river embankment and lay down.

I wonder what season it was; I don't remember. I had hay fever, but I wasn't sneezing, so I suspect it wasn't spring. The sky was so beautifully blue; the breeze felt amazing; the flowers were blooming; and the white clouds were drifting. I felt like merging into the sky, and the fragrance of the grass comforted me.

Though I was late, I made it to school that day.

My homeroom teacher, Mrs. Sotoura, was tall for the generation's females and kept her hair short, and she was a Japanese language teacher. I still clearly remember her beautiful handwriting. I loved watching her write letters on the blackboard, executing each stroke intentionally and naturally; it was almost a zen-like performing art. Watching it had a calming effect on me.

I liked her a lot, but I still couldn't bring myself to becoming a regular attendee in my senior year. I liked learning and studying. I had wonderful friends. I was not being bullied or teased. I just could not go.

To all of my classmates back then - there is one thing I want to apologize for. For the graduation album, each class had to take a class photo. I didn't know this back then, but the photoshoot was postponed to the next day when someone was absent. I bet that most everyone came to school after setting their hair nicely because the photo would remain for the rest of our lives. And it happened more than once, apparently.

I thought my face would be cropped and pasted on the corner of the group shot, which stands out even more, and I wasn't fond of the idea, but I accepted it as I couldn't go to school.

If anyone in the class of 2001, in Mrs. Sotoura's class, is reading this, please accept my apology for possibly messing up your best hair day.

With only six more months left in my senior year, I decided to drop out of high school. I was exhausted by the daily morning struggle, and I thought, "I would take the GED test when I know I want to go to college."

Around that time, Ms. Suga Kunitomo, the founder of Suga Jazz Dance Studio, said to me, "Akari, you're almost done with high school. Come to Maui when you're done. But graduate first."

"Maui…."

I didn't even know where it was.
But for some reason, I thought, "Okay, I will go to Maui!"

Since that day, Maui became the carrot dangling in front of me, and I managed to graduate.

For now, to make a long story short, Maui helped me heal my eating disorders. I am so glad I came here (Maui) at that time.

(Now, back to the last bit of my high school days.)

To graduate, my grades were fine, but my attendance was on edge. Mrs. Sotoura sat with me, calculated how many times I missed each class, and told me, "You can miss this subject four more times, but you cannot miss this one anymore."

At night, I carefully studied the next day's class schedule, and if there was any class I could not miss, I was determined to go even if I had to crawl.

Deciding to graduate didn't make going to school any easier. When my legs froze in front of the door on a day I had a class I could not miss, my mom called a taxi.

When a taxi arrived, I barely managed to walk out to the road in front of the house and push my heavy heart into the backseat - good thing the taxi door opened on its own.

As I mentioned earlier, my dad wasn't home during the weekdays, and my mom couldn't drive. I felt guilty for going to school by taxi and making my parents pay for it. Seeing a young girl dropping her head down in the cab, I wonder if the driver thought, "She must have some reason that she cannot go to school on her own." I felt embarrassed, but no driver asked me any insensitive questions.

Somedays, I came home after attending the class that I could not miss anymore. Since I could not ride a bus or train back then (due to the crowd phobia), I took a taxi home.

I had to get a teacher's permission slip to leave school early.

Whenever I went to the teacher's lounge to tell Mrs. Sotoura, "I'd like to leave early," she offered a reason, such as, "Headache?" and wrote it down before I responded without asking too many questions. I was thankful.

In my junior year, the homeroom teacher had asked me many questions. I didn't want to say, "I have a headache," but "I would like to go home" was not good enough. So, I had to say, "I have a headache" or "I have a stomachache." And I always felt badly for making things up.

Mrs. Sotoura, on the other hand, carried the burden with me as if she saw through my dilemma.

There was even a time when I honestly told her, "I've reached my limit for the day." Maybe, it's only in my imagination, and maybe I did not actually tell her so, but the point is that I felt comfortable telling her and trusted her that much. I'm sure she said, "Understood," and filled out the permission slip for me.

Around that time, the end of the year parent-teacher conference was held. That's when Mrs. Sotoura said to my mom,

"Miss Ueoka is already doing enough."

She even said, "I think it's a legitimate option," when my mom shared that I contemplated dropping out of high school.

It was not what a college-prep high school teacher would usually say (which made me like her even more).

"I know Miss Ueoka will find her way."

When my mom came home and told me what was said, I cried. It was happy tears… grateful tears. It has been a while since I cried because I was happy.

"There is someone who sees me."

It's no exaggeration to say it was Mrs. Sotoura who made it possible for me to graduate (and the late Suga Kunitomo who suggested me to step out of Japan).

There were other teachers at the school, like the passionate school counselor, but I liked the simplicity of Mrs. Sotoura's approach. If someone had come at me and said, "I will help you!" I'd have run away. It was too much or too strong of a medicine. I could feel Mrs. Sotoura's kindness and gentleness in her matter-of-fact manner; she wasn't too much. She did not disable me by helping too much. She watched her students with a delicate balance of distance and stepped in when we needed it.

In 2020, I felt the strong urge to get hold of her, so I wrote a letter to her by asking my parents to look up her address in the graduation album while regretting that I had not done so sooner. I hoped she was still around and had not moved.

Then, I received a call from her on my birthday, and it was the best birthday gift.

I am so glad that I was able to tell her:

"Mrs. Sotoura, it's because of you, I can be here in this way.

Your words, 'You are already doing enough,' has been my amulet.

I will do my best to become a person who truly 'sees' like you do and tell others, 'You're doing enough.'"