Prostitution, illegal drugs… Why a girl who sank into the nightlife kept “letters and good luck charms that her poisonous parents kept sending her”?

Emika, who never knew what it was to love, could not find meaning in her life with a man, and they separated soon after giving birth. However, it is difficult to survive while raising a baby on her own without an honest job. After much consideration, she returned to her hometown of Niigata and entered a mother-child living support facility.

A mother-child living support facility is a facility that temporarily accepts mothers and children who have difficulty raising children due to circumstances, and creates a path to independence. It was probably also because of the mother’s mental control that she went to the trouble of entering a local facility.

The mother delivered gifts one after another to Emika at the facility. She would then say, “You are my Emika’s mother.

–Your mother is watching over me, Emika. So, please come back anytime.

I guess she was still trying to keep Emika close to her.

From “mother and myself” to “myself and my daughter

While Emika was raising her daughter calmly at the facility, she gradually began to realize that she was still controlled by her mother. The existence of her daughter, who until then had only been “her mother and herself,” gave birth to a relationship of “herself and her daughter,” and she was able to think about the relationship from a distance. What used to be the opposite sex and marijuana was replaced by her daughter.

Emika gradually began to feel a sense of crisis that she could not continue to stay by her parents’ side. Without physical and emotional distance, she would never be able to escape her relationship with her mother for the rest of her life. She then decided to leave Niigata and move to Osaka.

Today, Emika works as a temporary worker and lives with her mother and child. She says

I try not to be like my mother while raising my daughter. I too have a tendency to think in black and white and control people. So I don’t want to do the same thing to my daughter that was done to me.”

For this article, Emika contacted us for an interview. For her part, she probably wanted to make her own reckoning by telling her story in the nakedness of what she has been through.

Living in Osaka, she still has a letter that her mother once sent her. When she is able to let go of them, she may be able to escape her mother’s curse in a real sense.

Wanted.

The series “Young Homeless” is looking for people in their 10s to 40s who have no permanent place to live. We are looking for real-life experiences of people who have lost their housing, either now or in the past, such as people living in cars, Internet cafe refugees, migrant sex workers, day laborers living in dormitories, hotel dwellers, store dwellers, and people living in various support facilities, as well as the voices of those who are providing support for these people. Anonymous or other conditions are acceptable, so please contact the author.

Kota Ishii (Author)

Twitter @kotaism

Email postmaster@kotaism.com