Hanako's Broken Heart Club

[Alexbond45]

No problem, Just get some help, work on breaking the big vague problem down into tiny bits. Then stomp those bits!

Maybe I should do that. The stomping would help blow off some steam, lol. Unfortunately, Im very much like Emi in the fact that I believe I need to get over my problems on my own, with no one elses help.

However, I should note that Help is always a virtue to have when getting through somethings.

(Lets take a page from my Military History Studies, shall we?)
If the United States never went into World War one or two, the European Powers would be under Germany for a long time, and so would we... you can never really get through your own problems, and avoiding them (Again, United States) can usually make it worse.

[Beoran]

When you look at it, everyone has to solve their own emotional and mental problems. Others can be there for you and assist you, but they can't magically make the problems go away. But the brain is a bit like a computer program, as long as I keep feeding in the same input the output will remain the same. So it's important to talk to reliable other people, and let them support you. Like that my mind can get some other input which can help me to change my point of view. So I don't think accepting help is something to worry about.

And as for us getting together and making a game, ... I'd selfishly love to recruit all of you for an idea I have (see the Eruta blog in my signature), but since it's off topic here we should probably take it to the fan game forum, or to IRC or e-mail each other.

[LunarKnite]

Looks cool, Beoran, sent ya a pm.

Now to get back on topic somehow... Do you guys have any tips on not being so quiet? I have a very hard time initiating the first word and continuing conversations for very long unless it's about a specific topic I'm knowledgable or interested in. If I somehow get past that first step, and get comfortable with the person, it's a lot easier to talk to him/her, but my interpersonal skills are pretty lacking as a whole.

[Beoran]

The key to good conversation is good listening. I admit that's hard for me. As I already said in a different thread: I think I should try to talk to people in words they can understand, in ways they are willing to listen to. To know how to speak to someone you have to listen to what they have to say. Talk about their interests, and what you have in common with them.

A trick I sometimes use to break the ice, if I want to chat with my colleagues, is to take out my cookie box and go around sharing it around coffee break time. I found it's easy enough to get a short conversation started if you share a small snack. A bit like how drinking tea together or eating lunch together in KS brought the characters together.

[The O.H.L.]

Looks cool, Beoran, sent ya a pm.

Now to get back on topic somehow... Do you guys have any tips on not being so quiet? I have a very hard time initiating the first word and continuing conversations for very long unless it's about a specific topic I'm knowledgable or interested in. If I somehow get past that first step, and get comfortable with the person, it's a lot easier to talk to him/her, but my interpersonal skills are pretty lacking as a whole.

If you don't know what the person is talking about or you know you miss heard them, be honest and try to make a joke out of it. It works for me, so give it a try.

As for starting conversations, if someone seems stuck try offering them help. And I mean stuck as in anything, be it from being lost, not knowing what to do to even just looking lonely. Or if you hear someone talking about a subject youmare interested in, add your two cents.

About keeping conversations going, keep asking questions about them, stuff they like, where they're from. You know, that sort of thing. Eventually they'll either start asking questions about you, or the magic of conversational unpredictability will take you away and you'll have something else to talk about.

But the golden rule is; Go with the flow. When you have something to say, say it before someone else says anything, otherwise you will be pushed out of the conversation.
Unpredictability and honesty are what works with me, but it may not work with everyone. Results may vary.

[LunarKnite]

I think I do listen a lot, though perhaps I just hear and not really register what people say all that often. I think my biggest problem, especially when I'm with a group of people is what you said, OHL. If I do have something to say, more often than not I'm either too soft spoken or I wait too long to get heard. Then I feel the time has passed and it'll just be awkward if I say what I wanted to.

To give a Katawa Shoujo reference, the reason I enjoyed Shizune's path so much was because the communication with her was relatively slow and deliberate compared to actual speech. I like taking time to think about what I'm going to say, and that's not something I can really do in conversation which is why I'm not so good at it.

[Alexbond45]

I've always found that clubs and groups reap excellent conversations.

[Walrusfella]

Do you guys have any tips on not being so quiet? I have a very hard time initiating the first word and continuing conversations for very long unless it's about a specific topic I'm knowledgable or interested in. If I somehow get past that first step, and get comfortable with the person, it's a lot easier to talk to him/her, but my interpersonal skills are pretty lacking as a whole.

I'd love to be able to offer some pearl of great advice, but I'm still working through the same sort of problem. I've noticed that I've gotten a lot better about it as I've grown older (I'm 29), but I still have vestiges of what you describe. Maybe your quietness will ease up a bit with time. I'm kind of assuming you're younger due to your listed occupation; feel free to correct me if that's too much of a leap.

Alexbond45's point is a good one - I've picked up a couple of socially intensive hobbies and that has really helped. There's usually always something to talk about in that context and you get lots of harmless practice in.

[LunarKnite]

I'd love to be able to offer some pearl of great advice, but I'm still working through the same sort of problem. I've noticed that I've gotten a lot better about it as I've grown older (I'm 29), but I still have vestiges of what you describe. Maybe your quietness will ease up a bit with time. I'm kind of assuming you're younger due to your listed occupation; feel free to correct me if that's too much of a leap.

Alexbond45's point is a good one - I've picked up a couple of socially intensive hobbies and that has really helped. There's usually always something to talk about in that context and you get lots of harmless practice in.

Yeah, I'm 20. I used to be in a club at my old college, a creative writing one, where we read and critiqued each others' works. I was fine reading my things out loud, but I always had trouble thinking of what to say for somebody else's work. I guess my goal is to become a little more chatty and open without caring so much about what people think.

Oh, sidenote. I'm a Cancer (like Hanako) in case people believe in horoscopes and astrology and all that.

[Wanderingheartache]

My advice? Well, I'm kind of silent myself... I've made due with common interests and sharing snacks/having tea when not in a club situation. I'm not sure how to come across it very often, I suppose try to find something else you may be interested in when they speak? I also practice small talk in the mirror... though I'm told that is kinda silly

[shiro_midori]

Heh, it'll be hard to put it all down in a readable manner.


Well, I suppose I could start when I first played KS, even though my problems go way, way back.

My first eroge, and only my second visual novel, if you count 999 as one. Emi's path was my first, and came naturally to me. At first, I viewed it as sort of a cross between an anime and novel with a choose-your-own adventure twist, but that didn't last long. I found myself identifying more and more with the characters, especially Hisao. I don't have a serious heart condition, but I do have a condition that I have to pay attention to just as much as his. More on this later.

The scene that really made me realize how emotionally invested I was turned out to be "Guess Who's Coming... Never Mind". I chose to confront Emi, and you all know how that goes. The track, "Cold Iron", really hit me hard, and I can't play it without thinking of her face then.

I finished Emi's path on a Monday. The next day, a Tuesday, while I was taking the bus home from college, I decided out of the spur of the moment to run the track near my house. It's always deserted, but well-kept, on weekdays. I placed my backpack and jacket down in a safe place, did some light stretching, and started walking. It evolved into a run after about five steps.

It was a wonderful feeling. Amazing. The asphalt seemed softer than I expected it to. It felt effortless. Perfect. For the first time in a very long time, I felt completely in control. Of myself, of my emotions, of my world. For about ten seconds

I didn't even have a chance to break a sweat. I didn't make it even fifty feet. As I put my left foot down, I must have hit the ground at the wrong angle. Maybe ten, fiteen degrees to the left.

How do I explain the feeling? When the patella is pushed outside the joint, how does it feel? I've described it as being like having your leg torn or blown off, but there's something more to it than that. Dislocation is such a sterile word. The pain doesn't come first. The shock hits immediately. As if a hand reaches up from the ground to pull you to hell.

I fell, of course. I must have fallen on it, looking back. I can't remember anything but the intense pain and the need to get the leg straight. The time it was out was probably less than three second, but it always feels like an eternity. Once the kneecap repositioned itself back in, the pain started to fade away. I knew from experience that it would swell up and start throbbing very soon. Getting up very carefully, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed home, knowing I couldn't walk all the way back. It was about two steps this time before it happened again.

I fell into the grass, the phone in my hand flying out of my hand. This time I was able to fall in such a way that the patella relocated almost immediately after hitting the ground. I laid on the ground, eyes shut, for a moment, before remembering I was in the middle of making a call. After groping around in the grass for a few seconds, I found my cell phone and brought it up to my head. It had gone to the answering machine, so I hung up and called my mother, telling her it was an emergency and where I was.

I laid face-up in the grass. It was a beautiful day, perfect for running. A few small clouds in the sky, a soft breeze whistling through the trees. Not too hot, not too chilly. I noticed all this as I stared up into the sky. It didn't make me feeling any better.

I felt like I had been knocked back down after struggling to bring myself up again. As if some higher power saw my wish to feel good, even "normal", as out of line, hubris. I felt broken.


Now, a week later, it hasn't gotten much better. I finished all the paths, 99% completion with only two scenes left (ironically, in Emi's path). During the week, I kept my knee in a brace, being careful to not put any weight on it when bent, as I found that leads to another dislocation. It settled wrong, swelled up, and the entire joint is stiff, feeling like cold rubber. We have no insurance, not enough money to justify a hospital visit for anything that isn't fatal. It's gone out about five times in one week.

But for the history. I have a condition where the trochlear groove on which the patella rests is much flatter than it should be, allowing dislocations and subluxations to occur much more frequently. Even with this condition, though, I had only experienced four, perhaps five dislocations in my entire life, usually months apart. Now it happens almost every other day, for apparently no reason, even through a full knee brace. Remember when I said I had a condition that I always had to keep in the back of my mind, like Hisao's arrhythmia? That was it. Whenever I'm sitting down, standing up, laying down, whenever I'm doing anything at all, my left knee is always there in the back of my mind. Every motion is made with my condition in mind. I went through six weeks of physical therapy, strengthening the joint muscles, but it proved unsuccessful, with a dislocation happening during the last week when my outstretched leg was tripped over.

Also, I have MDD, Major Depressive Disorder, for which I see a psychiatrist and therapist for regularly, as well as take medication for. An event like this obviously hits me much harder than it normally would. I had been improving, taking control of my life, even making progress learning Japanese (I'm planning on teaching English in Japan through a government-sponsored exchange program). This really felt like being kicked down, losing all the progress I had made. I burrowed deeper into KS, making it the defining aspect of my life this past week. Every time I completed a path, I felt a sense of overwhelming emptiness, as if someone I was close to had just died. I've always been a very empathetic person, which often is to my disadvantage (you can't spell "empathetic" without "pathetic"). So I immediately started on a new path after finishing one.


Now here I sit at 99% completion, two missing scenes, and a wrapped swollen knee. I found two other eroges, Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night, but they can't possibly hold a candle to KS, at least so far. The artwork, the dialogue, the shattering of misconceptions and stereotypes. For the past week, I have lived and breathed Katawa Shoujo. Rin's arc, the one I finished last, prompted me to try to express my infatuation through creative means, and so I spent the entirety of Monday sketching and inking drawings, studying KS track transcriptions, and writing poetry. I even spent half an hour in the college art gallery, studying each painting intently, searching for meaning in the watercolors and pastels.

Where the next day will lead, I have no clue. A wise man once said, "Sufficient for each day is its own badness." Am I really broken? Maybe. But one thing KS has shown me is that it's not the end. It's not what I am that defines me, but who.

[WorldlyWiseman]

How do I explain the feeling? When the patella is pushed outside the joint, how does it feel? I've described it as being like having your leg torn or blown off, but there's something more to it than that. Dislocation is such a sterile word. The pain doesn't come first. The shock hits immediately. As if a hand reaches up from the ground to pull you to hell.
...
Now, a week later, it hasn't gotten much better. I finished all the paths, 99% completion with only two scenes left (ironically, in Emi's path). During the week, I kept my knee in a brace, being careful to not put any weight on it when bent, as I found that leads to another dislocation. It settled wrong, swelled up, and the entire joint is stiff, feeling like cold rubber. We have no insurance, not enough money to justify a hospital visit for anything that isn't fatal. It's gone out about five times in one week.

But for the history. I have a condition where the trochlear groove on which the patella rests is much flatter than it should be, allowing dislocations and subluxations to occur much more frequently. Even with this condition, though, I had only experienced four, perhaps five dislocations in my entire life, usually months apart. Now it happens almost every other day, for apparently no reason, even through a full knee brace. Remember when I said I had a condition that I always had to keep in the back of my mind, like Hisao's arrhythmia? That was it. Whenever I'm sitting down, standing up, laying down, whenever I'm doing anything at all, my left knee is always there in the back of my mind. Every motion is made with my condition in mind. I went through six weeks of physical therapy, strengthening the joint muscles, but it proved unsuccessful, with a dislocation happening during the last week when my outstretched leg was tripped over.

Yikes. As soon as I read the account of your run, I was going to say "rowing machine!" or "yoga!", since both of those don't involve high-impact movements, but there's a risk for any movement at all? That is rough. Exercise and sunlight are crucial if you have any form of depression. There has to be a way to work around this.
-I'm not a health professional BUT-
Yoga might be doable if you focus on the upper body and your able leg when doing poses. Many poses can be done from a kneeling or sitting position. It's surprisingly good for muscle tone and cardio when you get to the advanced stages, holding poses for minutes at a time. I recommend Richard Hittleman's 28 Day Yoga ($10 on Amazon) if you can't afford a trainer. There are also programs designed for elderly individuals with bodily considerations that might be in line with your needs, but I don't know them off hand.

I'd love to be able to offer some pearl of great advice, but I'm still working through the same sort of problem. I've noticed that I've gotten a lot better about it as I've grown older (I'm 29), but I still have vestiges of what you describe. Maybe your quietness will ease up a bit with time. I'm kind of assuming you're younger due to your listed occupation; feel free to correct me if that's too much of a leap.

Alexbond45's point is a good one - I've picked up a couple of socially intensive hobbies and that has really helped. There's usually always something to talk about in that context and you get lots of harmless practice in.

Yeah, I'm 20. I used to be in a club at my old college, a creative writing one, where we read and critiqued each others' works. I was fine reading my things out loud, but I always had trouble thinking of what to say for somebody else's work. I guess my goal is to become a little more chatty and open without caring so much about what people think.

Oh, sidenote. I'm a Cancer (like Hanako) in case people believe in horoscopes and astrology and all that.

Astrology is only vaguely useful for describing people. I'm a Libra, I'm supposed to enjoy being around people, but the evidence goes against it.

I've kept my meager social life going by taking classes that interest me (I'm at community college level), writing one of them. Forming opinions on other people's work is also a problem for me. I usually just pick out a single description or conversation in the piece and say "Do more of this," and keep it vague from there. That isn't good for conversation, however. I usually luck out by figuring out who in the class is the chattiest and making a point of sitting next to them so that they can rope me in.
Forced conversation is acceptable conversation!

Now to get back on topic somehow... Do you guys have any tips on not being so quiet? I have a very hard time initiating the first word and continuing conversations for very long unless it's about a specific topic I'm knowledgable or interested in. If I somehow get past that first step, and get comfortable with the person, it's a lot easier to talk to him/her, but my interpersonal skills are pretty lacking as a whole.

Learn to ask questions!
This is as much advice as it is a note for myself. I tend to assume that most people don't want to be bothered since that's how I treat people myself, but most people don't actually mind answering questions. This is especially true if the question is about something that is relevant to you both but not especially personal, which is why the weather is a common go-to topic to the point of being utterly banal. Thinking about it like that, the classroom structure isn't the best place for social contact. You'll (I'll) have to be willing to track people down after class, ask them about the lesson, whatever. Complaining won't get people interested, though.

I'm pretty quiet too. As in, I speak so little normally that my voice doesn't project well at all, and people have a hard time hearing me even though I feel like I'm speaking at a comfortable volume. You guys have any ideas for strengthening the voice? Talking to the mirror may feel silly to some, but maybe reciting poetry or song lyrics to an empty room? You could play it off as being cultured if anyone catches you in the act

[Beoran]

shiroi_midori, thank you for your story! I've also thought I should exercise more, so I think it's most unfortunate that you got hurt just when you tried to do so. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I guess situations like yours are why here in Europe it's often recommended to visit our physician before we start exercising.

Still, you had the good idea. You wanted to give a new direction to your life. So keep on going in that direction, even if you have some setbacks. The sadness you feel after playing KS was probably already there, so the game allowed that sadness to come out and be released. Catharsis if you like. It may feel like a setback, but now that you know it's there, together with the people who are helping you, you can continue your path to recovery. All in all, I hope things will go better for you from now on.

[Daggett]

I don't know if you would consider me worthy to be on this thread, but I sometimes think so... So here I go. I'm think I should just type freely. Maybe it will become too incoherent? I'll go over it and make sure there are no swear words; I don't want to offend anyone who is trying to help me.

I am tried of not being able to help people too. Every time I have the opportunity I don't do anything or I just make things worse. Lately, I have been thinking. Maybe I'm not a nice guy who wants to help. Maybe I'm subliminally evil. Actually wanting to make things worse. Wanting to hurt, wanting to cause undue suffering to others, wanting to escalate things. So what? I can help carry something heavy or reach the top shelf. That isn't enough in my mind to make me worthy of life and affection? I don't think so. I don't think I should get any affection from anyone. Even now, I feel guilty for coming to you and wasting your time. Fishing for pity or a solution. But if I don't get any affection, I think I'd kill myself or lose my mind. Don't fret, I don't think I'd kill myself. Because I never do anything. I'm tried of living like this, I'm tried of being an incompetent idiot only capable of causing more misfortune and pain.

And I'm so self-centered and self-absorbed that I want to see the good I do if I do it. I don't think that charity and stuff like that would make me feel any better. All because I can't see the good. Maybe I wouldn't like that stuff because I wouldn't be doing it? I would just be a part of it. I just want to help, but don't know if I can... Another thing is I think I realize that I, the me now anyway, can't be trusted in a non-Platonic relationship. I think I am too overbearing, too dominating and controlling. I feel like I need someone to protect. But in the end, I would either smother or ruin the poor thing. Trying to be its "everything". And if I ever leave? What would the the repercussions? For both of us. I want to protect, but I don't know. In other way, I see myself as too weak. Fronting as a "I'll protect you from your mental and physical pain." But when the time comes... I'd just curl up and lose or make things worse. Then what? They would start believing in people even less because of me. Both barrels, backfiring right in my face. Right between my eyes. Maybe I should just be a nobody? A man perpetually behind a mask for the good of others.

Another thing... I can't talk with these people. I hear all of their thoughts and worries, but they never return the favor. Is that normal? Is that how things are supposed to work? Is one person supposed to be a dumping ground for the others' emotional turmoil then left behind or cast away like an object after transferring a curse? Is that my role in life?

Also, I'm scared. I don't feel things. On some rare occasions I feel happy, but it fades as fast as it comes. It seems all I can feel is fear, loneliness, anger, and envy. All negative. Is it possible to lose the ability to feel emotions?

[Beoran]

Dear Daggett, thank you for your story!

Sometimes, when I was younger my mind would feel like a haze, and I can recognize some of the things you describe here. To help other people, you don' t have to be a knight in shining armor or a superhero. Just be there for others. Help them in ways you can help them. But don't try to overreach.

And probably it's best to clear your own mind first. It's hard to help others when you feel helpless yourself. It's OK to ask for help when you need it.

I don't think it's possible to loose emotions altogether, but it's possible to suppress them so much they feel dead. When you play Katawa Shoujo, do you feel something? Maybe that feeling can be the beginning of getting in touch with your own feelings again?

And I'm sorry I can't say more than these few lines to encourage you, but I hope your life will get better step by step.