For me, growing up I was abused in every form by someone (who wasn’t a parent, but still someone I looked up to) it lasted several years from when I was about 9 to 13, then it stopped, I was bullied and blamed it on people being mean, but the truth is I was miserable to be around and pushed people away. In high school I finally got amazing friends and moved on (never told anyone about the abuse) but a year ago my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she’s going to die in less than a year, and I was thrown back into every emotion I had from before, and it didn’t help that I had several situations of being touched unconsentially by an instructor. To just add salt to my wounds two months ago I almost got kidnaped in my suburban neighbourhood, he tried to lure me in his car (17 years old by the way) I didn’t know him but he had stalked me for at least 6 minutes cause remembered walking past him/his car at a store. All this to say over the years I became obsessed with the idea that life has no intrinsic value and that it’ll beat you down over and over again, but that there’s still some beauty left in that. I’m a painter, so I look to anything artistic, music, theatre, painting, cooking and ect. as a showcase for the good in humanity. I never shared my story because I knew that no one really cares about me and it’s just ruin my life and where I’m at and going. Oyasumi punpun made me realize that I wasn’t alone with this sentiment, and made me realize that I can’t allow myself to become like them, to spiral down, you have to live with these burdens so maybe you could see the sunset everyone else in a while, so you can meet someone who instead of healing each other or both opening your wounds more that maybe they could just “exist” with you. I think the story takes on a very “realist” perspective in the fact that no one wounds are magically healed they just exist, and it tries to show that life isn’t that complicated, you just have to exist and endure. At the end they try to go off together, but punpun only later realized that all he wanted was to live in some house with her and just live a normal life, the truth is that we should just thrive off of normal small things, that’s why it’s normal.