My Letter to Roro-Chan
I have to be honest. I promised myself that I would write on this weeks back. There was so much I wanted to share about her, but most of it revolved around her death and its after-math. But I held myself back. Perhaps it was because of procrastination, the stress from my own personal life, or just not knowing how to talk about it genuinely and with enough respect.
Now, thinking about it, I don’t know what motivated me then to write about her. Did I really have good intentions, where I wanted more people to know about her so as to at least help make a bit of her dream come true and to somehow remind everyone to be kinder? My motives became questionable the more I started thinking about how to develop the story. I started thinking about how to make it attractive enough to reach more people and in a way, I lost sight of how to tell the truth. It was hard to find fault in myself too, as I had never written on an actual person’s death before.
And Roro-chan isn’t someone close to me. She isn’t a deceased relative or friend, not even an acquaintance. She’s a Japanese girl who died 7 years ago and whose existence I only got to know of through a pop song on YouTube. The only two things we have in common is that we’re of the same gender and that if she were alive today, she would have been the same age as me. I know little to nothing else of her life. I don’t even know if Roro-chan is her real name.
I wish I could have had the chance to know her better. From reading up on her online, it seemed that she wanted to gain fame and become a legend. I wish her death didn’t have to be the main reason why most people know of her. Her dream may have come true but the sacrifice it took to achieve that is horrible. Even worse is the people around her who urged her down that that path.
I may not be able to write up a moving story in tribute to her, nor am I capable of even sharing the details of her death in all of its clarity and accuracy, but I hope this one little thing will help her rest at peace, even if it’s by a little:
Dear Roro-chan,
Somehow in my darkest moments, I can’t help but think of you. There’s a window in my room and I am often beside it when I start to spiral. Thoughts of jumping out often crosses my mind and I know that it will result in a fatality. But then I think of you and the strangers who, in spite of not knowing you, mourn your death. And that’s enough to make me stop. I can’t explain why. But that hesitation, my attempts to cling onto life even when I feel like it’s all over, I owe it to you.
The funny thing is that in the middle of writing this, I decided to cut ties with my boyfriend, thus marking the end of an abusive relationship. I thought of you then, when gathering the courage to make that decision. So you’re not only with me when I contemplate leaving, but also when I decide to start on a new chapter. That, in itself, is legendary.
I hope that once we exist in the same world again, you and I can be friends.
Thank you.
