“You don’t belong only to yourself, you know?”
-Yuuko Ichihara, xxxHolic Kei, Episode 3
I don’t believe in much. This is because I find it difficult to trust even what I am able to feel or perceive with my most basic senses, but also as a defense mechanism. I make a baseline level assumption that everyone I meet dislikes me for some reason, and go forward from there, which often means denigrating myself preemptively before others have the chance to presumably do the same. Additionally, I can’t think of anything I’ve done in life that has contributed to others in any meaningful way.
The first time I watched the Lady Jorougumo arc in xxxHolic Kei, it was a bit of a revelation. Until that point, xxxHolic had been a fun, episodic series of ayakashi and youkai stories that were very loosely tied to another ongoing CLAMP manga series that I was much more invested in: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles. The Lady Jorougumo three-episode narrative changed that the moment she called out protagonist Kimihiro Watanuki for being so willing to throw away his own life to save another.
Why would she value his life in exchange for the life of someone else (in this case, a zashiki-warashi spirit who has fallen in love with Watanuki) when he’s so willing to throw it away? She tells Watanuki that his inherent callousness towards himself not only makes him less valuable in this situation, but also mocks those, like the zashiki-warashi, who do care about him.
At the time, her words resonated with me profoundly in a way that’s probably a bit ridiculous and overly-serious for the source material. By denigrating myself from the outset, I was not only denying people a chance to know me more genuinely, but I was unwittingly disparaging anyone who already cared about me in a remarkably self-centered manner. To this day I still insult myself liberally, but I have improved significantly over the past ten years. It’s a work in progress.
On returning to xxxHolic, what struck me was not Lady Jorougumo’s words to Watanuki or their ensuing fight, but Yuuko Ichihara’s words to Watanuki afterwards and his acceptance of Shizuka Doumeki’s gift. Echoing Lady Jorougumo’s sentiment with an added layer of caring, she tells Watanuki that he doesn’t only belong to himself. This is literal in a way due to the circumstances of Watanuki’s existence, but also figurative in that he needs to accept the fact that others care about him — that throwing his life away will hurt those who care about him just as much, if not more than directly attacking them. He’s made connections as a micro level that are just as important as any larger overarching contribution to society. She then holds out her hand and presents him with half of Doumeki’s eye, which Doumeki gave up so that Watanuki could see out of his right eye again.
Before his confrontation with Lady Jorougumo, Watanuki surely would have blustered and fought accepting anything from Doumeki, never mind something as valuable as half of his right eye, even if he would have been forced to take it eventually. Yet, the Watanuki who has just fought Lady Jorougumo and been confronted with the fact that others care about him simply accepts it with a sad expression.
It’s been particularly difficult this year to see myself as someone of any value whatsoever for myriad reasons. I’d like to thank xxxHolic (on top of an amazing group of friends) for reminding me that this is not the case.