I've always found Dazai to be a very strong man, though perhaps even he himself didn't realize that. He expresses his uncertainty and incapability to understand women, and why women liked him so much. In his eyes, he was a fiend, a 'monster'. Be that as it may, he was hopelessly honest. I wouldn't go too far to say he was a good man, honestly I can barely ever draw a line between good and bad, but he was what he was. With women, he was bare. At some point, he quit acting without realizing it, but he did.

One might blame Yozo's childhood for all that he became, I disagree. How can you save a person that's only known the worse side of things? How do you make that person believe? What kind of miracle can you bring? Does that mean there's no salvation for them? I think such a world would be bleak and full of misery. For one, take it from someone who had a perfectly normal childhood, aside from the continuous squabbles of my parents about money, family and his women, my mother's paranoia and their hate for each other, all that only worked to make me insensitive towards noise. I couldn't care less if they wanted to kill each other. It's true, my idea of a marriage may have become rotten but that is only just a small part of everything.

Speaking of, I don't believe I ever loved my parents, I couldn't. Its true I could have been adopted, that's what I tell people. I know it's as false as false gets. But it shuts them up. I can't display affections that are not there, I have never known how to do that. I can lie like a champ, I'm a terrific actor. But I'd never lie to myself. That's a part of the misery.

The school I went to was a military school. Nothing too special about it, except I got to see officers and big people all the time. When I was 15, I went ahead to join military. Really, I just wanted an escape route, I wanted to run away. And this was a prestigious way to run away. To be honest, I never liked the idea of being a soldier. For one, I can't take orders. Fighting for freedom? What a joke! Those soldiers are more of a slave than anyone on the planet. Anyways, I never fought for real. We were a band of trainees that went in to clear up the mess after those brutes had finished eating. We were really just the bottom of the barrel. I didn't care in the beginning as long as I got a bed of my own to sleep on, even if it was just for four hours sometimes.

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I stayed there less than a year. In November, they caught three men at the border, some petty soldiers from God knows where. All they told us was those three men were hostiles. Nobody questioned anything. I saw them begging for their lives like any common man would before they were shot in the head. That did it for me. I'd seen dead people before but not someone killed in front of me. It wasn't too different but what bothered me was that I couldn't look away. Those 'hostiles' were the small fry whose names would be forgotten tomorrow. That's not what I was gonna end up like. So I left, even the prospect of my own bed didn't keep me from leaving.

And the one thing I realized on my way home as I got off the train, was that I was a pathetic weakling. The thought was very sudden and I laughed like an idiot right in the middle of the station that night. I don't like weakness but I had never seen it in me before, that's why I liked myself a bit better before this realization.

I think that Dazai had that courage, the courage to take the plunge, meant to be his final. He could do it more than once. A man so in love with his life, I could never be like that. Because the truth is I am incapable of loving.