My wife says I am a professional shufu. Even though I do not really have proper training and often I feel like a true beginner. But of course I am a beginner – everything here in Japan is so different from what I am used to from Sweden. But at the same time it is also so similar; it is like looking at a very very good wax doll, knowing, without really really knowing, that it is a doll and not a person – feeling that there is something a little off without necessarily being able to put the finger on what it is. Maybe that is where the wonder of living here resides, being forced to actually try to see the world I am looking at for anything to start to make sense.
While my wife says I am a professional shufu, I call myself the luckiest man in the world for having a wife who thinks so. I want to think that we were designed for each other. It often feels like that. In many ways I think we are the embodiment of being one and the same, while at the same time still being opposites. Before we met, we both did kind of fit in perfectly in society without really belonging to, feeling part of, the world we were actually living in. Like we were moving wax dolls walking around, looking like everyone else, just that little bit apart that makes all the difference.
But now, after we met, sharing a life together, we are finally able to see with eyes calibrated to a reality where living like a wax doll is no longer necessary. My wife feels good about me caring about our home, our life, our obligations, caring about her. I feel good about my wife caring for us. And being her soon to be stay-at-home-dad-husband I feel totally at home belonging while not fitting in, a sense of belonging I have never felt before. And for that I am so so grateful.
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