私の
私が
I went alone to the hillside and knelt before my parents' graves. My feeling as I knelt there was half of sorrow and half of gratitude. I felt that the two of them, reposing now beneath the cold stone, still held my future in their hands. I prayed for their care in watching over my fate. You may laugh this off as nonsense, and I suppose it's fine if you do. However, this is the person that I was.
My world had turned upside down. This wasn't for me the first such experience. I remember my great astonishment at sixteen or seventeen, when it suddenly hit me that the world was full of beauty. I couldn't believe my eyes. I rubbed them again and again. My heart cried out in exaltation. The age of sixteen or seventeen of course, in a young man or young woman, is a time of sensual awakening. For the first time, I was awake to a new beauty in the world, embodied in the female form. With regard to the opposite sex, whose existence I'd hardly noticed, the scales had fallen and my eyes were suddenly open. From that point on, heaven and earth were utterly new to me.
When I first saw my uncle for what he was, it was the same sort of awakening. All was suddenly clear. I was granted no premonition, nor chance for preparation. It was on me out of the blue. In an instant, I saw my uncle and his family in an entirely different light. I was astonished. Remaining in their care, I feared, could only lead to bad ends.