Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-24187738-20151214152123/@comment-27413732-20151217092526

Well… how to start? They say it’s the common things in daily life the real actual treasures. I believe this is true, things thought to be simple by others become a real treasure to those who know how to cherish it; that’s what happened to me when I learned about Love Live.

Things were quite simple; I was on my final winter of high school, incredibly bored out of my mind. I have a strong liking to passionate stories with yuri, and having nothing better to do I decided to check out Love Live since it was becoming popular at that time thanks to its popular ships. Boy I didn’t know what I got myself into.

What I thought would be a cliché series of cute girls and pop music turned out to be one of the gems I cherish the most up to this date. Without noticing those 9 girls slipped into my heart and made laugh, cry and sing as their stories continued playing on my T.V. It was heart wrenching hearing each of their stories and identifying with them, Rin and Nozomi especially.

Where am I trying to get with this? Every lesson has its beginning and this was my lesson; don’t let anyone decide what you can and can’t do. EVER. Let yourself put your own limits and fight to actually achieve them, don’t just wait for some kind of miracle: make it happen.

I can’t say Honoka is my favorite girl, she certainly isn’t, yet every time I see her she shines brightly and somehow warms my heart not because of her singing, or her appearance. But because her motto. Her way of looking at life is what made an actual change in me.

Just as Nozomi and Rin I was a secretly insecure girl, afraid of leaving friendships more than 6-year-old behind to study my career and more afraid to actually express that same fear. I was also going to study a career in which I was extremely good, yet I couldn’t get to enjoy it.

For more than 5 years I had constantly given my parents academic results worth many awards, yet I felt empty. I was doing everything for their sake, not for mine.

Many times I asked myself: What do I actually want to achieve? What’s the purpose of all this crap I’m doing for others? Since when did my days become so gray and monotone?

Philosophy class on my last semester made me realize I had stopped living for myself. I had stopped doing what I enjoyed to make others happy. I was losing years in actions that carried no actual weight to me.

Still I had no guts to say I actually wanted to study Medicine and my motivation wasn’t just strong enough to change it. And so half a year later I was studying something that I learned to hate. I still kept reading new Love Live material at the time and playing SIF the most I could, but lacked the same spark to enjoy it as I did so before.

Until I told a friend to watch the series; to force him to do it I actually had to accompany him throughout the 2 seasons. That’s when my spark was ignited once again after re-watching the whole series. Being honest I’m the type of person that is moved easily, and watching the whole series again allowed me to find the courage to leave the career I was taking: Mechatronics.

For the rest of the semester I didn’t go to school, instead I worked and studied to pay for the exam to get a good scholarship. It wasn’t much but I was able to get a 50% total scholarship, more than enough for both of my parents after hearing what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Right now, a year later, I’m studying what I want, and though I can’t dedicate as much time to SIF as I did before, Love Live holds a strong presence in my daily life in the most mundane activities possible. Every hardship, obstacle or problem I find becomes just something I must cross step by step to reach my upmost desire; change lives for the better.

The change in me came from one of the dumbest things ever: searching for yuri in a bored morning of Winter vacations. Yet that unplanned action at the end brought me to one of the most important decisions I feel I’ve ever made.

Following your desires and wishes is something everyone should learn, and giving Love Live an opportunity is a nice way to realize what it can bring in your life to just follow your heart. Because if not even you believe in yourself, who else is left to do so?