Special Episode: Who I Was Back Then, and Who I Am Now

I still remember that night clearly.

A black EG6 was right on my rear bumper downhill,
and I couldn’t do anything about it.

“…I was completely beaten.”

After I said it,
I sat in the car for a while, unable to move.

Back then, I went to the mountain pass almost every night.

It wasn’t just that I wanted to get faster.
I was at a point where I couldn’t feel calm unless I went.

When vocational school and my part-time job were over,
I would maintain the car
and wait for night to come.

Looking back, I think I was addicted to that atmosphere
more than the driving itself.

If I won, I felt good that night.

People praised me,
remembered my name,
and saw me as “the fast one.”

But that feeling was gone by the next day.

I would look for the next opponent,
the next run,
the next win.

No matter how much I won,
it never truly filled me.

To be honest,
I wasn’t thinking clearly back then.

I wasn’t seeing what was around me,
and some part of me barely recognized how dangerous it was.

I had that baseless confidence that I’d be fine.

Now that I look back,
I was being selfish.

Today, I don’t do that anymore.
I don’t go racing down mountain passes.

I still love cars.
I still love driving.

But the way I drove back then
is no longer in me.

I understand it was dangerous,
and I understand it was never just my problem.

This blog isn’t something I write to say,
“Those were the good old days.”

I’m not trying to promote that culture.
I’m not trying to encourage anyone to copy it.

I simply wanted to leave an honest record of
how I started to drift off course back then,
and how I slowly reached a point where I couldn’t turn back.

If someone reading this is doing something similar,
I’m not here to preach at you.

But at the very least,
this isn’t a story I can glorify.

Everything I’ve written from EP01 to EP09
is based on real experiences.

There is no fiction here.

I’m not trying to justify dangerous behavior.

My stance today is clear.

I’ll keep writing about the past.

But it’s not because I want to go back.

It’s my way of sorting out, in my own words,
what went wrong back then.

This blog is about putting the gear in again
and starting to move forward with my life.

It’s not about returning to the past.

Thank you for reading.