Featured / Yuzuru Hanyu is My Emergency Contact

Can I Still Love Yuzu?

Am I ok? Yes. Am I ok? No. Will I be ok? I don’t know. 

The only thing I know for certain is that I still love Yuzu.

The same Yuzu who announced he got married, is married, will be married, accidentally had a skating term auto-corrected to mean “married”… We aren’t exactly sure. What we do know is that something happened, is happening or will happen. 

At a very Yuzu time, in a very Yuzu way, Yuzu told us something very…not Yuzu…wrapped in very Yuzu words. I imagine an interviewer once again attempting to crack the Yuzuru Vague-yu code:

Interviewer: You put out a statement about getting married. 

Yuzu: I put out a statement about skating. 

Interviewer: Yes, but in that statement, you said you were getting married. 

Yuzu: Was that before or after the part about skating?

Interviewer: It was sort of toward the beginning…

Yuzu:  I distinctly remember putting out a statement about my skating. 

Interviewer: So who – 

Yuzu: Please continue to support my skating. This has been Hanyu Yuzuru.

But no matter how vaguely wrapped, how carefully intended, how gently presented – the words were there. And we found ourselves with a lengthy statement about Yuzu’s skating…which felt as though it had arrived tied to a brick and hurled through our windows at 11:11.

But nothing in my life had changed; right? 

So I cleaned up the broken glass, replaced the window, and put the brick and the letter in my scrapbook. (Because anything from Yuzu is worth keeping.)

I clicked a heart under words that had broken mine.

And I tried to be ok. I tried living a day without Yuzu. 

I didn’t say good morning to my Yuzu screensaver. 

I didn’t watch SharePractice.

I didn’t watch GIFT.

I didn’t wear my Prologue hoodie.

I didn’t listen to “Suiheisen.”

I didn’t go into the room with my Yuzu calendar. Or my Yuzu banner. Or my other Yuzu calendar. Or my other Yuzu banner. Or my Lotte clear files. (Turns out the only room in my apartment without a photo of Yuzu is the bathroom.)

I didn’t say good night to Wallzuru. 

I didn’t even drink Dr Pepper.

It was a dark day.

I felt like someone trying a crash diet, or a pessimist who vows (bad word choice) not to complain for 24 hours. I discovered quickly that “a day without Yuzu” – much less a life without Yuzu – simply wasn’t going to work for me. I realized it isn’t about moving on FROM Yuzu. It is about moving on WITH Yuzu. But what does that look like? Am I ok with that? Yes. Am I ok with that? No. But I still love Yuzu. And I have questions – and they are not “who” or “when.” 

Can I still love Yuzu? 

Is it ok to still love Yuzu? 

Do I still need to love Yuzu? 

But more importantly: How am I supposed to feel now when I hear Blinding Lights? 

From the moment I read Yuzu’s announcement, I felt the heavy burden of responsibility to spin this for the Fanyus who are sad. I felt the responsibility to take this incomprehensible emptiness some of us are feeling and make it into something beautiful we can move on with together…and survive…with Yuzu.

But I can’t do that. And I’m so sorry.

I cannot take how I am feeling right now, transform it into something beautiful and be ok by the end of this blog post. Because I am not OK. And I don’t know how to make this OK for anyone else who is not OK. I want to say meaningful things. I want to speak for the Fanyu who has been struck speechless. I don’t know how to be OK, and I don’t know when I will know how to be ok.

All I know is that I will either be ok and with Yuzu or I will not be ok…and with Yuzu. 

I’ve started counting time in hours since the news. ‘It’s been 24 hours.’ ‘It’s been 36 hours.’ ‘It’s been 48 hours…I can’t be expected to be over the initial sadness yet; right?’ But how long can I say that? What happens when it has been weeks later? Months later? Years later and I’m still counting as if I believe there will be a resolution in my heart after a certain passage of time?

And as I saw more and more congratulatory messages, celebratory wedding bell emojis and sisterly notes to “Mrs. Yuzu,” I felt more and more tasked to speak particularly on behalf of the lonely Fanyu. 

The lonely Fanyu without a husband. 

The lonely Fanyu without a boyfriend.

The lonely Fanyu without children.

(Though I know it is possible to feel lonely even with all of these things.)

The lonely Fanyu who Yuzu kept from feeling lonely. 

The lonely Fanyu who has no easy words of congratulation. 

The lonely Fanyu who is…heartbroken. 

Because we have finally found an emotion we cannot share with Yuzu. The comfort of finding your one and only…and them finding you in return.

How do you share this with the non-Fanyus in your life? When you have “normal people sadness,” it is easy to find comfort in your friends and colleagues. A family member passes away. You have a sick pet. You’re missing someone you actually know. They understand. They relate. But to keep the façade – the forced smile of ok – when your heart is breaking, breaking, breaking? Because if you crack, for even a minute, and let your true feelings betray that Façade of OK, you will be asked, “Why are you crying?” And you’ll have no choice but to bury your face in your Pooh-san and say, “My imaginary figure skater boyfriend announced his marriage.”

And this is where some might say, “Know your place, Fanyu.” I get it. Really. Yuzu doesn’t know who we are. But he has never treated us that way. He cares about us. He creates for us. He wants our support. He wants to comfort us. We touch his heart and make him cry. He does the same for us. I don’t remember anyone saying “Oh stop, he doesn’t even know who we are,” when he was baring his heart for us while skating to “Suiheisen” at GIFT. Or painstakingly creating a YouTube Christmas present for us. Or lovingly reading the chat at SharePractice. That’s what this entire past year has been: getting closer to Yuzu. And everyone had been celebrating it. Now it is suddenly, “Know your place.” Yuzu made it clear where our place is.

And it’s with him.

I never thought I would marry Yuzu. There was never any delusion (except maybe the fun kind). Turns out, the only thing I was delusional to believe was that Yuzuru Hanyu could be single. But I was lonely. And from the moment Yuzu came into my life, that loneliness disappeared. Entirely. Entirely. It was as if Yuzu had gently placed his hand over that hole in my heart and said, “今僕がいるよ。” [I am here now.] All these years later, on the morning of August 4, he finally removed it and said, “私はもう行くね 。” [I’m taking my leave.] and I am feeling that hole of loneliness anew. I forgot how empty I can feel. 

And I never thought Yuzu would make me sad. What I felt whenever I saw Yuzu was pure happiness. But in the blink of a tweet, I looked at Yuzu differently: with a whisper of sadness. No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, that feeling – that whisper of sadness now caused by the source of my greatest happiness – continued to grow. What was I supposed to do? Yuzu was the only one who could help me escape being sad. What was I supposed to do when Yuzu was the source of that sadness? The medicine was killing the patient. 

And then.

And then.

I saw someone call Yuzu a liar. 

And I wanted to explode. At that moment, it wouldn’t have mattered if Yuzu had 8 wives, I was ready to defend him more ferociously than ever before. It was as if my broken Fanyu heart had been shocked back into health. And I felt like my Fanyu self again. よかった。[Thank goodness.] I was going to be ok. 

But the next morning, I wasn’t ok. Again. Absolutely nothing had changed. Just me. Again. Asking myself if I was ever going to be ok. Again.

It seems Yuzu’s loneliness is a much more artistically abstract version of loneliness than my own. I imagined he and I were sharing the version of loneliness which is coming home to an empty apartment, watching Yuzu, and then going to bed alone. (Though I never really thought he did the “watching Yuzu” part…ok, maybe I did.) There are so many things we thought we shared with Yuzu (besides his Practice). For many of us, we also thought we were sharing the experience of being single. He seemed truly alone. I saw what I was feeling in his eyes, his actions, his words, his moments of despair. It was never about wanting Yuzu to be suffering alone. But there was an open door between us. A connection we could feel with him. The struggle of being alone in the world. I thought, ‘If Yuzu can be alone, so can I.’ But now that door has been shut, and we are on the other side. Still lonely. And now without Yuzu. Whenever I was alone, I felt like Lonely Yuzu was walking beside me. Sitting beside me. At his laptop beside me. On his non-phone beside me. And that made everything OK です. Now, Yuzu isn’t lonely, but I still am. How can I be alone…alone?

I thought he needed us. Does he still? He must, or he wouldn’t have asked us to stay by his side. Yuzu once said that if he ever married, he thought his fans may feel he had betrayed us.

You have not betrayed us, Yuzu.

You could never betray us. Just as you could never lie to us. And we could never lie to you. That is why many of us have not been able to say “congratulations” yet. It’s not because we do not wish you happiness. It’s not because we do not support your decision.

It is because we are 独りだった [alone] and we are missing that Yuzu in the long black coat and the too big boots who was 独りだった [alone] with us.

I have often said there is nothing Yuzu could do to make me turn my back on him. (Always being fully aware this is a bold promise for me to make.) But it is a promise I intend to keep. We will be with you forever, Yuzu. Just know that when you are ready to live your “days without the Fanyus,” you will have to DISMISS us. In Yuzuru Blunt-yu terms. Because we will never walk away on our own. We will always be waiting right behind you. You simply need to turn around to find us. 

We are still living a beautiful love story with Yuzu – an arena full of glowing hearts and wrists for Yuzu that spreads far beyond the walls and ceilings. And there is no villain in this story. It is a story full of people trying to love and protect and cherish one another.

It is no surprise to discover at last the theme of Yuzu’s love story is simply there is too much love.

But dear Fanyus, remember this: You can love Yuzu and still feel sad. We cared about this person. And we still care about this person. Through all of this…I am still worried about Yuzu. Am I ok? Yes. Am I ok? No. But I hope Yuzu still is. Our hearts are invested. It may not have been through a registration or wedding vows or cutting a cake, but we each have made a commitment to Yuzu in our own way. A commitment that we have fiercely protected, deeply valued and clung to for dear life. Whatever moment Yuzu touched your heart – you cannot be expected to turn that off after two kanji. And I don’t think Yuzu is asking us to.

I read the news at 1:08 on August 4. I loved Yuzu with every speck of my heart at 1:07. Where was that love supposed to go by 1:09? That much love cannot be expected to simply vanish. 

But a man who now belongs to someone else once told me,

“大丈夫 。 大丈夫 。”

[It’s okay. It’s okay.] 

And I will continue to believe him.