earthlings by sayaka murata

i started earthlings by sayaka murata because i always had this sensation of being… out of orbit.

not exactly tragic, not exactly poetic either. just a constant misalignment, like if the frequency of my existence does not synchronise with the rest of the world. as if everyone else received instructions for “how to be human”, and mine got… misplaced in some bureaucratic void.

at first, the book felt almost intimate. natsuki as a child, so lonely, so misunderstood, it was uncomfortable in a familiar way. she tries to connect, to attach meaning to people, to situations, even to authority figures that might validate her existence. there is something almost tender in that attempt, even if slightly dissonant. but then, something mutated. and i do not mean it evolves. i mean it distorts.

the story becomes turbid, almost viscous. the loneliness here is not aesthetic, not melancholic in a beautiful way. it is invasive. it contaminates like a factory. it is what happens when isolation is not chosen but imposed, when suffering is not only lived but completely ignored, like a signal sent into space that never receives any echo.

and that… transforms a human.

what disturbed me is not only what happens to her, but what remains after. because at some point, society stops making sense to her. its rules become arbitrary, almost absurd. and ironically, she is not entirely wrong. but the problem is, without those shared illusions, what is left?

not freedom. something closer to disintegration.

in the end, they do not just exist outside society, they exist outside humanity. morality dissolves, identity fragments, and the idea of being “human” becomes optional, almost irrelevant. like a costume you can decide not to wear anymore.

and that is where the book stopped being relatable, and started being a warning.

because I have experienced a lite version of that. i isolated myself before. not because i was forced, but because i was exhausted of not belonging. it felt logical at the time, why insist in a system where you feel like an error?

but isolation is not neutral. it is not a pause. it is erosion. almost invisible.

your social skills do not disappear suddenly, they decay. your sense of self becomes more diffuse, less articulated. you start to feel less like a participant of reality, and more like an observer… or worse, like something that was never fully part of it.

it is paradoxical, no? you isolate to protect yourself, and in the process, you dismantle the very structure that keeps you human.

so earthlings did not comfort me. It did not romanticise my loneliness. it confronted it.

if i cannot naturally find a place where i belong, then i ought to construct one artificial, imperfect, even unstable. it does not matter. i just have to. because the alternative is not solitude. the alternative is dissolution.

and i prefer the awkward effort of belonging… than the quiet horror of becoming something that no longer needs it.