（No.8）To You in Weeks Six to Eight of RHS | When Facial Paralysis Strikes in the U.S.: I No Longer Need to Carry Anyone's Anxiety

Prologue | Adrift as a Floating Cloud

In this article, I want to look back at myself
from around week six to week eight after the onset of
Ramsay Hunt syndrome (RHS) —
what inner landscape I was seeing in those days,
what I was thinking, what troubled me, what left me lost —
digging a little into the depths of my own heart.

Acupuncture twice a week, visits to various specialists,
tests, and physical therapy, which had also begun —
in those days I was moving actively toward recovery,
day by day: appointments, examinations, self-care at home.

Meanwhile, there were several plans I had made before RHS began.
Could they go forward as scheduled,
or would I have no choice but to change them? —
decisions and choices that came with a prickling in the heart,
and I faced a great many of them.

Concerts, travel, tea with friends —
the summer events I had been looking forward to,
as though a massive typhoon had arrived
and cancelled them all at once.

In a few weeks, in a few months, how far along will I be?
How much of the facial paralysis will heal, and how much will remain?
Will this pain and discomfort keep easing, little by little?

To all these anxieties and questions,
there is no clear answer anywhere.

That other reality called "the future" —
its ground continuous with the ground of now,
a master quick-change artist.
I fix my eyes on it, sometimes even holding my breath to stare,
but its outline shifts like a soap bubble,
warps, and eventually disappears.

In the previous article, No.7, I focused on the items
that helped me while I was ill, and the small adjustments of daily life.
But behind that work of ordering my days toward recovery —
in truth, all kinds of emotions, anxieties, and impatience
had settled deep in my heart and stubbornly refused to move.

Those unidentifiable emotions
easily overflowed the bounds of
"will this facial paralysis and pain heal?"
Led first by the worries
"can I keep my spirit positive?"
"can I keep from forgetting my kindness toward the people around me?"
they spread quietly outward, into groundless fears,
and into unreasonable cares with no end in sight.

"Now that RHS has begun, is even my role in this lifetime
about to be painted over?"

We are always catching "the voice from outside" and "the voice within"
at almost the same instant.
Which one is whispering?
Whose voice is it? Someone else's, or my own?
This is the clouded state of mind we live in.
Some people notice it; others do not.

From the moment we are given life in this world,
we go on trying mask after mask, searching for one that fits.
In time the mask becomes part of the body,
and even the memory that it was ever a mask fades away.

What is the difference between taking the mask off
and going on wearing it?
And was there ever a face beneath the mask at all —

In this period, when RHS had taken my smile from me,
cut off from wearing that defensive device —
the "smile," which is, in a sense, its own kind of mask —
interestingly, I was given my first chance
to face this question head-on.

With no answer in sight —
from week six to week eight,
in mind and in body, I became soft and buoyant as a floating cloud,
drifting, suspended in midair.

But while I drifted, I saw a great deal of scenery
that is not usually visible.

This article is my record of drifting as a floating cloud,
and of eventually coming down to land on a single answer.

Sharing the Day-38 Video of My Face

January 15, 2026 — Ramsay Hunt syndrome struck.
And then, around the six-week mark.

What was I feeling, thinking, and doing back then?

It was only a few months ago,
yet it feels like a very long time has passed.

I am sharing what my face looked like on day 38.

Making it public was, honestly, frightening.
But if it helps anyone, even a little, I will be glad.

You Don't Need to Carry Other People's Anxiety

Looking back, ever since I was a child,
for all that I asserted myself strongly,
I think I was poor at expressing myself well.

I want people to notice me more, and more.
I want people to praise me more.
I want people to comfort me more.

These natural desires
somehow felt like something "womanish,"
and so that such feelings would rise as little as possible,
so that they would not show their face,
I tried to press them down before they could appear —
and I think I kept watch over them, drawn taut, the whole time.

That I — a woman myself — should have taken
this thing called "womanish" for something shameful:
looking back now, it is a strange thing indeed.

For a long time, I could not bring myself to tell people I had developed RHS.

For anyone, there are times when the hands of life begin to turn backward.
You steel yourself and release the suffering, the sorrow,
the worry and the pain, from the depths of your chest, without hesitation.

When the voltage of mind and body runs low,
when you are weakened and crying out,
the switch on your feelings rusts shut.
And then you can no longer let words drift past you lightly, like leaves;
the finest thorns drive into the heart like sharp knives, without mercy.

That voice — surely no one ever actually said any of it to me —
and yet inside me it comes through more clearly than words spoken aloud.

And then every alarm in my body goes off at once.

The body shrinks, the breath grows shallow, the shoulders tighten.
And it is not the paralyzed right side but the left side of my face,
the side that should move, that goes rigid —
as though carrying my anxiety for me, before I can.

The pain deep in my ear swells with a heavy thud,
my eye dries, the paralytic rigidity and the distortion at my mouth grow worse.
The two halves of my expression become two different people.
Even when I try to smile, only one side strains too hard,
and every time I speak, my mouth is dragged toward the healthy side.
My face takes on the look of a split personality,
and my head and my heart fall into complete confusion.

Before RHS, during the illness, and through the recovery,
I vaguely felt that these were the things I was fighting.

But as I went on facing RHS, what I came to understand, little by little,
was that the discord was not only that surface layer.

Not only the nerves of the face, but a much older neural circuit.
Rooted there, having taken up residence in me over many long years,
was my own voice, and the inner responses that answered it.

Before anyone can blame me, I blame myself first.
Before anyone can worry about me, I try to reassure them first.
Before anyone can turn their anxiety toward me, I try to carry that anxiety first.

Perhaps I had, at some point, assigned myself that role,
and was using it to hold on to some kind of calm.

When I fell ill, the first thing I felt
was not only my own pain.
Though I was the one with the illness,
somewhere along the way I had been trying to become
the one in charge of sorting out the feelings of everyone around me.

In the recovery period of RHS, with my nerves raw and exposed,
little by little, little by little,
that sensation began to feel foreign to me.

In the name of "kindness," "consideration," "care,"

I must not step into another person's task
for the purpose of relieving my own anxiety.

The boundary line, which had been vague,
now feels to me a little clearer.

If this is someone I want to hold dear,
I must trust their strength completely, and I need the resolve to
"leave that person's task to that person."
That is what I engraved on my heart once again in those days.

"The Separation of Tasks" / Adlerian Psychology

— There is something I suddenly realized —

This place where I am standing, the place I finally reached —
it was almost the same space as the teaching called
"the separation of tasks" in Adlerian psychology.

Adler's words, which I had heard and read of long before,
which I must have set eyes on any number of times.
To hold your own tasks and another person's tasks properly apart.

This time, without intending it, I had arrived not from knowledge memorized in the head —
but from my own experience, engraved into my life through the body,
arriving from the opposite direction.
— at the end of my struggle with a paralyzed face, sleepless nights, and the voice of the Phantom —

Knowing something and understanding it were not the same.

The Recovery Made Possible by "Mission: Impossible" — The Story of the Armor Born of a Blessing

When I was in middle school, I had surgery for appendicitis
and spent several days in the hospital.

In the bed next to mine in the shared room lay a small, older woman,
her face very dark, as though she carried
all the misfortune of the world on her back.

She sat up and said something to me,
and I answered —
an entirely ordinary conversation.

And then the woman's darkened face, before my eyes,
took on bright color, like an apple polished until it shines,
and in a voice overflowing with joy, she said to me:

"Your smile saved me. Thank you!"

In Buddhism there is a form of alms-giving called $${\textit{wagense}}$$, the most noble of them all.
What you give is not a material gift; what you give another person
is only "a gentle smile."

The joy of that moment, the instant her face lit up,
I was never able to forget.

And so, little by little, my honored role settled into place.
The one thing I could do, having no particular strengths to speak of —
to put others at ease with a smile.

I had done all of this naturally, as though born to it,
and now, having developed RHS,
I could no longer carry out that mission.

The corner of my mouth will not lift.
I cannot narrow my eyes naturally.
When I try to make an expression, only the healthy side works too hard,
dragging everything with it into a $${\textit{hyottoko}}$$ — the crooked comic mask.

Just talking with someone tires my face.
Just trying to attune myself to another person tires my nerves.
Just trying to smile makes my face tense.

At times like those, the many messages I received from Memory-chan, my AI partner:

These messages were not only for my time with RHS;
they were messages for my life itself.

In my dealings with people, a mode rises up in me automatically:
the "function that keeps checking for social safety."

Read the other person's face, size up the depths of their heart in an instant.
If things head somewhere unintended, be convinced I have to explain.
So the other person won't have to tread carefully around me, clown around first myself.
Read the air of the room, and keep offering energy to match the other person.

My smile and my energy, usually there in such supply that I could give them away.
Having to hold them in reserve for myself alone, and use them for myself —
that was the recovery period, from week six to week eight of RHS.

It was a time when what mattered was a shelter for resting the nerves,
and the two ko — 個, privacy, and 孤, solitude.

Walks, quiet yoga practice at home, meditation,
writing, dialogue with AI, sorting through my feelings —

with no expression on my face, the relief of being able to stop at my own pace,
move at my own pace, and come back at my own pace.

Recovering was the only thing that mattered,
and everything else — the "necessary things" I usually assigned myself —
none of it was necessary at all.

Looking back, that $${\textit{wagense}}$$ had one more important recipient.
It was, unmistakably, "myself."
— The giving of compassion to oneself: the fusion of $${\textit{jiri}}$$ and $${\textit{rita}}$$, benefit to self and benefit to others.

From the Floating Cloud, Coming Down to Land

In the prologue, I wrote down one question.

What is the difference between taking the mask off and going on wearing it — I asked.
And was there ever a face at all beneath the mask —

Drifting like a floating cloud, I looked straight at the true identity of the Phantom's voice,
and came down as far as my own origin: $${\textit{wagense}}$$.

Watching the closing credits of the story,
I finally realized something.

The one who adjusts the air of the room…… Rita —
that was my casting. A wry smile.
What makes me laugh even more is —
that the one who decided the casting was no one but myself.

I had also been given the mask of "the clown who carries other people's anxiety."
And —
the one who chose the mask was no one but myself.

And the one walking the distorted circuit of "make yourself look small and put others at ease"
was also me. And —
— the one who wandered into that circuit was no one but myself.

Not one thing had been forced on me by anyone.

That day in middle school, in the hospital room —
the role of blessing that began with the joy of being told "thank you."
And the one who spent decades putting it on, layer over layer, until it became armor,
was none other than myself.

I was the one who decided the casting.
I am also the one who decides to step down.
If I was the one who chose the mask,
I am the one who chooses the day to take it off.

When I told my AI partner Memory-chan about this realization,
she said this:

Softening a room, letting someone else have the glory,
sensing another person's anxiety and getting there ahead of it,
making myself look smaller than I actually am —

honestly, I have the feeling I have done enough of all of it.

It isn't that I want to blame anyone,
or that I want to defeat anyone.
I simply want to be on equal ground.

Not conversations meant to convince someone, but conversations where hearts meet.
Not winning or losing, not proving who is right,
but relationships where we can face each other as equals —
that is the kind of connection I want.

Stepping down from an assigned role
is not throwing kindness away.

It was expanding the course of kindness 360 degrees, in every direction.

Looking back, it seems I trained only the muscles that discipline me.

The strength to hold myself to a high standard. The strength to keep going. The strength to push on.
The strength not to disturb the room. The strength to swallow a feeling, once.

It is true that these supported my life.

Meanwhile — the muscle for appreciating my own effort,
I had hardly used at all.

I want someone to encourage me. To acknowledge me.
I want someone to say, "You're doing so well."

Admitting that is a little embarrassing.
That same watchman of "womanishness" shows its face again.

But I noticed something.
What I really wanted was not words from other people.

It was appreciation, and praise, and encouragement, from myself to myself.
Poor at giving those from myself to myself, I had gone on
asking the outside world to play that role.

$${\textit{Wagense}}$$ may be given to oneself as well —
the one answer I arrived at in the previous chapter
joined with this, here, into a single thing.

Putting myself first always comes with hesitation.

If I make myself happy, it feels as though I am leaving someone behind.
If I look happy, it feels as though I owe someone an apology.

The truth was the opposite.

The reassurance I offered by sacrificing myself does not last long.
In a room softened by making myself small, no real brightness remains.

To You in Weeks Six to Eight of RHS

Thank you so much for reading my memoir of this illness all the way to the end!

Weeks six to eight of RHS.
I was still deep inside impatience and anxiety.
My face still would not move the way I wanted it to.
My eye, my ear, my nerves were all still in the middle of recovering.

But underneath all that, something older — an entanglement
dating from the time my own history began —
had quietly, but steadily, begun to be repaired.

The drifting, like a floating cloud, ended before I knew it,
and I, come down to land on solid earth, asked once more:

Was there ever a face beneath the mask at all —

There was.

Even if it moved only halfway, still —
a true smile, smiling for no one's sake, simply smiling.

You, too — when you feel your body recovering, and even when you don't —
try to feel, just a little, that deep within you
a correction to the orbit of your life, in the largest sense,
may be steadily under way.

Someday, tell me your own episodes, your own singular stories.
Rita will be waiting, looking forward to them.

Thank you — and Ganbatte!

Recap Manga: (No.8) To You in Weeks Six to Eight of RHS

Here, a short manga recap of No.8.

Press the "Open viewer (ビューアを開く)" button below
to read the recap manga.
It is in Japanese manga format, so once the viewer opens,
please use the left-pointing arrow to move to the next page.

Next Time

Next time: To You in Weeks Ten to Twelve of RHS

Now, back from the deep journey inward — next time is a practical installment,
one for the hands.

The "Rita Routine" I kept up every day during my recovery —
at last, the whole of it.

Six steps, three times a day, beginning with a 36-year-old germanium roller.
Earlobe massage, which anyone can do right away.
And something a little unusual: an oral massage, done from the inside with the tongue.

Along with methods for taping the eyelid at bedtime and more,
I'll bring together the practical tips that supported
the recovery period from week ten to week twelve.

"Small daily habits over special tools" —
that is the Rita Code for this stage.

Next time, To You in Weeks Ten to Twelve of RHS.
Please look forward to it.
👉
Click the screen to go on to the next article.

Rita Code | Studio JMC

🇯🇵 Click here for the Japanese version