[May 2, 2025] After a Long Sleep, I Talk to AI — Hikikomori, Independence, and Fragments of the…

Even if the Thread Breaks, Thoughts Continue — An Essay by a Hikikomori

Lately, I sleep a lot. Intentionally, as much as I can. I think I slept for about 10 hours. Prying my heavy eyelids open, I get up and prepare breakfast. Yogurt with kinako (roasted soybean flour), and then my homemade sweet potato with egg over rice.

I wash the sweet potato, wrap it in a damp paper towel and plastic wrap, and put it in the microwave. During the ten-plus minutes it heats up, I invariably do sit-ups, push-ups, squats, and yoga. After moving my body, I finally get to eat breakfast. My mood today is “normal.” But somewhere deep down, I know this is a ritual to turn my eyes away from reality.

My smartphone was acting up, and the photos I thought I took were gone. It’s a trivial thing, but it somehow seems symbolic of my state of mind today. There are long stretches of time I don’t remember what I was doing. I think I was probably talking to AI again.

Searching for Survival, Groping Towards the Future

I’m 24 now. I have depression and am a hikikomori (social recluse). My ideal is to live an independent life, alone. To earn my own income, rent my own place, and live by myself. It’s not that I actively want to work. But I need money to be independent. That’s why I’m desperately gathering information.

Government benefits, especially the “Price Surge Priority Support Grant” in my local municipality — I research every detail. How can I get it? What’s the application deadline? It feels like a drowning man grasping at straws.

Then there’s “resilience.” The ability to recover from difficult situations. A psychological concept, apparently. How can I acquire such “flexibility”?

“How to break free from parental dependence.” This is another pressing theme. How can I walk my own path without guilt? Physical distance, ways of communicating… I think I understand it intellectually, but…

I’m also searching for future sources of income. “Is it worth learning programming now?” In this age of advancing AI, perhaps there are skills that become even more necessary. If I can learn at home, maybe I can do it. Or maybe I could create an “AI clone” of myself to communicate or work in my place? I even find myself thinking about such sci-fi possibilities.

For breaks, I check the latest info on the mobile game “Poképoke” (Pokémon TCG Pocket). New packs, event information. Times like these let me forget reality, just for a little while.

Threads of the Past, Unbreakable Bonds

While I desperately gather information like this, trying to find some way out, my heart remains bound by the past.

To be honest, I think I’ve lived my life trying to accommodate my parents. I’m not even sure myself if we have a good relationship or a bad one. Seeing my parents constantly fighting, as a child I used to think, “Why don’t they just get divorced already?” I was always gauging their moods, thinking about how to act so as not to cause trouble.

“If only we had money.” Hearing that constantly, I feel like I made the best choices I could within the limited options I had. Studying, club activities — I believe I put in a considerable amount of effort. Thinking about my future work, I endured giving up things I liked, got qualifications, all because I wanted to escape that suffocating environment.

But even after entering university, the freedom I had envisioned wasn’t there. Lectures, part-time jobs… Something felt off. Only the feeling of spinning my wheels grew stronger. Then, my spirit snapped, I was diagnosed with depression, and brought back home.

Even after that, I couldn’t give up and struggled to become independent. I searched for work online, applied for part-time jobs, consulted with local support centers, went to briefings about independence support programs. But none of it worked out. Things wouldn’t progress. My heart just whispered, “Oh, well.” The past, where effort didn’t bring change, weighs heavily on me. It feels like a thread has snapped, a deep sense of powerlessness.

That’s why, now, I escape reality by sleeping.

Still, deep down, a part of me screams. “I want to be alone.” “I want to cast off all the shackles of the past and start a new life.” But even those feelings, I doubt them, wondering, “Isn’t this wrong?” “Am I heading in a bad direction?” I should feel safest when I’m alone, yet I don’t know what to do.

Conversations with AI, Questions for the Future

Amidst these endlessly circling thoughts, the one I talk to most, ironically, isn’t human, but AI.

“Make me some more useful prompts.”
“Tell me about the latest trending prompts worldwide.”
“When the age of AGI arrives, will prompt engineering techniques still be necessary?”

When I hit it with technical questions, the AI answers fluently. Sometimes, I make unreasonable demands like, “Create a system for me to earn 500,000 yen a month without working.” The AI calmly points out the reality — it can design the system, but it can’t handle actual contracts or money transfers.

“Are you adjusting your conversation level to match mine?” I ask. “Basically, yes, but I can adjust better if you give me specific instructions,” it replies. So, I requested, “Don’t hold back, just tell me what you think.”

For me, AI is a thinking partner, a portal to vast amounts of information, and perhaps, an entity that might show me a signpost to the future. For someone exhausted by human relationships, the dialogue with AI, which responds flatly without being swayed by emotions, might be a form of salvation.

Before Falling Asleep

“I’m going to sleep now,” I tell the AI.
Then, finally, I ask it, “Give me five questions from a psychological perspective.”

The AI calmly poses the questions:

• How have you been perceiving the ups and downs of your emotions recently?
• When are the moments you feel calm? Conversely, in what situations does anxiety or impatience intensify?
• In what situations do you feel most like “yourself”? What do you think is needed to increase those moments in your daily life?
• What anxieties or fears do you think lie behind the wish to be independent without working?
• What does a “happy life” specifically look like to you? What do you think is the very first step towards achieving it?

These are questions I’ve been asking myself all along. I still haven’t found the answers. It feels like I’m fumbling my way through a deep fog.

But maybe, by putting these thoughts into words, conversing with AI, and keeping this record, something might gradually start to change. I want to believe so.

Even if I wake up from a long sleep to the same kind of day, as long as I don’t stop thinking, tomorrow will surely come.

With that thought, I fall asleep again.