Where the Sea Is Not

The year she turned seventeen, Lin Xi wrote "I want to see the sea" on the back of a sheet of draft paper.

At twenty-eight, she met Chen Mo at a matchmaking event. He said, "I'm not much to speak of." She said, "Neither am I."

At thirty-five, she turned her fund for seeing the sea into tuition for her son's bilingual kindergarten.

At sixty, the day after she booked her plane ticket, her son called. "Mom, could you help us take care of the kids?"

At seventy-five, on her sickbed, she clutched the yellowed sheet of draft paper in its tin box. Outside the window, she heard the tide from the year she was seventeen.

Later, while sorting through her belongings, her son found a line of tiny pencil writing:

"The sea was what I longed for; you were the harbor I came home to. I sailed my dream of seeing the sea into a life with you."

A bit of rambling: I've been revising this story over and over since the end of 2025. When will I stop constantly rewriting things? I'm so, so, so frustrated! From the first completed draft to all the revisions, I've cut and added words until nearly ten thousand were gone. After reading the latest version and posting it, I feel empty. I really want to ask myself: why did I keep revising Lin Xi's life? Is this really her story, and is it what I wanted and am satisfied with? At this moment, I know I've lost the best version, and the life Lin Xi wanted me to show everyone. My worst habit is editing the original document, so after revising it thirty or forty times, the first version was already impossible to recover. When I start another story, I won't change anything except typos, grammatical errors, and unreasonable content. Finally, I want to apologize to Xi Xi. I'm sorry for repeatedly changing your life and experiences, but I think this is ultimately the best ending.

Xi Xi, may you be born by the sea in your next life, with the sea always by your side.

Reading note:

A bittersweet ending isn't the same as a tragedy. Lin Xi's life is complete: she has a marriage, children, a family, and love. She traded her dream of "seeing the sea" for a different kind of life. That exchange isn't a failure, but the real path taken by most ordinary people: between ideals and reality, they choose responsibility and love.

So the bittersweet ending here is a "beauty left unfinished," a "fulfillment tinged with regret."

Theme: In the tug-of-war between ideals and reality, see the resilience and glimmer of an ordinary life, and gently make peace with unfulfilled dreams and the ordinary yet one-of-a-kind person you will ultimately become