Edelweiss and Mint Leaves

Before I learned to "solve problems", life first gave me a model with no solution. What I call home is full of sudden absences, silent betrayals, and hurt in the name of love. What I learned from it was not logic, but a profound injustice and disorder. It took me many years to barely learn to maintain a semblance of balance in this disorder. When I was thirteen years old, in that summer filled with the fragrance of mint, I met "Edelweiss". It was in a math class, and I must admit, I'm not very good at it. Just when I felt familiar with the problem on the blackboard, the strange boy walked up. He wrote down the first solution clearly and concisely. Just when I thought it was over, he paused for a moment and actually wrote the second one. The ideas are very different, but equally elegant and rigorous. The wind blows through the thick shade outside the window, bringing with it a ray of refreshing mint. Then, in English class, he and I sang "Edelweiss" fluently, side by side with the teacher. One is to split the chaos with logic that I cannot grasp, and the other is to reach purity with sound, and the fragrance of mint lingers as the background of memory. The shock at that moment was twofold: not only did I get a glimpse of an orderly and beautiful life possibility, but I was even more shocked to realize that there was such a free and certain "another possibility" in a field that I was not good at and even feared. This became a distant but clear coordinate in my heart. The rest of my life was more like cultivating "mint". Just because the coolness of that summer was so profound, ordinary and slightly bitter, it was the closest thing to "freshness" and "vitality" that I could think of in my own barren emotional soil. I use it to deal with all the problems that extend from that "unsolvable template": dealing with the hard-to-replace sincere devotion to my in-laws, dealing with the fear of destroying freedom of movement overnight, dealing with a body reshaped by childhood alarms. Amidst the unheard falling sound, this was the only tiny experiment of order that I could conduct for myself. But in fact, I can't even grow mint. It wilts on my windowsill, over and over again. It is very similar to all my efforts: trying to use reason and logic to solve a problem that is full of emotional fallacies from the beginning; trying to build an upright life on a sloping foundation. This book is not about growing live mint. Nor is it about becoming an edelweiss. This is just a draft about "how a person who starts from a wrong premise repeatedly checks her unsolvable fate." It records how a soul who has seen "another possibility" took the wrong formula given to her by her original family and deduced it over and over again on the subsequent examination papers, failing over and over again, but trying to write down even one step closer to the correct step. We may never be that elegant "Edelweiss", It is also possible that the ideal "mint" will not be cultivated in a lifetime. But the process of continuous verification itself, Perhaps, this is the most tragic and sober "second solution" to our own destiny. Dedicated to all those who started from the wrong starting point and are still trying to figure it out. Intention: Face the "wrong preconditions" of life brought by the original family, but do not indulge in accountability to the original family; get a glimpse of the "Edelweiss"-like ideal life form, but do not rely on its light to illuminate oneself. Even if he cannot become the ideal "edelweiss", he can still plant the "mint" that symbolizes self-healing. However, the independent struggle process of "repeating calculations and refusing to stop writing" is the best solution to fight against the unsolvable fate and is another gesture of self-salvation for the traumatized.