Travel Back

Lu Mingxi thought she had forgotten. Forget the pen stuck in the ashes in the corridor of junior high school, forget the nickname "that so-and-so", forget the teacher's words as he turned the pen and said, "Just don't get together." She pressed these things into the deepest part of her body and grew into an invisible wall - she lived in the wall with excellent grades, cheerful and gregarious, like a bright, worry-free light that did not cause trouble. Then she meets Sulu. Sulu was quiet and calm. He came to her when she was at her brightest and said, "You are like a lamp. When it lights up, I am not afraid of the dark anymore." They read comics together, draw in the dormitory, and talk across the aisle after lights out. Lu Mingxi swallowed back the second half of her sentence - what she didn't say was that the wick had been burning for too long and was almost finished. Then the lights went out. Depression slowly creeps in like water, taking away her sleep, her appetite, and the strength of her fingers when holding a pen. The harder she tried to "get better", the harder she fell. The closer Sulu got, the more she realized she couldn't catch this person. On the day we broke up, there was half a bowl of unfinished rice on the cafeteria table. The person sitting across from me said, "I don't seem to be able to be with you anymore." But Lu Mingxi didn't stop. She met Qing Yu, a short-haired, silent girl who would give her half an apple. Qing Yu said: "Pack those pieces away, don't throw them away. It won't work if you lose even one piece." She went to see a psychiatrist for the first time. The pills lay like grains of rice in her hand, and she swallowed them. On the night of the winter solstice, the longest night of the whole year, she fell asleep. The apple tree sprouted in spring. She stood in front of the tree and took a deep breath when the wind blew over. Concept: How does a person whose wings have been torn learn to flap again in a cage. Youth is not healing, it is continuing to live with all the cracks. The "nothing" that is swallowed back, the evenings that are called "that so and so", the requests for help that are lightly pushed away - they will not disappear, they will grow into the bones and become part of the body. But cracks are not defects, they are places where light gets in. Real growth is not about becoming a "good" person, it is about accepting that you have been broken, are still broken, but can still move on. It's to stand in front of an apple tree, watch it sprout, and then say to yourself: I am still there, too. When spring comes, the new leaves don't know that last year's leaves have fallen, but they are green on time. The proof of being alive is that you are still breathing, still walking, and still holding the pieces in your hands without throwing away any of them.