When she was seven years old, she was willful for the only time and asked for a Barbie doll worth thirty-nine yuan.
Mom hesitated for half a month and finally put it on her pillow. That was the only time in her entire childhood that she was "heard."
After more than 20 years, all her "I feel pain", "I passed the test", "I posted my essay on the blackboard and reported it" were like falling into a deep well. There was the sound of water at the bottom of the well, but no one looked out to take a look.
Her father is a factory manager. He leaves early and comes home late. He is alone in the study room in the middle of the night, checking the account books, with ashtrays piled up in a hill. Her mother dropped out of school at the age of thirteen to support the family. She had not been "seen" by anyone since she was a child, so she could not see others. It's not that they don't love, it's that they are too tired, so tired that all their love has turned into silent things that don't speak after they are done - a cup of cold boiled water, an insurance policy that has been paid for twenty years, and a bag of dried radishes dried in the autumn.
Ryan learned to remain calm in this silence. Don't talk about it when it's hot, don't cry when it hurts, don't show off when you pass a test. Because she learned one thing too early: if no one takes her hand, it will hurt more than if she doesn't.
Later, she met someone who made her willing to reach out and he gave her the first glass of warm lemonade in her life. Then she met another man who, without saying anything, cleared an empty room and put a desk for her.
She went from a junior college to an associate degree, and from an associate degree to a civil servant. Every step is taken by one person, the desk lamp in the middle of the night, the notebooks stacked up, and the words "come on" written with fingers on the bus and then disappear. No one applauded, no one said "you can".
But she came out. After she came out, she realized that it was so easy to not long for recognition from others.
The scar on my ankle was burned when I was six years old, twenty-three years old. The pain had long gone, but she kept it.
Flowers bloomed on the scar. A very small one.
Seeing yourself is enough.
Concept: A person's ultimate confidence is not gained by being loved, but by pulling oneself up from the bottom of the water late at night when no one is watching. Those childhoods of not being heard, those silent parents, those moments of reaching out and then retracting, ultimately did not break her, but instead ground her into something that could shine on its own. It took her many years to understand that it was so easy to not crave recognition from others. The scar can bloom because you are still growing.