Practice being alone: ​​when I started to love myself

Chapter 5 The Wrong Way and the Right Person (1)
love letter one
Many people have asked if the story of "Traveling Apart" is true and if M exists.

Of course the story is not true, I am the one who makes it up.

But I must have loved, we all have.

His name may not be M, but ABCDEF.

This letter, written when they broke up many years ago and never sent, was addressed to him.

Maybe it was a coincidence, on the day I found this letter, I received a call from him in the taxi after get off work.

We haven't contacted for a long time, we can only talk about the weather.

I think back to the first date, when the two extremely nervous people were talking about the weather.

In the cycle of life, we are not separated but there is no need to meet again.

Recently, I often think about when we first started together.

We were young, really young, 19 years old.

It was as if we knew each other well before we met.

It was I who liked you first, standing in the dark.I once told you that I love you like a mole loves its darkness.

You will also feel that this situation is not fair to you. You don't know that the person who passed you by actually knows a lot about you.

But thinking that I was the only one who had to bear the tension and fear at that moment, I felt even again.

Because I like you, I always hope to see you, and I often want to leave this place where you are also there.

This is a very paradoxical thing.

So I traveled alone.

Many times on the platform waiting for the train to come into the station, whenever the strong air current blows my hair and the corners of my clothes, as if to sweep me away, the whole world is only left with that powerful roar, and I feel safe.

Yes, you don't know I like you, you won't hear my heartbeat, I'm safe.

Going back and forth like this, I gradually don't remember how I finally got close to you after going back and forth like this.

Yes, I love you as the mole loves its darkness.

Later you asked me why I fell in love with you and was with you.

There must be many reasons, but they are not exact and often change over time.

Now I like your quietness.

This is a good thing to understand at a certain age.

No adjectives, no adverbs, no notes.

I long to meet a clear and transparent soul.

A free soul that is not polluted, not damaged, not imprisoned.

He is full of vitality, as bright as the sun, as calm as the water of a lake, and as low as the rain in the middle of winter.

In this world, tears are no match for saliva.So how precious is silence.

So I thank you so far, when we met, you didn't say anything, just gave me a chance to get closer.

love letter two
In the past, you often told me in your letters to think less about the past and start a new life more.

I'm doing it now, it's just that the future is coming so quickly that I don't have the energy to deal with it gracefully.

But what is there to complain about.What happens when you are caught off guard is called transformation, right?
You must forgive my clumsiness, just as you once tolerated my stubbornness.

I still remember the day when I arrived in Nanjing, the sky was full of kites and the yellow leaves of Qixia Mountain.

Suddenly a strong wind blew up, and the building was tinkling, and it was unknown who's wind chime was.I wore a T-shirt under my overcoat, and it was a bit chilly, but I was sane.The street lights under the sycamore tree are still so gentle, like smiling eyes, and the car lights are golden and shining all over the street.

Maybe the scene is not that good, but because I met you, everything is trimmed with bright edges.

I dare not tell you how much I miss the bathroom at home when I live in a hotel apartment from [-] to [-]. On the towel rack, the towels are arranged in order of color gradient from dark purple to pure white, and the towels are creamy white with softener. breathe.

I'm an easygoer and have no plans to change.One day, because of following you, I changed my original intention. The process did not have the chic posture of breaking out of the cocoon and becoming a butterfly, but the embarrassment of shedding the skin.But when he gritted his teeth, there was a smile on the corner of his mouth.

On the road, be a guest.

Now that I'm having trouble again, I allow myself to miss you.

Over the years, with the thought of you, I walked through the noise and desolation of the world alone.Hesitant footsteps often seem to be covered with wounds, even the dust can't bear it.

And you have already turned around and gone to the side of those who need you.

do you know?The stars in the sky always remind me of your pulse, the slow rhythm that never stops.

And your estrangement with compassion and care with coldness.

If the vast sea of ​​people can meet again, I will still say that everything is fine.

But if you can't, that's fine too.We do not pray because we suffer.

In the midsummer before I met you, in the Vatican under the scorching sun, I pressed my palm on the seal of the gate of heaven, and the moment I lowered my head, I made a promise. No matter when and where in the future, when I hear the call , will answer.

From then on, I placed all my hopes and took away a quiet ray of light from heaven.

Even if you come and go, we spend a little time together, but under this watch, I will not be in trouble wherever I go, because we are never alone.

love letter three
More than summer, less than autumn.

The tea water is green and the mountains are beautiful.

How comfortable it would be if the prosperity of the world could be dealt with calmly like the cycle of seasons.

Maybe we will all have a moment to go away alone in order to say goodbye to someone.When I think of that person in a foreign country, I still remember his body temperature, but it is as distant and gentle as missing the past.

In the most unforgettable relationship, only a bag full of old letters came back to me.I read them all on the balcony in the light of the rainy season, and the tears blurred the years we walked together.

The moment I looked up, I realized that the so-called growth is not that you know how to take responsibility and go all out to fight for everything, but that you can accept the regret that you still can't get what you want after hard work.

This is the last resort wisdom of a gecko.I was stubborn since I was a child, so I understood this truth very late.As we get older, wounds heal more slowly.I dried the wound on the long journey, but I also know that this scar will be with me for a long time, even the rest of my life.

But what?

I once fell in love with the world formed by the sense of taste because I temporarily lost my hearing.In the study room on a cloudy day, the piano that has been idle for many years exudes a bleak and noble woody smell.The gradually ripening persimmons are too late to be picked, and the birds come to peck them one after another, and the wind in the backyard has astringent fragrance.The steamed buns just out of the cage are white and plump, a bit like the Mid-Autumn Festival.In the early morning, the dew gradually leaves the grass and trees, half suspended in the air, taking away the breath of the grass and trees, which is the most beautiful and shortest smell.

Walking alone in the forest in the evening, the huge pink sunset, the stream glowing in the dark, the orchids blooming, the fragrance is like fireflies, jumping and flickering.I walked quickly, slower than the rushing night, and faster than the budding trees.I feel very happy to finally get rid of so many evenings of missing you in a foreign country.

Okakura Tenshin explained in "The Book of Tea": "Essentially, the tea ceremony is a kind of worship of incompleteness, and it is a gentle exercise in order to achieve some possible perfection in a life that we all know is impossible to be perfect. Temptation." Standing in complete silence and darkness, I suddenly saw the light in my heart.I see your face.

Love is also a temptation, to see how much we can give without asking for anything in return, to see how long we can persist without asking for results.

I also know that it's not because of someone's departure that I feel hopeless, but because I'm starting to age, my heartbeat stops and retreats like a tide, and all kinds of losses come like bloodthirsty flies.

盲医
In the evening, a friend called and hoped to meet, but she was frustrated emotionally.

When I'm depressed and my will is weak, I'm afraid she's the only one who thinks of me, a cold-faced stunned young man, for dinner.

I can't speak, and I'm not good at comforting people. I don't know what to do. When I'm in a hurry, I may tell a few bad jokes.So, before leaving, I decided to bring a few books for her to read.

Words used to be my comfort. For me, no matter how lonely or far away, as long as I have a pen and a piece of paper, I can feel safe.Hopefully words will fill her wounds too.

In the twilight, trying to make out those familiar spines, I found the book that I thought would suit her mood at the moment.

One here, one there.

I feel like an old Chinese doctor with limited eyesight, who wants to concoct a good medicine, which can cure diseases and pains, and heal the heart even more.

Is there such a medicine in the world?

Maybe there is.

It is colorless and odorless, insoluble in water, not disperse in the wind, fast and hard to find, it must be lured with black silk as medicine and at the cost of effort.

Just hide some secrets, and don't even tell them when you cough up your heart.

I watched you come with a knife and pointed out the location of your heart.It is with my permission that you have the ability to hurt me.

Fortunately
Wilde said that only shallow people know themselves.

It seems that shallow people are more likely to be happy, while deep people have too many questions to have fun.

Insomnia is not profound, but insomnia nights will remind you of many things.For example, in the summer when I lived in Bristol, my graduation thesis was almost blind.At two o'clock in the middle of the night, I went to Fish and Chips at the entrance of the alley to buy French fries.

I remember that hour was the closing time of the pub. Drunk young people came out of the pub noisily. The greasy smell of French fries floated in the air, like the shivering golden color of fairy sticks.

I also like to go to the kitchen rice cooker and eat leftover white rice from dinner, served with chips, and munch on it leaning against the locker.Sometimes I meet roommate L from another house who comes to the kitchen to look for ketchup.

He said: Actually, I eat French fries just to eat ketchup.

Sometimes I met him on the steep slope outside the student apartment building, and we went to the Starbucks on the half slope to buy a cup of coffee to take away.At that time, he was experiencing a serious lovelorn, and his back looked as if it would shatter if he touched it.When I feel sad, I will roll up the bed in the middle of the night and go to other people's room to make a bed on the floor.

Time cures all. But it takes a long time to wait, I don't have such patience and courage, so I resort to food.

I looked at a handsome boy who was about to eat his belly, and I was heartbroken.

So far, I still can’t figure out how such an outstanding person can even get a scholarship for a complex course like artificial intelligence, but he can’t get out of the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of love.

He was eating French fries and said in confusion: The human brain is really too complicated, needlessly complicated.

I don't know if his emotional injury has healed after many years.Maybe he is already a successful engineer, married a wife and had children.Just like Lin Yaoguo and his wife Wen Jing in "Forty Men", they respect each other like guests, reciting Su Shi's "Ode to the Former Red Cliff" in the living room when they are free.The magnificent scenery of the Yangtze River was broadcast on TV, but a pot of soup in the kitchen was stewed.

It's as simple as that.

I used to think that such a trivial life was a curse, but later I realized it was a gift.

i wrote a card
August 2004, the last summer in continental Europe.My wandering steps are gradually heavy, and more and more time is spent writing postcards, almost every day I have to sit in a corner coffee shop and write a thick stack.Describe the weather and the scenery you have seen at that time in detail.One of them read: I want to spend the rest of my life with you in Florence, would you like to?
When I returned to London from the white port of Dover by coach in September, autumn had already begun.It turned out that the student dormitory of the London College where I lived had been converted into a temporary youth hostel, and my friends who lived with me had already gone to the United States to study.I took out the postcard I sent to myself when I was in Italy from the mailbox, and once again carried the travel bag to live in the student apartment of UCL.

During those youthful years when I lived in no fixed place, how keen I was to write postcards to myself during the trip, as if to confirm the connection between myself and those addresses again and again.

Like a wandering ship, looking for an anchored shore.

On the day of moving, I came out of KingsCross Station and bought a fashion magazine at WHSmith, and a novel was attached to the magazine: Lazy Ways to Make a Living.

With the remaining change, I bought a postcard of Yoshitomo Nara at Paperchase: a seemingly innocent and weak little girl with a bulging pork loin face, wearing a pink blue cloth jacket and smoking.Human memory, how strange, now I still clearly remember that the poster on the billboard that day was a middle-aged man by the sea, with a thin and kind face, squinting his eyes in the wind, and the slogan was: I want to feel the wind through my hair when I still have some.
Probably a promotional advertisement for a low-cost airline.

When I opened this novel a year and a half later and found the Yoshitomo Nara postcard in the book, even though I was already in a silent winter night far away from thousands of mountains and rivers, the shadows of the trees and the sunlight hit me The heat on my arm, the voice of people at the station, the birdsong in my ears when I passed the park in the middle of the street with my travel backpack on my back...even the sea breeze in the advertising poster, they all came back, vivid and real, inexplicable.

I even remember sitting in the drawing room of a student flat in Bloomsbury writing postcards before I left London.The brocade sofa, the thick faded carpet, and the sweet early autumn of London outside the window.The verdant trees bloomed with unknown flowers, and the big canopy bloomed in full bloom.As time goes by, the interior is a shadow of gray and green.When I raised my head from the desk and stared at the shadow at my feet, I found that it was still trimmed with Daobao blue borders.

It turns out that memories can also be stored in postcards, just like you insert a thin bookmark for a certain piece of life that you want to remember. When you look back, they are the most accurate indexes, allowing you to retrieve the memories of that day. The journey and everything that followed is vividly remembered.

So, wherever I go, I will send you a card, let it walk the distance between us, describe the scenery I saw to you, and convey my miss to you through the postman's love relay, so that you will not forget me in the future .

Paris, a love story

November 2003, Paris, heavy snow, Avenue des Operas Their story is so vulgar that it might be rejected by any magazine.Ten years later, he returned to Paris, sitting in the front row of the Paris National Opera, thinking so expressionlessly.But this heartache has been preserved for such a long time, and it has been transformed into melancholy and then sadness over time.

When the performance was over and the audience gave a standing ovation, he rubbed his face with his palms, got up and left.

Outside was the radiant Parisian night.He stood in the shadows between streetlamps and streetlamps, his expression finally mournful.Snow silently piled up on his shoulders.

I remember breaking up with her at this intersection.The corners of their clothes still smelled of the aroma of the cup of coffee just now.Standing face to face without saying a word for twenty minutes.

Her hands were hidden in the pockets of her coat.He tapped the curb with his toe.Finally she raised her head and said, "Why don't you just forget about me." After a while, he also raised his head and said, "That's fine, too."

In November 2003, Paris, Charles de Gaulle Airport, she was snowing alone, with a travel bag and a windbreaker hanging on her arm.Due to the rain and snow, the flight to China was temporarily canceled.When changing the ticket, I refused the hotel offered by the airport staff, bought a cup of coffee and waited in the departure hall.In the middle of the night, he was another black-haired and yellow-skinned person in the waiting hall.I buried myself in a French magazine at the airport. "Do you speak Chinese?" she asked him in French. "Say it." He replied, then closed the magazine in his hand, smiled and said in Chinese: "Hello."

"Hello. Will I bother you?" She looked apologetic.

"will not."

"where are you going?"

"Vienna, I don't know when the flights will resume. Maybe I should take the train. How about you?"

"I'm going home."

"Are you here for a trip?" he asked.

"No, I just came to see someone."

The midnight lights and emptiness of the airport, the black sweater made her pale.

She fell asleep on his shoulder.From the eyes of others, they are a pair of wandering lovers.

What she was looking for back in Paris was someone else, just like the one next to her: black hair, yellow skin, a steady voice, and a determined expression.But at that time, they were all too young.

That year, also at this Charles de Gaulle airport, she waited and waited, but he didn't catch up.I don't know if I'm tired of love, or because of the hardships of life.

(End of this chapter)