When I was young, I used to sneakily eat snacks because I didn't know when my parents would appear. So I would devour them hastily, feeling both scared and guilty. I don't know how I felt back then, but now when I think about it, my throat feels sour and my heart feels aggrieved.
I don't know why, but recently I've been reminiscing about these experiences. I keep thinking about the times when I would sit alone on the bus to the youth center at night, from the starting point to the final stop, listening to classes that I couldn't understand at all, feeling restless. I would watch my classmates and their good friends making noise around me, knowing deep down that I would never be one of them. They would only maintain the necessary friendliness required by society towards me. And then there was the time when I was pushed off the slide and stood there, watching my grandmother argue with someone else's parent, feeling lost and only feeling the pain where I landed.
It seems that looking back, I was always a lonely, aggrieved, and confused figure on my journey of growth.
Of course, I believe that reality is not like this. Maybe it's just because recently, I've been living with the same mentality as when I used to sneakily eat snacks.
My life is like a flat world, where people of the same age are all running forward desperately, and on the horizon behind them, the ground is constantly collapsing and falling. Below is an abyss of unknown fear. I've only heard of people falling into it, but I don't know what happens when you fall. So everyone is running forward desperately, trying to stay away from the collapsing area, and I am also running forward with everyone else.
But now, I just can't run anymore. Can't run anymore, or don't want to run anymore? I don't know.
On the day of the snowball fight, I wanted to run because I couldn't stand still, but my feet slipped on the snowy ground. I desperately took steps forward to maintain balance. The first step failed, so I tried again, and again, and again. I ran desperately for five or six steps, unable to straighten my body. My center of gravity was too far forward, and my face ended up hitting the snow. For a moment, I felt wronged and didn't want to get up. I thought, "I might as well just stay down." But real life told me to be stronger, that no one would care about such a small matter. So I stood up, said nothing, and continued to join them in the snowball fight.
In my life, I have also fallen like this. I tried to take steps to maintain balance, but once I fell, I didn't want to get up anymore. In front of me is the heavy gate of the legal world. Many people have already opened that gate and ran inside, far away from the collapsing world, beyond my reach. But as I look at the heavy gate, I only managed to push open a tiny crack. I can't go in, and I don't want to continue pushing. I crawl parallel to the fractured horizon, getting further and further away from the way out.
And I have crawled parallel once before, from journalism to law.
The horizon is constantly collapsing and approaching. Any movement parallel to the collapsing horizon is a waste of time. Wasting time is wrong and will lead to falling into the abyss. So I shouldn't do this.
That's why I say this period of time is stolen time. After giving up on preparing for the law exam, I have been playing things I want to play with all my might. I bought a VPS, created a blog, set up a cloud storage, subscribed to all the note-taking software I wanted to use, and even tried to take advantage of the remaining months of my GitHub student benefits by pretending to be a student from other well-known universities. My mind is filled with all sorts of information, but I'm too lazy and confused. I don't know if I should record my experiences, thoughts, and ideas. I don't even know if there's any meaning in doing so. After completing them, succeeding, there is no joy in my heart, only regret for not starting earlier and self-blame for not doing what I should be doing.
Just like when I used to sneakily eat snacks.
A blog is for sharing technology and life, but I don't have the technology, and my life is a mess. Note-taking software is for recording knowledge and progress, but I haven't been studying or making progress. I'm just unable to control myself, using "interests" and "hobbies" as an excuse to avoid the problems that life presents to me and that I must solve.
In fact, my entire life is also stolen. Within this identity named XX, I complete the things that he should do in his life, and then secretly and desperately do things that I like. Over time, I no longer know what things he should do, what things I want to do, and what things I should be doing now. I have completely lost track. No, I know what I should be doing now, but I can't understand it, so I stop doing it.
Who am I? There is no answer to this question, and the more I think about it, the slower I become. Yet, I am constantly entangled by this question.
Looking back at the horizon, the abyss has already surrounded me, and I can hear the sound of collapse in my dreams. And yet, I am still like the lonely, aggrieved, and confused figure from my childhood, on this flat plane called life.