致我的 2013To My 2013

The heavy air of the night carries a trace of the melancholy of parting. The mischievous moon has taken the stars off somewhere to enjoy themselves. The tower block that used to blaze with light is showing only scattered sparks now. Every so often the sound of festive firecrackers reaches me. Is it only when a year is about to end that we cling to time like this, that we sigh over how fast it goes? And what of it — you can't withstand years that flow like water, and you can't escape being young in the middle of them. 2013, once past, will not come again.

I kept fantasizing about a heavy snow before the year turned, so that it would be like birds returning to the woods when the food runs out, leaving a great expanse of white and clean ground behind — burying all my grief and desolation deep, so that this New Year could arrive in simple happiness. But in this world, we can't fully hold even our own fate; how could we be foolish enough to expect everything to go our way?

The last big thing of 2013 arrived quietly. Since the dust has settled, any more regret would just be affectation. Everything returns to the starting point. My restarted final year of high school has been forced onto track through the discomfort. Since I understand my goal, all that's left is to go through wind and rain. Maybe it's set too high, out of reach — but if you don't try, how would you know your own potential? As Brother Sheng said, maybe what I lack is the nerve to go forward regardless.

Looking back on 2013 — my last full year in high school, and maybe my last full year in Hefei — it counts as an abundant one. I got nearly everything I wanted. Gathering with middle-school classmates over the holidays, remembering those beautiful years; finding things to laugh at in school even when the workload was heavy; the many exams I sat, most of which were passable; reading some books I'd long wanted to read, which enriched the time outside class. As for the rest — since even I find it unacceptable, let it go.

Lately I've been hooked on Where Are We Going, Dad?, genuinely moved by how pure the kids are and won over by how attentive the fathers are. Before I know it I'll come of age in 2014. One second I was growing up nervously under my parents' shelter, and the next I'm supposed to stand on my own. The joke about Sister Yuhong turning eighteen is about to go stale. Watching my parents run all over the place for my independent-admission applications, and try every way they can to cheer me up when I'm down, I really shouldn't let them down. Thank you to my family, and to my friends — your company is what gives me more drive to keep going.

And I finally understand: the wheel of time turns round and round, fragments of it slipping past and falling in front of my eyes, and the things remembered, the things forgotten, the things held and the things lost all seem to be just stages of a life. Maybe there's no need to grip so hard. What I want, perhaps, is not for everything to be perfect — only to have nothing on my conscience.

The left bank is the memory I can't forget, the right bank is the brilliant years worth holding tightly, and rushing between them is my faint, year-after-year sadness.

Carrying that faint sadness, I keep walking, toward my future.

In memory of my 2013, my seventeenth year.