这一年过得太快，快的来不及和过去告别，就猛然发现早已和它渐行渐远，有时你甚至会怀疑，那些让你刻骨铭心、发誓永远不会忘记的回忆，那些让你温暖，希望永不分离的人儿是否真的曾经存在过。
当我一个人站在中关村的人流中，也会猛然想起一年前我问过很多朋友的那句，一年以后我们会在哪。那种回忆是可以给我温暖的，只是再回过神来，只有呼啸的车流和永不缺少光明的星空陪着我。我昂起头，努力不让眼泪流下。安慰自己，至少，完成了夙愿。我来到了想去的地方。而这又何尝不是最好的结局？
前段时间，微信上流传着一个游戏，写下能概括这一年的一个字。沉思良久，我写下了「念」。或许怀念，或许想念，或许执念。又或许，只是年年岁岁，心上有今朝而已。
回想整个 2014 年，年初刚从国赛回来的时光，那一定是这 18 年我最大的阴影。如果之后高三遇到的所有挫折我都可以笑着调侃着说出来，这段记忆至今仍是我不愿触碰的伤疤。它一如合肥的寒冬，那是和帝都不一样的。它是一种温柔的冷，却也是最彻骨的冷。它侵染你的每一寸皮肤，渐渐占领你的内心。如今的我，已经很难想象那种绝望，心中苦，却真的无法找到宣泄之处。经历不同，再加上大家都在准备高考，这种如同在冰窖里过冬的感觉着实让人受不了。如今回想，那大概是一种执念，坚信自己是优秀的，便无法接受自己如此落后。但也必须感谢那段时光，不知是一次次打击让自己麻痹，还是自己明白其实自己只需要和自己赛跑就好了，那大概是唯一一段时光，我真的看见自己一步步成长。
一直觉得自己是一个超级幸运的人，似乎总是受到幸运女神的眷顾。只要自己努力做的事，总是能够获得意想不到的结局。高考，出分，填志愿，暑假那些经历就像一场梦，除了在百度上能够看到自己的丑照，也似乎什么也没有留下。生命依旧马不停蹄地前行着。
只是没想到，我最终来到了自己从未想过会来的学校。一如既往，我的生活里怀念永远是不可抹去的一部分。有小伙伴说，当我说起过去的时候，是一种沉醉感，是真真正正沉浸在其中。但是他也反问我，那这种怀念，会不会到达一种求而不得的绝望？他的问话使我一时语塞。沉吟良久，我终于明白了我的心。如果说高中我对初中的怀念是一种对回到过去的渴望，我现在的怀念更趋向于一种幸福的追忆吧。我会偶尔梦见那些在六楼往下看的视野，那些在空地上打球的身影，还有自己快迟到，匆忙进教室，走到只有一人的两张桌子前，找前后讲话的画面。也会在理科知识的刺激下，偶尔想起自己曾是个彻彻底底的理科生。果然等一切都过去，伤心的都忘记了，只留下那些美好的。也许回忆就是这样，在你最彷徨，最失落的时候，给予你最后的温暖。这大抵是最美好的回忆了吧。
来到了这所中国最好的大学，才真的发现世界广度。我也愈发热爱这里，这也许就是，心上有今朝吧。我从来都不曾见过如此优秀的一大群人，他们有极高的效率，极强的自学和沟通能力，和极广的知识储备。我时常会感到自卑，却也早就做好了被虐的准备，于是倒也即使摆正了心态。只是渐渐发现，在这所园子里，自己越来越孤独，孤独的我都觉得自己要孤独终老了。当然这也许是大学的必然结果吧。每个人都有自己的事情，有埋藏在心底的秘密，大家的过去，似乎也只有在百度上才能略知一二。那些说出来吓死人的奖项，他们也从来不会提起。好在，还是遇到了一群好朋友。我们可以聊聊那些不为人知的过去，那些悲伤，那些痛苦。我一直觉得，如果能够了解一个人的过去，那一定是我最大的荣幸了。那么庆幸认识你们。我会记得半夜三更出去打麻将浪，凌晨 2 点未名湖的冰上漫步，大日子的约约约，还有寝室里的小感动。也认识了一些超级优秀的学长学姐，因为你们，我也要变得更加靠谱，做中华好学姐。也开始做一些不寻常的事情，机缘巧合开始的一些工作，便决心好好做下去，有梦可以追的感觉真好。现在的生活，虽然累，也有时压力山大，却依旧改变不了它美好的本质。有时开玩笑说，回去和学弟学妹千万不能说，大学很苦很累。但是我想说的是，这里真是充实，又快乐。那么，青春，大概就这样过吧。
谨 纪念我的 2014 我的十八岁
This year went by too fast — so fast there was no time to say goodbye to the past before I looked up and found I'd already drifted far from it. Sometimes you even start to doubt whether those memories carved into you, the ones you swore never to forget, and those people who warmed you, the ones you hoped never to be parted from, ever really existed.
Standing alone in the crowds of Zhongguancun, I suddenly remembered the question I'd asked so many friends a year earlier: where will we be a year from now? That kind of memory can warm me — but then I come back to myself, and all that's keeping me company is the roar of traffic and a night sky that never lacks for light. I tilt my head back and try not to let the tears fall. I tell myself: at least I did the thing I'd longed to do. I got to the place I wanted to go. And isn't that the best ending there is?
A while ago a game went around on WeChat: write down one character that sums up your year. After a long think, I wrote 念 — to remember, to miss, to fixate. Or maybe just: year after year, today is what's on my mind.
Looking back over all of 2014, that stretch at the start of the year right after coming back from the national competition is without question the darkest shadow of my eighteen years. Every other setback in my final year of high school I can now talk about with a laugh, but that memory is still a scar I won't touch. It was like Hefei's deep winter, which is not the same as Beijing's. It's a gentle cold, and also the cold that gets furthest into the bone. It seeps into every inch of skin and gradually occupies you from the inside. It's hard for me now to imagine that despair — the bitterness in my chest with genuinely nowhere to let it out. What I'd been through was different from everyone else, and everyone was preparing for the college entrance exam, so that feeling of wintering in an icehouse was truly unbearable. Looking back, it was probably a fixation: I believed so firmly that I was excellent that I couldn't accept falling that far behind. But I also have to be grateful for that stretch. Whether it was the repeated blows numbing me or my finally understanding that I only ever needed to race against myself, that was probably the one period in which I genuinely watched myself grow, step by step.
I've always felt I'm an extremely lucky person, as though fortune keeps looking out for me. Whatever I put real effort into tends to end up better than I had any right to expect. The exam, the scores, the applications, that whole summer — it feels like a dream, and apart from an unflattering photo you can still find of me online, it seems to have left nothing behind. Life keeps moving at full tilt.
What I didn't expect was to end up at a school I had never imagined I'd attend. As always, nostalgia is a part of my life that can't be erased. A friend said that when I talk about the past there's an intoxication to it — that I'm genuinely immersed in it. But he also asked me back: doesn't that kind of remembering eventually turn into the despair of wanting what you can't have? The question left me without an answer for a moment. After a long pause, I finally understood my own heart. If the nostalgia I felt in high school for middle school was a craving to go back, the nostalgia I feel now leans more toward a happy looking-back. I still sometimes dream of the view looking down from the sixth floor, the figures playing ball on the open ground, and the image of myself nearly late, hurrying into the classroom, walking to two desks with only one person at them and turning around to talk to whoever's behind. And when something in the sciences prods me, I sometimes remember I was once thoroughly a science student. Sure enough, once everything is over, the sad parts get forgotten and only the good remains. Maybe that's what memory is: at your most unmoored, your most lost, it hands you one last bit of warmth. That's probably the most beautiful kind of memory there is.
Only after arriving at the best university in China did I really discover how wide the world is. And I love it here more and more — maybe that's what it means to have today on your mind. I had never seen such a large group of outstanding people: their efficiency, their capacity to teach themselves and to communicate, the breadth of what they know. I often feel inferior, though I'd long prepared myself to get flattened, so my head is more or less in the right place. What I've slowly noticed, though, is that in this garden I get lonelier and lonelier — lonely enough that I think I might end up alone for good. Which is probably an inevitable result of university. Everyone has their own things, their own secrets buried deep, and the only way to learn a little about anyone's past seems to be searching for them online. The awards that would floor you if you heard them, they never bring up. Fortunately, I still found a group of good friends. With them I can talk about the parts of the past nobody knows, the sadness, the pain. I've always felt that being allowed to know someone's past is the greatest honor there is. I'm so glad I met all of you. I'll remember going out at midnight to play mahjong, walking on the ice of Weiming Lake at two in the morning, the endless plans on the big days, and the small moving things in the dorm. I've also met some seriously impressive upperclassmen — because of you, I want to be more dependable myself, and be a decent senior to others. And I've started doing some unusual things: work that began through happenstance, which I've decided to do properly. It feels good to have a dream to chase. Life now is tiring, and sometimes the pressure is enormous, but none of that changes how good it is at its core. I joke sometimes that we must never tell the younger students that university is hard and exhausting. But what I want to say is: it's genuinely full, and genuinely happy. So — this is probably how youth is meant to be spent.
In memory of my 2014, my eighteenth year.