On the Edge of Teenage Years
1. The Tempest and the Shroud
There is an ocean living in my heart.
When the warm light of dawn penetrates into the ocean floor and the gentle water is calm like a giant looking glass, it will pass.
Sometimes, swirling dark clouds of storm sweep through the ocean like a tempest, and the screeching wind crashes against the water surface, inspiring meters of roaring waves. It will pass.
Even if it drizzles for days or weeks without the rays of sunlight breaking through the dampness of the air, I know it will pass.
I only ask to know that everything passes. And everything I can ask for, I already have.
Because depression is like a shroud of grey that shadows over the expanse of the ocean, never to be cleared. At least, I did not have faith that the cloud of depression would ever clear. Even if there are glaring beams of sunlight underneath those clouds, only a vague spot of shimmering light would flit through.
Once, I have allowed that shroud of grey to overshadow my ocean, when I have given up what I want for what is expected. But it is not coming to North Carolina itself that is the cloud of grey, but rather how I relented to the fear of uncertainty to pursue what I want. I thought I must have hated myself, because I know what I want; but I would always choose its opposite.
Perhaps it is to make up for my own lack in the strength of character that I was lucky enough to have friends who supported my character when I couldn’t. They were always by my side, they were always one text message away; we wrote each other letters and long paragraphs of text messages in appreciation of each other’s presence. When they tell me how I am the most driven, thoughtful, and ambitious person they have ever met, I would think to myself “it is so nice of you to say that to comfort me” — because I did not think for a second that I was driven, thoughtful, caring, or ambitious. They were the shimmering light that shined on my ocean through the shroud that was my own depression and anxiety.
It is only until later, when the boundless dark clouds have been blown away that I could really see how glaring their light was.【You would know if you are one of those friends. 这是我对你们的公开表白】
More than six months ago, looking at the same ocean that I am looking at now, I decided to make a change in my life and come to Columbia. In many ways, it is willful, capricious, and irresponsible even, but it would blow away the dark clouds of depression that seemed so powerful. That is all I could ask for. And everything I can ask for, I already have.
In the days after that, there are drizzles and there are tempests. Like the loneliness and the solitude. They say that the city is millions of people living alone. It gets so lonely, especially when I now without the clouds, I can remember clearly how glaring were the lights from my old friends, and I do not have them by my side anymore. I miss them so much. So I guess that solitude is the drizzle, but I know that it will pass.
It will past because now, I can start to get used to living without depression. It will pass because I can learn to love myself. It will pass because I open my eyes and see the world not through the colored lens of the shroud, but through my own eyes and discover the tiniest moments that move me.
So I am lucky to have that. I do not ask for much more.
2. Boiling the Ocean
There are two ways you can get a cup of hot water: you either take a cup of water and boil it, or you boil the ocean to get one cup of water.
I am boiling the ocean.
I am always running between places, from classes and clubs to interviews and internships to meeting with friends for SoulCycle and brunch. I thought I could take them all on. Indeed, I was just getting used to living without depression (which felt strange at first) and it is so liberating. It made me have so much energy that I felt I could always stretch myself a bit harder.
In October, my mom came to visit me in New York. I told her not to worry about me at all because Columbia is so much less stressful than North Carolina. And I meant it. The freedom of living in a place of my dreams made me numb to the exhaustion, and blind to how my energy is being drained every time I over-exert myself by saying yes to yet another responsibility. I also told my mom that I was not going to go home for Christmas break. I was going to stay in the city to the on an internship in tech consulting. Why would I need rest?
At a place like New York, it seems impossible to rest. Everyone is going around doing so many exciting things that I felt empty for every second I wasted on idleness (可世界都爱热热闹闹，容不下我百无聊赖TAT).
So cup by cup, I was heating up the water in the ocean. I do not know if all these effort can make me find that one cup of water that would make my life meaningful. But one thing I do know is that I cannot boil the ocean anymore. Because when I overstretch myself, things can really go down. They can go down all at once, like the first weeks of November.
On November 1st, I smashed a hole on the flesh of both of my knees as I was running to work, before which I had to scramble to finish the LitHum Paper due at 5 pm that night. On November 9th, I smashed my iPhone as I was walking through midtown, too tired to hold it on. A stripe of bright light started to appear on the side of my screen so that the next morning, on November 10th, I woke up with my eyes hurting so much that I could not keep them open. I went to the doctors and told her that my eyes were hurt by the light of my broken phone from the previous night. She laughed and looked at me incredulously:
“Do you really think that is possible?” She said, “It is obviously because you have not been resting for the past month”. After that, she gave me a card on her table. I opened my eyes wide to read what is on the card and was baffled by why an eye doctor would refer me to Counseling and Psychology Services.
“Thank you, but I am fine.” I said.
“You don’t look very fine, sweetheart”.
I felt like a madman — it is as if everyone can see that I am mad except myself. I thought the breaking of my knees, my phone, and the damage to my eyes were accidents, that I could just buy some bandages, a new phone, and eyedrops and continue to work with the same fervor and intensity. But really, they are all symptoms to the same malady of boiling the ocean.
It is hard to give up anything that I am doing. But perhaps it is not an admittal of defeat, but saving my energy for what matters the most. That night, I called my mom and told her that I was going home for the winter. At that very moment, playing on my MacBook the chorus in Ode to Joy burst out in joyful singing:
Freude trinken alle Wesen
An den Brüsten der Natur;
Alle Guten, alle Bösen
Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.
No, it is not an admittal of defeat. Rather, it is a joyous laughter through adversity and a will to give up determination for serenity when it is the right time.
And I gotta stop boiling the ocean. I will.
3. 大海，飞机，和死亡（未完）
每当我难过的时候，就独自看一看大海。
I know that even the furtherest expanse of the water would not give me the answer, nor does the song of the waves crashing against the shore. But still, I like to sit silently and watch, like how in May 2019, I sat by the shoreline watching the sun slowly drop lower and lower into the water. I sat there because there was so much uncertainty between me and the future, like where the hell should I go to college like that question had not been bothering me for so long, since that uneventful morning after my high school AP Music Theory class. When I fixate myself on one thing, it is all that matters in the world.
But on that afternoon, staring at the ocean, I realized one thing. 没有那么多事那么重要.
Suddenly I did not care at all where I would take my life. It really does not matter. I do not mean it in the sense that I can waste away my time on unimportant things, but it frees myself to take risks and to embrace a path of uncertainty.
I had the same epitome as the I watched the clouds over the Arctic circle. It is an ocean of clouds. The world under it is so enchanting that I cannot resist the temptation to know about it as much as I could.
It is only when I am dying that —
Ocean. Plane. Death.
Even I am at a point of confusion as I am turning away from my teenage years into more maturity and responsibility, I do promise myself one thing: to open my heart, and —
Live bravely.
Live openly.
Laugh through adversities.
Share moments with ones I love,
But also relish in solitude.
2020.1.17 in 荻水清吧 & 倪氏海泰
