Forever innocent

Perhaps everything moves quietly and gently forward with time, forgetting what I was looking for, and forgetting what I once strived to pursue. We always change with our environment, and when things remain unchanged, we always forget something—the people we knew, the events we experienced.

Quietness often breeds a nameless restlessness, leading to eventual numbness and a loss of passion. This is what people often call ordinariness, a kind of happiness, yet we can’t truly appreciate it.

I’ve begun to doubt the very definition of happiness. It’s less a feeling and more a desire. Desire itself is endless, so should happiness be too. I don’t want to think about whether I’m happy or not; at least in the eyes of others, I am the kind of happiness they envy.

The journey has been difficult; those who have walked with me to the end have had it even harder. Looking back, I realize I’ve come this far on this path of life. There’s an underlying, inexplicable unhappiness that seems to have been weighing me down all along, to the point that I sometimes feel suffocated.

Every day, I shuttle between towering buildings, bustling streets, and crowds in the city, yet my heart feels an indescribable desolation. Unconsciously, I have begun to loathe the city’s atmosphere, wanting to escape the hustle and bustle and go to a remote village to enjoy a moment of peace and tranquility. However, I am trapped in it, finding it difficult to move forward. I still have to face all the things that the city has to offer, including the ugliness of human nature and the endless desires within it. Sometimes I despise the dark psychology I show at certain moments. Rather than calling it darkness, I would rather justifiably call it self-protection.

Try to distance yourself and give up, try to be open-minded and carefree, try to do many things that you haven’t had time to do but have to do, give up when appropriate, strive when appropriate; in a certain environment, try your best to be a complete role model, but in reality you are a sentimental person, so it’s so tiring.

Busy days always make me forget things. If I casually mention people and events from the past, I really doubt whether they were also experiences I shared in my life. A recent memory always feels like it happened a long, long time ago, distant and unreachable. I begin to doubt the definition of time itself, whether it is moving too fast, so fast that it makes me panic and speechless. Looking back, I have already forgotten.

On the journey of moving forward, there seems to be something being anticipated, and something being feared being lost; something being reminisced about, and something being forgotten; and a struggle being made in a state of inexplicable thoughts.

In matters of the heart, I often choose to give up, yet I can’t help but think back to that blossoming age of first love. Now, so many years have passed, and I seem to have reached the age where I loved you back then. Am I still the one you were in the rainy season of love? There are no answers, no need for answers, no continuation, and ultimately, silence.

On a moonless night with stars, I look through the glass window at the neon lights flashing on the street, with the occasional passing car breaking the silence of the night; I look up at the stars twinkling in the darkness, winking at me, as if telling me to stay innocent forever!