What I wanted to say
I really cried today.
Not the kind of crying that comes out loud. Tears just circled in my eyes
without falling.
Just now, a Twitter user with a default avatar sent me a private message.
He said he had been quietly following my blog
and had even written an analysis of it on Zhihu.
Because he had analyzed my writing without asking,
he had signed up for Twitter specifically to send me this apologetic message.
Reading it, I felt a sudden ache.
So I was not just talking to myself in an empty room.
So a blog—without notifications, without little red dots, so quiet it can even be forgotten—
really could connect one person’s sincerity to another’s.
The world could still be this beautiful.
Because a stranger was quietly listening to me speak.
At the end, he wrote that I had not posted anything for a while.
And in that moment I felt terribly ashamed.
I could have written so much more.
I could have written about waking every morning, staring at the ceiling,
counting how long it had been since I had eaten properly.
About sitting blankly at the window in the evening,
watching the distant city lights come on and go out like isolated islands.
About the time I took 96 guaifenesin/dextromethorphan tablets,
lost my memory,
and left behind nothing but incoherent words typed in a haze.
I could even have written about the thought that keeps surfacing
as I drift through the effects of medication every day:
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be free of everything?”
But I did not write.
I chose to lie there, hiding inside my phone’s feeds.
Refreshing one item after another until my eyes ached.
Night would arrive: drugs, alcohol, blackouts, unconsciousness, losing control.
In the moments when I was clearheaded, I felt utterly rotten.
But I was a good girl.
The kind who used to worry for half a day after being late to class.
I was my parents’ little genius.
How did my life end up like this?
I know my intelligence could carry me toward more things.
I can write stories. I can code.
My head is full of maps, cities, philosophy, revolution, utopias, and love.
And yet the first question I ask when I open my eyes now is:
“How do I get through today?”
Seventeen. It really should not be like this.
But today, that stranger’s message
reminded me
that I have not given up on myself completely.
My life is chaotic. Yes, it is a ruin.
But perhaps the ruin itself is worth recording.
Even if it is not beautiful, it is an honest expression.
So the world is not without love.
Sometimes love is simply hidden too deep,
so deep you only see it when you are about to lose hope.
Today, I saw it.
Thank you, stranger with the default avatar.
Thank you for making me decide to write another blog post tonight.
I am still alive.
I will try to keep writing.
— Ame
Late at night, July 23, 2025
(Still alive. Perhaps I can stay that way a little longer.)