I am like a lonely plant, growing wilted on a desert of my own mind, and the world in which I am centrifuged seems out of reach and unreachable...
More than twenty years have passed since that incident, and whenever I think about it, my heart faintly hurts...
I was not born to go to school, and after barely finishing junior high school, I was conscripted into the army and became a glorious soldier of the people. That year I went to the beautiful Lugu Lake, where I also started my unforgettable first love...
It was an early spring morning, and I was driving the carriage with the squad leader to the market to buy vegetables, and just halfway to the road, a little girl of seventeen or eighteen stopped us and asked us to take a ride. The military and civilian families are pro! We were also happy to have a fellow countryman on the road, so Ah Zhu and I met.
Ah Zhu is a beautiful girl, tall, round face, a pair of watery eyes very charming. I feel especially happy with her. In the bamboo forest, beside the path, under the shade of the trees, the flowers and grasses have left the footprints of our happiness.
Love knows no ethnicity, and so does Azu and I. One look in her eyes, one movement resonated with me. I remember once we went to pick mushrooms together, she was barefoot, jumping in front of me to show me the way, one moment saying that this poisonous can not be eaten, the next time saying that the tree is a local unique national protected plant... From time to time, he would turn around and pull me along.
Three years of military life flew by, and a month before I was about to recover, I couldn't eat enough, couldn't sleep at night, and worried about the future of me and my Azhu. I am a city soldier, and I can resettle my job when I am restored, but my Azhu is a rural hukou, which is an insurmountable mountain in front of us. (In those days, it was difficult to stand in the city without a hukou.
How do I do it? Desperate to marry her home? How do I give an account to my elderly wife? Why should I bear to leave Azhu behind? Let the poor girl swallow the pain of parting and go on a path that neither of us wants to take? My liver and intestines were broken, and I looked up and asked the sky... Where do I go from here?
After some heart-wrenching thought, I had no choice but to give up: to give up the woman I thought about day and night, to give up my feelings that had been there for several years, to give up all my promises and hopes, to give up...
Now that many years have passed, whenever I think of her, my heart is like a knife. If it were now, I would have married her without hesitation, but in those days, I did not dare and could not... Only deep regret flows in the heart...
Maybe in this life and this life there is only endless sadness and boundless pain to accompany me...