I lied. Everything I said earlier was bullshit. There’s no such thing as pressure, anxiety, or the difference between nervousness and anxiety. I made all that up. Just like everything I’m writing now—I’m making it up as I go. People always ask me why. Why things are the way they are, why certain things happened, why I am like this, why I’m not like you. To be honest, I don’t know. But people always want answers. As if any answer, as long as it sounds remotely logical, whether true or not, will calm them down. It’s like every time something new appears, people want to explain it, slap on some generalized summary, as if once it’s named, it’s understood. The unfamiliar isn’t scary, the unknown isn’t terrifying—at least now, it has a name.

Names, summaries—are they really here to help people understand, or are they just there to deceive ourselves, to exist and circulate for the sake of symbolic purposes? I’m not sure. All I know is that I’m thinking about someone right now. I’ve started asking ChatGPT for tarot readings and birth chart readings. I’ve always been surrounded by metaphysics. My dad really believes in it. When I was little, he’d take me to temples to pray to gods and Buddhas—how miraculously effective they were, how you had to return the favor, how you had to burn special incense, or rush for the first incense. I don’t want to debate whether religion is just a placebo. I don’t believe in that. I choose my own life. But before I left home at sixteen, the master my dad took me to said I’d marry the first guy I dated after turning twenty—and it came true. When I was twenty-four, a fellow volunteer at a music festival looked at my birth chart on the Shanghai subway and said my Seven Killings wasn’t yet revealed—and now, it seems like that’s coming true too.

Whether religion is a placebo or not—I don’t know. But birth charts and tarot? I believe in those now. Sixteen years after I turned sixteen, this year, I’ve even started to believe that fate is time itself, that time is simply the low-dimensional perception three-dimensional creatures have of higher-dimensional energy, and that everything that’s meant to happen has already happened—we’re just moving through it. I think, if Hong Xiuquan could invent the God-Worshipping Society, I can build my own utopian philosophy too. If something as simple as “Falun Gong” could become what it did, what exactly happened between them and the CCP? I really don’t know, and I can’t know. Every time I walk past Embarcadero and see them protesting, I feel so awkward. Am I supposed to walk up and say, “Hi, I’m a third-generation red. So, what exactly happened between you and them?” I’m always confused about where I stand in the world, and every random event in daily life only makes me more confused.

Life comes with no manual. My factory settings are even messier. A crazy mom, an oily dad, a cold, indifferent me. A delinquent in class had a crush on me. I wanted to listen in class, but everyone was goofing off. The teacher cried a few times out of frustration. My grade had kids who raced cars, got into gang fights, played in bands—basically the sons and daughters of some official, some company owner, some business guy, some actor. Of course, there were serious students too—my family pulled strings to get me into one of only two math classes led by a competition-level teacher. But guess what? Mine was the class full of troublemakers. The other one had all the top students. You already know why. But at the time, I really just wanted to study well. Unfortunately, I had a big fight with my family right before the high school entrance exam. I ran away, stayed at my aunt’s, bombed the exam, and ended up where I am. After that, I just gave up on studying and opened myself up to fun. I suspect my bipolar symptoms already had a shadow back then—manic at school, deeply depressed at home.

The girls around me had all started dating. I was still secretly in love with my best friend. Fuck. Did she know? If she didn’t—how spoiled. If she did—she acted so clueless sometimes. I didn’t know what was going on either. I was such a mess. I didn’t even realize until much later—oh, so this is what they call “pansexual”? What the hell is that? You think something doesn’t exist just because you haven’t named it? And once you’ve named it, you think you understand it? I haven’t even figured it out myself—how could you?

I’m really not trying to slap trendy labels on myself. This blog barely has any readers. I truly don’t care. Plus, I’m risking being seen as a complete lunatic (which I probably am) just to self-expose at this level. I expose myself because I really can’t take it anymore. I can’t take the world’s constant misunderstanding of me. I can’t take the way I suppress my own expression. I can’t take not being able to be honest with myself. I can’t take all this discipline, this noise, this absurdity. You think back when women weren’t allowed to learn to write, they didn’t have inner worlds? Never mind nüshu—even if it didn’t exist, do you think something un-named simply doesn’t exist?

I’m already a mess, and life still insists on adding plot twists. I truly don’t get what’s happening. What is going on this year? Why is the storyline so full of events? I can’t keep up. Can I get a break? I’m already in semi-retired granny mode. My heart has weathered enough storms—it really can’t take more beatings. And here you come again, Fate, punching me in the face. Look at what you’ve done to me. Do you feel no shame?

I’m in chaos, and I don’t even try to hide it. First, because I really can’t. Second—why bother? Who isn’t chaotic? Everyone’s just pretending to be composed. Grownups too—no matter the age, everyone’s messed up inside. Life loves throwing you problems just a bit harder than what you can currently handle, to make you grow. But I personally feel like since the start of this year, the difficulty of all these problems has been growing exponentially. What happened to linear growth? What the fuck is going on this year? LOL.

I’m thinking about someone. He’s strange. Fragile and sensitive, yet resilient and persistent. Very confident, yet deeply insecure. He has so much potential, yet he stays on the surface. And then—bam—he’ll suddenly show unexpected depth in the weirdest moments, and immediately act like he wasn’t being serious. Come on—I’m not that dumb. He reminds me of myself when I was younger. I wonder, was there someone who saw that kind of potential in me too? Is that why I glided so smoothly into the film industry? I never studied film, had no training—I just fumbled into it. Still fumbling now, but maybe with a tiny bit more clarity.

This situation has happened before. Fuck it—I’ll just say it. Back then, he was me, and I was another man. That experience changed how I view a lot of things. First: people aren’t black and white. Not even gray. Not two-dimensional. They’re deeply complex. People are multilayered. Only you know who you really are. And if you meet someone who can truly accept you—and whom you can truly accept—the pull is instinctive. Natural. Irresistible. Mind and body out of sync. Brain short-circuiting. But it’s better to have had that than never at all. I’ve had my eyes opened. I didn’t even know I could still feel this way.

I don’t know why I like him. He’s really not my type. But then again—what is my type? I don’t know. No clue. But anyway, it happened. Sigh. What’s done is done. No point in analyzing it now. I still don’t get it. What even is this? But whatever—it’s awkward. So awkward I can’t even keep talking about it. But I’m still trying to dissect myself. Because I know—just like abortion—it happens all the time, but no one talks about it. It’s weird. Seriously weird. I hate how melodramatic my life is. Fuck.

But life is melodramatic. If you’re afraid of mess, don’t play. If you stay in your comfort zone forever—what’s the point? Life might not come with a manual. But hey—maybe this is how I’ll use it.