Eighteen


I am finally, of course, after all, eighteen.

Back then when I wrote I always started with some very clichéd sentences like “She was seventeen that year” or "The story begins at eighteen". It's not hard to see the hidden smugness between the lines, taking it for granted that seventeen or eighteen is the one and only beginning of beautiful myths, the Genesis. Throw the protagonist into this age and then write of their sorrows in love, the fleetingness of ideals, and the missteps of desire--no matter what, it can all be forgiven, because the story itself is veiled in a dark green gauze. Even the greatest writer of modern China has written, "When I was young, I too once dreamed many dreams."

Now I am eighteen. I am finally, of course, after all, eighteen. I don't even remember when I began fantasizing about or fearing my eighteenth year, nor do I recall the scenes I imagined. As early as preschool I was asked what kind of person I wanted to become when I grew up, what I would do, what kind of life I would lead. Back then 长大 (growing up) felt full of allure. At an age when I couldn't write most characters the word "长大" was among the few I could, and yet surprisingly I'm still writing them now. Still pausing deeply with the pen, unable to continue the second half of the sentence.

But this is no longer endearing. You can't at this point still face the future with that innocent untroubled expression. Are you still a child? The naive beauty of the question you asked as a kid--"What is growing up?"--has vanished entirely. I'm telling you, it's now, this very moment, do you understand? After tonight in every sense you are grown up. Even the word "grow up" has long become too childish too awkward for you. From now on don't use it anymore. Hurry and shed that childish tone, hurry and wipe away those girlish tear stains, hurry and wake from those damp dreams, hurry and transform from this bewildered facade. What? You say you're scared? You say you don't know what to do? Come on, stop fussing.

No one hasn't come through this way. Your own childhood and adolescence, the ones you traversed, lost, and foolishly marked like carving a boat to find a dropped sword, they've already drifted far away with the current. The decades that follow are hurtling toward you through the void. What will you use to meet them? Those hidden words from your seventeen-year-old diary? Back then you were so full of heroic ambition. Yearning for bitter love, probing forbidden fruit, championing true knowledge, believing in fairness and justice, trusting that where there's a will, there's a way. Back then your wishes still flickered in faint candlelight, your spirit showed no signs of weariness.

But now all that's left in you is a deep-rooted fear. There are too many things around you that terrify. You fear the scattering of close friends at the tail end of your student days, fear the uncertainty of whether a plane will crash, fear drugs and AIDS. You worry that one day you'll never read books again, worry that no one loves you as you imagine, worry about life's inevitabilities, worry about the final stroke when your talent runs dry, worry about dying young, worry about living in vain, worry that everything you believe in, when you turn back one day, will seem utterly unbelievable.