So you’ve been reading about death
So you’ve been reading about death. I’m sorry if anyone ever gets blindsided by my death, as it turns out, I’m no good for living life. Living a life takes, in my opinion, a lot of optimism, a little bit of ignorance, and endless hope. I’m not sure if I have any of them. I’m sorry I’m so “morbid”, even though I don’t agree that I am, this is, simply, to me, the most rational and plausible truth of our existence. It’s extending perhaps indefinitely into the future, we have to keep it going by giving life, and living ours ourselves, even though the process itself is meaningless. We are all living for an uncertain future, as if we are on a mission, we are extending and progressing for something in the future. I wonder if this is where Arrival (the adapted screenplay is quite different from The Story of Your Life, the difference is what I’m referring to - the whole heptapods came to earth because they need us to keep living into the future, so humanity can save them in the future) got its idea from. It does feel like we are being helped by aliens so we can be important at some point in the future.
Death is always sudden, as I learned, when depression hits you like a thunderstorm. Actually, I was diagnosed with bipolar, severe depression, and PTSD all at the same time. I’m not sure how that’s possible, I feel like the doctors were just confused and slapped all the names they knew on my file. To me, I’d rather call it an epiphany. An epiphany of how deeply meaningless our lives are. Endless hard work, exhaustion, hate, self sabotage, war, pain, sadness, loneliness, and all for what? For fleeting moments of joy, excitement, relaxation, comfort, peace and exhilaration? Doesn’t sound like a good deal to me. Why should I keep going? I’m not sure. I’m also not sure why it is suddenly such a big deal to decide to leave. No one asked me if I wanted to be born, yet here I am. It’s only be fair if I can at least decide when to leave. Turns out, I can’t. It’d be a “mental illness”. Or in my case, three.
Would it be weird if I tell you I might know how it feels like to be dead? I once described this to someone: it just feels like extreme coldness. There’s not a slight sense of warmth inside of you, your nose is cold, your head is cold, your stomach is cold, your legs are cold. You are not breathing. You can’t move. You feel extremely tired. You want to sleep. Your sense of self slowly deteriorates, and disappears. You fly up high, look down on your body, and you leave. I’m not sure how I know this. I think I dreamt about it before. I dreamt of death, all the time. The first 15 years of my life, I lived like a dead.
I had never made a single decision for myself up until that point. At least not for the things that mattered to me. I ate what was allowed, I went where were allowed, I was around kids that I was allowed to be around with depending on who their parents were, I studied what was allowed, I learned what I was supposed to know, I read what I was supposed to be reading, I watched what I was supposed to watch, I wore what I was supposed to wear.
But I couldn’t think the way that I was supposed to think, neither could I behave how I was supposed to behave. Until one day, I stopped going to school. The summer of my second year in high school, I stopped showing up in school, completely.
The summer before that, an exchange program had visited my school and told us about a year of living and going to school somewhere in USA. Being founded by a few missionaries from a prestigious college from USA in the early 1900s, our school has always kept close ties with its mother school. Every year, a few teachers travel from overseas to do a year of teaching at our school. During their year of teaching, they help all kinds of organizations to stay connected with us, and one of those years, an exchange program came to our school. By then, I had been plotting my exit for a few years, I immediately brought the program to my dad’s attention. As he always did, he said no before I could utter another sentence.
Call it fate or whatever you like, the second year, another so-call education consulting company startup, who hogged all connections with non-profit exchange programs abroad and charged a “service fee” for “helping out with applications” to applicants, came to my dad’s bank, asked for a loan. Seemed like they did proper promotion while they did that, my dad suddenly was entertaining the idea of actually letting me go. There’s clearly some misunderstanding because my dad seemed to believe that we were paying them to take care of us, while they seemed to think that they were paying us to take care of them under the disguise of cultural exchange. I had no idea if that was close to human trafficking, because I certainly felt like I was trafficked. For a little bit at least. I spent the year avoiding the host family as much as possible, but I did love all the friends I made that year. I enjoyed my teachers, my classmates, and my experience. South Lake Tahoe was so, so beautiful. I loved every second of being there. The sky, the lake, the rocks, the snow, the pine trees, the hills, the sun, the breeze, everything was breathtaking.
ChatGPT 翻译：
所以你最近在读关于死亡的东西。如果将来我突然去世让谁措手不及的话，那我很抱歉。事实是，我真的不擅长活着这件事。
在我看来，活着需要很多乐观、一些无知，还有无尽的希望。而我不确定自己是否具备这些。我很抱歉我这么“阴郁”，尽管我自己并不这么认为——对我来说，这只是我们存在最理性、最合理的真相。
生命可能会无限延续下去，我们必须通过延续生命和自己活着，才能让它继续下去，哪怕这个过程本身毫无意义。我们都活在一个不确定的未来里，好像我们肩负着什么使命一样，我们在朝着未来推进和延展。我在想，《降临》是不是就是从这个想法出发的（电影改编的剧本和原作《你一生的故事》有很大不同，我指的是这种差别——七肢桶来到地球，是因为它们需要我们继续活下去，好让我们将来可以拯救它们）。确实有种感觉，好像我们正在被某种外星智慧帮助着，好让我们在未来的某个时间点变得重要。
死亡永远是突然的，这是我在抑郁像雷暴一样砸下来的时候学到的。实际上，我被诊断为双相情感障碍、重度抑郁和创伤后应激障碍，而且是同时。我不知道这怎么可能，我觉得医生只是搞不清楚，把他们知道的所有标签全贴在我档案上了。对我来说，我宁愿把这一切称作一种“顿悟”——顿悟到我们的生活有多么空洞无意义。无尽的辛苦、疲惫、憎恨、自我毁灭、战争、痛苦、悲伤、孤独，都是为了什么？就为了那一瞬间的快乐、兴奋、放松、舒适、平静或亢奋？这对我来说不是什么划算的交易。我为什么要继续下去？我不知道。我也不明白，为什么决定离开就突然成了多大的事。没有人问过我是否想出生，但我就是来了。那至少，也应该让我决定何时离开吧。但结果是，我不能。这就成了“精神疾病”——在我这里，是三个。
如果我告诉你，我可能知道死亡是什么感觉，会不会很奇怪？我曾经这样描述过：就像极度的寒冷。你身体里一点温度都没有，鼻子是冷的，脑袋是冷的，胃是冷的，腿是冷的。你不呼吸了。你动不了了。你非常非常累，只想睡觉。你的自我感逐渐瓦解，最终消失。你升到空中，俯视自己的身体，然后离开。我不知道我是怎么知道这种感觉的。我想我以前梦到过。关于死亡的梦，我总是做。人生的头15年，我过得就像一个死人。
那之前，我从没为自己真正做过一个决定——至少不是关于我真正关心的事。我吃允许吃的食物，去允许去的地方，身边是家长允许我接触的小孩，我学被安排好的知识，学“应该知道”的内容，读“该读”的书，看“该看”的东西，穿“该穿”的衣服。
但我没法按他们“希望的方式”去思考，也没法表现成他们“希望我表现的样子”。直到有一天，我不再去上学了。高二那个夏天，我彻底不去学校了。
前一个夏天，有一个交流项目来我们学校，说可以去美国的某个地方生活、读书一年。我们学校是20世纪初由美国一所名校的传教士创办的，一直跟那所学校有很深的联系。每年都有几个外教来我们学校任教一年。教学期间，他们也负责联系各种组织与我们合作。有一年，有个交流项目就这样来到了我们学校。那时候，我已经暗中筹划“逃离”好几年了，我立刻把这个项目告诉了我爸。他一如既往地，在我说出第二句话之前就说“不行”。
命运也好、巧合也罢，第二年，一个所谓的教育咨询公司创业项目来找我爸工作的银行申请贷款。他们垄断了所有和海外公益交流项目的渠道，对申请者收取“服务费”，说是“协助申请”。看起来他们在做推广的时候做得挺像样的，我爸突然开始考虑真的让我去。这里显然有某种误解：我爸好像以为我们是出钱给他们帮我们安排生活，而他们好像以为他们是花钱让我们照顾他们，披着“文化交流”的外衣。我不知道这算不算接近人口贩卖，因为我确实感觉自己被“交易”了一段时间。我那一年尽可能地躲着寄宿家庭过活，但我真的很喜欢那一年认识的朋友、老师、同学和那段经历。
南太浩湖真的太太太美了。我在那里每一秒都爱得要命。天空、湖水、岩石、雪、松树、山丘、阳光、微风，一切都令人屏息。