Notes of a Crocodile

by Qiu Miaojin

I devoured all kinds of books for tortured souls.

Being in college gave me a sense of vocation. It exempted me from an oppressive system of social and personal responsibility—from going through the motions like a cog, from being whipped and beaten by everyone for not having worked hard enough and then having to put on a repentant face afterward. That system had already molded me into a flimsy, worthless shell. It drove my body to retreat into a self-loathing soul, and what’s even scarier is that nobody knew or seemed to recognize it.

The fact is, most people go through life without ever living. They say you have to learn how to construct a self who remains free in spite of the system. And you have to get used to the idea that it’s every man for himself in this world. It requires a strange self-awareness, whereby everything down to the finest detail must be performed before the eyes of the world.

I denied myself, and I denied the fact that she was part of my life, so much so that I denied the dotted line that connected the two of us and our entire relationship to a crime.

My time was gradually consumed by tears. The whole world loves me, but what does it matter since I hate myself?

No one will ever know about your tragedy, and the world eluded its responsibility ages ago. All that you know is that you’ve been crucified for something, and you’re going to spend the rest of your life feeling like no one and nothing will help you, that you’re in it alone. Your individual circumstances, which separate you from everyone else, will keep you behind bars for life. On top of it all, humanity tells me I’m lucky. Privilege after privilege has been conferred upon me, and if I don’t seem content with my lot, they’ll be devastated.

The first time I saw you, I knew I would fall in love with you. That my love would be wild, raging, and passionate, but also illicit. That it could never develop into anything, and instead, it would split apart like pieces of a landslide. As flesh and blood, I was not distinct. You turned me into my own key, and when you did, my fears seized me in a flood of tears that soon abated. I stopped hating myself and discovered the corporeal me.

A stone hit my heart. Then another one or two or three broke through. Their numbers kept growing until it seemed like only a matter of time before every last rock on earth had hailed down on me from the top of Mount Everest.

me. For a long time, my hidden shame had made me push everyone away. I’d rejected them before they could reject me. I ran away from close relationships even with the people who loved me. I was a blind man fallen into the ocean. I’d taken the mirror and smashed it to pieces, unable to stand the sight of my hideous, disfigured self.

I was shown the limits, and being confined within a set of walls tormented me and drained me of life, for the real me spanned multitudes, stretching far beyond the bounds of normality encircling ninety percent of the human race.

I’d taken everyone I loved and killed them off in my heart, one by one. I’d long been tending their graves—secretly visiting and mourning during the day, going out and erecting a cross on starry nights, lying inside and awaiting my own death on starless nights. That was my Atlantis, the kingdom I’d built in the name of separation. I’d never before unearthed so much of myself, and so suddenly at that. Inside the world of my tomb, everyone else was dead, I alone survived, and that was the reason for my sorrow.

‘By the time a man celebrates his creation, it has already half turned to dust.’

Despair was in her past and in her present. Everything about her screamed despair. Because of her despair, I loved her. Because of her despair, I was shaken. Because of her despair, I was overwhelmed, and because of her despair, I left her. Her despair was her beauty.

A certain part of me has died as I’ve learned to leave behind the qualities of my youth—the overanxiousness, oversensitivity, and self-consciousness, not to mention arrogance and idealism, that diminish with life experience.