Notes of a Crocodile

by Qiu Miaojin

We look happy. But underneath, there is already a strain of something dark, malignant. Just how bitter it would become, we didn’t know.

I devoured all kinds of books for tortured souls. Started collecting issues of the independence movement’s weekly. Studied up on political game theory, an antidote to my spiritual reading.

Remnds me of dan

Most of the time, however, I didn’t eat a single thing all night. Didn’t shower. Couldn’t get out of bed. Didn’t write in my journal or talk. Didn’t read a single page or register the sound of another human being.

Reminds me of me

spent more time getting to know my way around the supermarket next door than I did getting comfortable in my own skin.

Me

fundamentally bad habit. 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.

Since there’s time to kill, you have to use boredom to get yo...

In spite of everything, the truth is I still can’t take it. I can’t take it. Really, I can’t.

“How did you get this way?” It pained my heart to hear her speak such nonsense.

Most of the time it was just me talking.

Talking about every person I’d ever gotten entangled with and couldn’t let go of.

Ha me

She thought she understood. And she accepted me. Years later, I realized that had been the whole point.

Those wrenching eyes, which could lift up the entire skeleton of my being.

How I longed for myself to be subsumed into the o...

The scarlet mark of sin and my deep-seated fear of abandonment had given way to the ocean’s yearning.

accept the prison sentence that your crime is your existence.

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.

don’t want to become myself. I know the answer to the riddle, but I can’t stand to have it revealed.

Gonna vomit

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.

You turned me into my own key, and when you did, my fears seized me in a flood of tears that soon abated.

She gave me a puzzle in a box. She put the pieces together patiently, one by one, and completed the picture of me.

“You don’t want to have this . . . bad pattern . . . but what I am supposed to do, now that I’m used to it?”

She spoke timidly, not because she wasn’t supposed to have such feelings but because she was telling me about them.

Because femininity meant having to hide one’s true feelings.

“Because there’s no reason for us to see each other. Besides, I’ll run off one day, and that’s when you’ll really feel bad.”

Omfg

I knew she didn’t want to live this way. I was upset, and so I’d treated her badly.

Unwanted by her, I felt like my heart was being dragged around on a chain.

You literally did this to yourself. Her avoidance is triggering me

Basically, what I wanted to tell you today was that we shouldn’t stop seeing each other.

So fucked

me. I used to think that I could seek refuge in you.

If you don’t want me to seek refuge in you, sorry my skin’s not thick enough to handle it.

I said, Can we start over? She turned around. The ocean wept. I knew it was mutual love.

Whenever my memory failed me, I would take out a notebook and look at it, and go over the events that made me who I am. They illustrate a process.

college is a place where certain people arrive covered in a layer of muck, a nastiness that they, in turn, smear onto others.

It was strange, to say the least, to be waiting around for some guy I’d met only once to come over and beat me up, but in fact, I felt like we were old friends.

Hahaha reminds me of isabella

“The thing is, you’re more strongly inclined toward realism than I am, so it’s easier for you to escape yourself.

“Even if you were in the inferno, I’d follow you down just to see you. I’m capable of things you can’t imagine.”

She said I didn’t have to help her with anything and to let her do it herself unless I was always going to be there.

I walked over and wrapped my arms tightly around her head. She grew quiet, letting in the warmth. The panic in her heart was no match for it.

She was a vine extending one slender, delicate branch toward my window, hoping I was the sky, not knowing that on the other side, there was no shade, and not much sunshine, either.

To my seventeen-year-old self, Sylvia Chang and Lo Ta-Yu were like a dab of concealer, a soundtrack applied to cover up teenage heartbreak.

She told me after a few days had passed. Out of all the various little moments I’d cataloged, that one easily became the core of my memories of her.

“Fine. You go to sleep, and I’ll write in my journal and wait for you to wake up.”

Due to the overwhelming volume of calls to the Supplement Group, all of our staff members are currently suffering from laryngitis.

Hahaha

So I decided to confront my desires head on. I would renounce my resistance and hasten toward destruction.

would indulge in reckless behavior until I’d completely exhausted all my past inhibitions.

Are you running away again, she asked me, choking back a sob. I said nothing. She’d hit the nail on the head.

Uggggghhhhhh

Since we’ve been together, I’ve been divided in two. One part wishes I could extricate myself from this. The other part wants to help you make me stay. I’m being torn apart.”

F-ing avoidant

I’ve known from the very beginning that we were going to break up eventually. There’s no such thing as eternal love,”

saying she didn’t want to talk about it. That meant her emotions were so precious that she didn’t want to ruin something by trying to articulate her feelings about it.