Notes of a Crocodile

by Qiu Miaojin

Although I’m a woman, I have a female prototype too.

It seems I’m going to have to learn to be crueler if I’m to become the master of my own fate.

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.

Those sincere eyes, like a mirror, hurt me. But she accepted me.

Those wrenching eyes, which could lift up the entire skeleton of my being. How I longed for myself to be subsumed into the ocean of her eyes. How the desire, once awakened, would come to scald me at every turn. The strength in those eyes offered a bridge to the outside world. The scarlet mark of sin and my deep-seated fear of abandonment had given way to the ocean’s yearning.

The whole world loves me, but what does it matter since I hate myself?

A human being has only so much in them, and yet you must learn through experience, until you finally reach the maddening conclusion that the world wrote you off a long time ago, or accept the prison sentence that your crime is your existence. And the world keeps turning as if nothing had happened.

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.

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.

No matter what kind of trouble she was in, I’d run over in an instant to toss a rope down and pull her back to safety.

“Ever since I started to wise up, my family’s been perpetually disappointed in me. Though it hurt them, I shattered their image of me little by little. If I didn’t, I’d have to sacrifice myself in order to maintain a false ideal. I’ve been trying really hard to get over my resentment.

Because love goes hand in hand with hatred, and because there’s hatred, you’re going to fight, and when you fight, you see that there’s love. The three become inseparable. Once your sexual frustration reaches a certain point, if you don’t either fulfill or rid yourself of your desires, you’re going to find yourself deep in the abyss of meaninglessness. And there’s no easy way out. In fact, you’ll cling even more desperately to the object of your fixation, and when you do, your desires will turn against themselves in full force.

“My whole world wasn’t turned upside down in one night, but it’s like you said, I feel this silent depression, and I don’t know why things have to change. Something is blocking my path, and I call it the wall of absurdity. Honestly, I’m having a total breakdown. Ever since I was little, I’ve always been successful at everything I’ve tried.

“Resisting death. That’s what it comes down to. It’s like you’re on autopilot: No matter how much you hate life, your body doggedly resists death. Even other people aren’t allowed to die. You still try to stop them.”

What is the human race, anyway, but a multitude of outlets for desires? There’s no suppressing the truths that arise from our experiences. Desires teach us lessons, and we have to go forth into the new worlds that we construct for ourselves.” Chu Kuang’s voice trembled. “When you can’t, that’s when you die.”

My twentieth birthday. I was in a bad place, and death was a speck on the horizon.

I felt that if I let anyone else into my heart for even a second, it would sully the love we’d shared. I’d never be able to live with myself. I couldn’t hate you or stop loving you, and that was only the beginning. It was impossible to hate you, though I tried.

I always knew it was love, that I should love while I could and prepare myself to no longer be able to love.

I’d always been surrounded by people who cared for me, but no matter how much they loved me, they couldn’t save me: It just wasn’t me. I never let others get too close and simply paraded a fake me that resembled their image of me.

There was no one I wanted to share my thoughts with. There was nothing I could do to lessen the pain, no source that I could pinpoint. Secretly, though, I did sort of enjoy being a fucked-up mess. Apart from that, I didn’t have a whole lot going on.

If I died, what difference would it make to the world? After all, no matter who I was, my death would be no more significant, nor would I be spared from lonely nights. And really, what difference did the world make to me, anyway? With that question, something stirred deep inside me, making my body tremble. It did make a difference. I had needs like anyone else, and sure, one of those needs was a little acknowledgment. But the problem was the way I loved: It was the very cause of my pain.

Ever since I was little and started to learn what it meant to love, I never understood that I had to love me too—otherwise,

When it reached the point where I couldn’t take it anymore, I entered a state of denial and started injuring myself.

‘Only healthy people are capable of being in love. Using love to treat an illness just makes the illness even worse.’

Sometimes I just know my love is for you, and that’s when I want to run back to you and give it all to you now. I want to love you well. But we’ve already become distant strangers. What else am I supposed to do? I have to rely on old memories in order to get along with the new you. I can’t even tell you how much you’ve changed.”

I’ve been lost all these years. How come it never gets better for me? No matter how hard I try to improve my life, everything falls apart. There’s a saying: ‘By the time a man celebrates his creation, it has already half turned to dust.’ I always end up back at square one. This is a hateful, dog-eat-dog world.”

On how to love well: Instead of embracing a romantic ideal, you must confront the meaning of every great love that has shattered, shard by shard.

Unhealthy love is two people stoking a shared fantasy of desperate beauty, weaponizing passion and desire. Real life is filled with twists and turns, changes, recurrences. Before you even know it, you’ve become a deluded romantic who denies the consequences of time or destroys the very thing that they love.

“You can’t hold on to a beautiful thing forever—not in your memory, not even if you keep loving it. If you tried, it would only die in your possession. Beauty must be free to run its course.”

The deeper you love, the deeper your compassion grows and the more you realize that the other suffers just as you do. When all is said and done, human civilization is ugly and cruel, and the only thing to do is to raze it to the ground, and that’s because kindredness is the one true constant between you and anyone else. The best way for any relationship to end is with the sentiment I wish the best for you, and I am grateful for what we once had together.

“This isn’t who I am. I don’t want to suffer. Love should be a beautiful experience. If it can’t be saved, then I don’t want to love anymore. I have to shut down.

I no longer think of myself as an unhappy person—quite the opposite. Admitting that I have problems is a mode of optimism, since every problem has a solution. Unhappiness is a lot like bad weather: It’s out of your control. So if I encounter a problem that even death can’t solve, I shouldn’t care whether I’m happy or unhappy, thereby negating both the problem and the problem of a problem. And that is where happiness begins.