Chapter 1
It is said that seventeen is the most beautiful age of life.
Maybe it's youth, enthusiasm, or someone... It must be beautiful because people always see people nostalgic for it.
But Sen, a young woman at that beautiful age, doubts the truth about the age of seventeen in other people's mouths.
I'm Sen, one day I decided to review my memories.
I'm an introverted girl and it's probably because of the environment.
During the first four years of elementary school, I had to witness school violence, along with the problem of not being able to get along with my peers, so now I still can't blend in with the crowd. Sometimes hearing your comments about me I want to refute, but I can't, the feeling of helplessness and lethargy keeps my mouth shut, even I almost think I have autism.
It seems pretty pathetic, but the truth is that I was extremely lucky to not be able to socialize in elementary school.
I am purely a witness to those horrible facts, I have never been a victim. Harder to believe, I was one of the few outsiders in a class of almost forty people.
That was the first thing that made me realize that being an introvert is really good.
After that, things didn't turn out the way I had imagined, I wasn't just an introvert, but more like an invisible person. During class activities, cleaning, daily duty, etc., I was only there to take attendance and then did it lightly, because no one noticed how I was. Even when relatives come to visit, people don't remember me.
And I really enjoy it.
Gradually, I became indifferent to everything around me, anger unintentionally became a luxury. As a human, everyone gets angry at times, but I don't have the energy to care about it, living like a normal person is overdue for me. I really have no energy to waste.
Just like that, until I was in sixth grade, I was assigned the task of painting to decorate the class, then I was aware of my role. That I also have something for others to remember, I'm not invisible.
Anything that doesn't happen for the first time becomes normal, I started to feel bored with this task, tired of interacting with classmates. I just want to go back to the good old days...
Although I am tired of interacting with classmates, fortunately, I still have childhood friends, thinking about it is a bit nostalgic. Now everyone has changed, I've changed into the person I don't want the most.
Irresponsible, insensitive, without energy. It sucks, I consider getting through the day my life's mission, and somehow I'm determined to do it until I'm eighty- Well, it's not that bad, thanks to it I'm still hungry to be alive, this is a commendable thing.
I thought this was a quest, so I recorded the progress.
In eighth grade, I became more spontaneous. I happily hang out while my friends are studying, doing all the things I like, reading stories all night and all morning, then my health declines, making my parents worry. It's even more outrageous that I lied a lot, my parents loved me because they thought I was sick, so whatever happened had to happen.
My parents found out all my lies.
Until now, I feel extremely lucky and want to thank the person who exposed me, otherwise, I wouldn't be where I am today.
After being discovered I cried a lot, not because I was beaten or scolded, but because of her shame with everyone. I feel so embarrassed, the feeling of humiliation keeps swirling around me making me unable to stop crying, but I keep feeling regretful, that was the last time I cried in front of other people…
Okay, feeling embarrassed that only stuck with me for one night. I quickly returned to my normal orbit, the next day I still went to school with a blank face without asking who told my father, although I was a bit curious.
Since then, I have been studying hard. Not to the point of rushing to study like crazy, but for someone with low energy like me, that's a lot.
Finally, my efforts paid off, with impressive high school passing scores, I went from being a lackluster person to succeeding leaving an impression on all the teachers in high school, including those I did most unexpectedly. Of course, a retarded person like me only learned this through my cousin's mouth two years later.
Entering a public high school, I feel like my life can slow down. It's just that I into the class of choice, the class that people think only "good" people can enter.
I'm so confused, how can an ordinary person like me enter the chosen class, and then how can I keep up with the program? I don't want to be at the bottom of the class at all, I'd rather be in the middle in the regular class than the last in the chosen class.
Time has proved that I worry too much, due to academic pressure, In my first half of the semester, my rank is in the middle of the class, my score is even higher than my last year of middle school, the year I think I study very well hard work.
And of course, I think that studying in a chosen class is just a trivial thing. In the eleventh grade, I did not continue to play, but the rankings remained unchanged. I know, it's because the environment around me is also really bad, but I choose to believe that I am not lazy.
This year I am seventeen years old, life is not as enthusiastic or turbulent as I thought.
I don't put much emphasis on studying, I don't have passion, I don't have goals, and I don't even have a lover or too many relationships. I live slowly day by day, reluctantly listening to stories told by previous generations, then sad because I don't have as many memories as other people.
Maybe when I grow up I don't have a story to tell.
Contrary to me, my father is a man who has experienced a lot. At first, he was a normal dad in my eyes, it wasn't until I heard how people talked about my dad that I realized how wonderful he is.
The first time I was born with a feeling of great admiration for someone, it was not a kind of cult, but eternal respect. Gradually, I became very interested in listening to the old stories told by the owner in an excited mood, those are just everyday stories, but especially in that, I won't be able to find them anywhere in books.
In my head I accumulate a lot of different knowledge, I find it also counts as something that makes me happy, just none of it is worth mentioning.
Then I thought, why do I like listening to my dad tell his everyday story but not my own? If I consider this busy life, my father is not very prominent, there are many people like my father in society, but in my eyes, they are normal.
Most people are just like me.
I took a while to think about the cause of the problem, then I made the most likely worst decision since I was born.
I try to live as an extrovert.
It feels like I'm pushing my life to the brink of destruction, every day doesn't pass normally anymore, it's like hell on earth.
I go to class to talk actively in the morning, text friends in the afternoon, do homework for the evening, sometimes go out to play… Too tired, really tired, I don't have any time for myself.
In the end, I gave up that lifestyle, although this horrible memory doesn't count as something worth remembering, at least it reminds me to live true to myself. Funny, as soon as I turned back to being an introvert, I had to sleep more than ten hours a day for a month to make up for that lost energy.
Due to the heavy loss of roots in the eleventh grade, in the twelfth grade, I had to study twice as much as others to be able to keep up with the class program. Study, study, study, I feel a bit overwhelmed. And it's inconvenient to be glued to that tiny phone every day, so I asked my dad to buy me a laptop.
My father is very comfortable, although, in the time of the epidemic, the family's economy is a bit difficult, he still lets me choose the laptop brand I like. I'm very happy, it's just that I haven't studied yet, how dare I choose the expensive one, so I chose to buy an old laptop for more than two hundred dollars.
People are worried that such cheap stuff won't work, but no problem, buying it is the right choice. The old laptop works really slow, in return, it is full of features for my studies. Later, when I get used to it, but I have conditions again, I will easily give up this old laptop and buy a new one.
I'm usually slow and lack sophistication, but when it comes to money, I'm very sharp. From childhood to adulthood, I have never regretted decisions related to money.
When I have a laptop, I focus more on searching for documents, and randomly I also read books. The books tell the story of everyday life, the form is not much different from the story of my father, the only strange thing is that the character has no relation to me.
Huh? So why do I find it interesting, do I know or have met the owner in the story?
…
I almost exploded when I realized the problem.
The key is not whether I know the owner, but whether I care or not. And if I care about my life, maybe it will be interesting.
Seventeen is not beautiful? Seventeen is not memorable? If I notice...
I'm not sure, I've also seen some people have very unhappy lives, no matter how hard they try to think only of the good things, the fact that they're always miserable can't be changed.
Therefore, even if I console myself that I am very happy, my feelings will not lie. If I'm sad, I can't consider myself happy.
But I really want to know if I'm really happy or not, or just bored all the time, and then live meaninglessly through the day. Whatever the outcome, I really want to know, I want to define my life and rate it.
So I decided I would rewrite my own story, rewrite everything I've been through. My feelings, my way of thinking, and my actions, I will record it all so that one day when I reread it, I can comment on it in the most objective way.