Being a writer wouldn't be so bad either. I could create a world with the mere sweep of a pen. Love and hate, sadness and joy—a writer held each of these things in her own hands. Every time she created a character, this character would live out a life for her. If she was tired of being a gentleman, she could become a scoundrel instead. When she was sick of writing fair maidens, she could create a free spirit, a wild thing. All in all, no matter what career I ended up choosing, it would be somehow related to the arts, and it would put me before an audience numbering in the tens of thousands. The ordinary, the pedestrian, the middle-of-the-road… Those were the things I could not bear. I would rather die than live that kind of life.
A young Pisces' personality contains two sides in extreme conflict, just like the sign's two opposing fish. Each side pushes in a different direction. This dichotomy dogged me through my entire youth. I struggled between tradition and rebellion, and I hung somewhere between the labels of "kid" and "girl" . A look of vacant confusion often filled my youthful features.
When I was seventeen, I always wore gorgeous and audaciously colored clothes. An azure shirt, a red miniskirt or a long, milky-white skirt with a cloth belt… Long and wide silky sleeves that fluttered majestically in the air… And, of course, that high-waisted violet jacket and pair of matching pants… My seventeenth year was the peak of my rebellion against all things ordinary. Give me personality or give me death.
And so I waged a war against myself. While I very clearly had my mind set on achieving beauty, I still made deliberate attempts to blur the lines of gender. Disgusted with the moniker of "girl" , I called myself a "teenager" instead. I was on friendly terms with my male classmates, and when I wrote them letters I would sign each one the same way: San Di, "Third Brother" .
A fire burned inside me. I was drawn to lively gatherings by my very nature, yet when surrounded by others I would intentionally keep to myself. I assumed the role of passive onlooker, trying to create an aura of practiced aloofness. During more than a few official and unofficial academic debates, I would engage my opponents in heated intellectual discourse, deploying all sorts of cutting-edge arguments. It was not only natural but essential that I cite Sartre, Nietzsche, Plato and their ilk. My discourse stunned my classmates into silence. They never dared provoke me after those first few debates.
One can imagine a person set against herself. She is certainly not a dainty or "ladylike" girl. Despite her ladylike figure and features, her inner conflict has distorted those features until they have inevitably lost their initial sense of beauty. At the very least, she cannot be called cute. Inside, I hoped to become liked, but my exterior was closer to that of a porcupine, bristling with quills, teeth and claws. Who would dare approach someone like me?
At seventeen, I was extremely lonely.
