Chapter 22 Chapter 21

Li Daiyu's body has been surprisingly uncomfortable for the past two days, her menstrual flow is endless, and she doesn't leave her like an old friend. The hot weather made her upset.Especially when walking, I feel sticky heat discomfort in that part.People are very fragile, as long as there is one discomfort, they will be tortured by it all day long.The hotter the day, the more she felt the weakness of her body that could not tolerate the cold and heat. The heat of summer is more unbearable than the cold of winter. When she took off her sweaty shirt and sweaty undershirt and wiped her sticky body with a towel, she found that the only part of her thin body that allowed her to gain a little bit of female confidence The pair of relatively full breasts also sank slightly listlessly, as if they had lost their heavy fullness in the past, and appeared a little loose and light.

She dared not face up to her body since she was a child, and the thinness of her limbs was the thing that made her most uneasy every summer.Skirts and short-sleeved tops are bound to reveal a girl's limbs, which often makes her feel ashamed.She wore long clothes and trousers longer than other children, and when she had to change into a skirt and a short-sleeved top, she always hesitated under the urging of her parents.Parents can't understand that a little girl is already sensitive to her appearance at the age of seven or eight, and is afraid that her legs will not look good.After putting on a skirt, she would often put on a pair of long thick socks to wrap her legs. It was the kind of thick red and white socks, and her mother would groan with cystic eyes: "Put on a skirt, put on a pair of socks again." Put on thick socks, how nondescript, aren't you afraid of the heat?" She didn't speak, and her father would often mediate at this time: "The little girl looks beautiful in floral socks, let her do it, let's not interfere." She lowered her head and feet and rubbed against the ground. walked away.

For quite some years, she has been worried about her skinny arms and legs, and every time she takes a bath, she can see her skinny body and her bony breasts like a washboard.When she was a teenager, she often sat listlessly in the big wooden tub in the bath and lost her mind.Once a girl has low self-esteem physically, she will also have low self-esteem mentally.When she wrapped her thin and dry body with clothes, even though she had a pretty oval face, she still couldn't find unrestrained happiness.She always walked hurriedly with her head down, always feeling the thinness of her breasts and the bonyness of her arms and legs.When she saw other girls walking on the campus with their chests upright, she clearly felt that her shriveled breasts were hollow, and her loose and wrinkled tops were empty.

For this reason, she pays special attention to her diet, hoping to gain weight and grow up. However, her appetite has been like that of a kitten since she was a child, and she can't eat much.When she saw other female students devouring food, she unknowingly added another inferiority complex.This low self-esteem combined with envy of others made her often regard other girls as her potential enemies.My mother often looked at her and kept nagging: "The living standards of other children are not higher than ours, so why do they all look better than you?" Hostility, however, she has received a whole set of kind education since she was a child, weak and kind like a lamb, so she often blames herself for it.When she was in the fourth and fifth grades of elementary school, she realized her hostility towards other girls and blamed herself for this hostility.In a conflicted state of mind, she became more and more withdrawn.After entering middle school, she no longer dared to look anyone in the eye.Whether it was the boys' eyes, the girls' eyes, or the teacher's eyes, she didn't dare to look directly at them.

Her problem was finally discovered by her father, who said, "Why don't you dare to look at your father?" At that time, she suddenly felt greatly wronged, and tears welled up in her eyes.She stood there trying to raise her eyes to look at her father, but she couldn't. Conscious of not being able to look into other people's eyes, this filled her with resentment and pain.As usual, the mother kept nagging: "People's children are generous, but you are always shrinking and shrinking, and you haven't done anything wrong, why are you like this?" Listening to this kind of scolding, she became more like a silent lamb.At this time, my father would always leniently mediate: "Don't keep talking about Dai Dai, no matter how young a child is, he has self-respect." His father's words made her eyes wet, and she wanted to cry, but she didn't have the courage to shed tears. .The mother's nagging will then turn to her father: "You have protected her since childhood, and the more you protect her, the more vulnerable she becomes." Hearing this, she especially couldn't cry, and she must not let her father be blamed for her.

The only thing that supported her since she was a child was her academic performance, especially the main subjects of Chinese, arithmetic, physics, and chemistry. She studied very well.This earned her a little teacher's appreciation and a little shelter at home.Her academic performance is like an umbrella, covering most of her mother's scolding.Whenever she retreated to her room and lay down on the table to study, her mother would often watch at the door for a while and then turn away, which made her realize the little girl's respect.Ever since she realized that hard work and good grades are the protection against her mother's scolding, she curled up in front of her writing desk as soon as she got home from school. At night, the light illuminated by a pillar lamp is an independent world where she forgets everything.This kind of immersion in studying between school and home with her head bowed every day made her feel indifferent to the world and live in peace with each other.

Before she knew it, she had her first menstrual cramps.While nagging and accusing her of soiling her trousers and sheets, her mother also gave her the necessary guidance.My mother also showed concern about this matter, prepared necessary supplies for her, and gave quite comprehensive hygiene guidance for that era.That day, she looked at her mother with a pale and swollen face, and at her mother's white hair on the temples, and couldn't help but feel a little grateful.My mother said something that she will never forget all her life: "You are no longer a child from today on."

In the following days, although the mother used nagging to rule the whole family as usual, she never forgot the scene of the mother and daughter sitting on their little bed under the lamp and talking that day.For the sake of her mother who gave birth to her, and for the guidance her mother gave her that night, she will never forget her mother. She found that she had developed a little bit, and her arms and legs were more fleshy and thicker than before, especially the two legs were gradually plump.Once plump, the skin is also whiter and radiant.Although she was still thinner than other girls, especially her arms and shoulders were still very thin, but this change in her body still made her taste a bit of girl's late self-confidence with great happiness.She especially felt a shy pleasure when she saw that her buttocks were not as thin as before, but a little plump in thinness.When she walked, she felt her hips sway slightly from side to side with her steps. She was delighted and moved by the weight that her hips gave her at first.Since she was a child, she was like a girl with only bones, hanging clothes and moving around in the air.Now, the volume and weight of her hips and thighs made her almost grateful to fate.

One day, she knelt on the bed naked, covered her face with her hands, and almost burst into tears with excitement.She was thrilled with her growing breasts.It was an agitation that was both sad and happy.She threw herself on the bed, hugged the big loose pillow and squeezed and rubbed her breasts.She burst into tears that she was finally a girl who wasn't mutilated.She buried her face in the pillow and cried for a long time, so that she was a little out of breath.The mother who got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night noticed it, and came to knock on the door: "Dai Dai, what's the matter, are you uncomfortable?" She choked up and said: "No." In the confusion, she hurriedly put on her underwear.The mother still pushed the door open and came in worryingly, turned on the lamp on the desk, and saw the tearful daughter: "Your face is flushed, do you have a fever?" Li Daiyu will never forget her mother's warm and tired hands on her sweaty forehead. Her mother asked, "Dai Dai, what's wrong with you?" Crying so much that my mother was helpless.After crying for a while, she wiped away her tears and said: "I'm not uncomfortable, I dreamed about something sad." The mother looked at her in confusion and said: "Then go to bed early, and you have to go to school tomorrow."

Mother turned off the desk lamp and left. That night, she could not fall asleep for a long time looking at the moon outside the window.She wiped off the tears on her face, tidied her hair, straightened her underwear, lay flat on the bed, stroked her breasts with both hands, then stroked her abdomen from the breasts down, and finally stroked She touched her girl's mark, touched her buttocks and legs lightly, then placed her hands on her sides naturally, quietly and hazily thinking about everything about herself, and fell asleep. She is gradually able to face up to life more and more, although she is still relatively fragile, she still looks down in the crowd in most cases.

When others need her help, she will be more calm.She was still very timid and shy when she needed help.After entering high school, she understood the more comprehensive progress and requirements of life, and she still studied diligently. In order to apply for joining the league, she wrote countless thought reports.Whenever the members of the group gave her ideological help, she always listened to every word respectfully and obediently.League cadre Zhu Lihong has been her contact with the League organization for several years, and she has to hand over a thought report to Zhu Lihong every week.When Zhu Lihong stood there short and flipped through her report, the censoring eyes always made her uneasy.As soon as Zhu Lihong raised her big goldfish eyes to look at her, a slight tremor passed over her body.At home, she can use her studies to withstand her mother's nagging, but at school, no umbrella can block the censorship from the revolution.Her thought report was considered not deep and soul-touching again and again, so she deeply examined her inferiority complex due to her thin body since she was a child, and realized that it was the vanity of the petty bourgeoisie.Zhu Lihong read every page of this inspection with relish, and said: "This ideological report is relatively profound, but it is not enough. We must dig deep into the root causes and thoroughly expose our family influence and social influence." Li Daiyu followed this As a guide, I wrote nearly 60 thought reports in one year, and the drafts filled a drawer. After a girl struggles with low self-esteem to gain initial self-confidence, she has the energy to pay attention to the boy's world.During the two years of her second and third year of high school, she gradually fell in love with a male classmate, Lu Xiaolong.She doesn't like evil people, she likes kind people.She doesn't like cowardly people, she likes strong people.She likes outstanding people, but she doesn't like people who are too much in the limelight.She wants to like someone she can trust, and Lu Xiaolong is this kind of person in her mind.He is good at learning, talented, and honest.He is neither rhetorical nor ostentatious, but also stubborn and taciturn. Li Daiyu knew her emotional tendencies, knew that her heart would jump when she saw Lu Xiaolong, and knew that she was in the same group as him for experiments in the experimental class, so she was extremely excited.In order to get close to Lu Xiaolong, she brought the philosophy books he needed from home many times. Now, these stories have come to an abrupt end. The Cultural Revolution has involved everyone in a vortex, and she cannot adapt to such drastic changes.On the first day of the exercise, when she saw Jia Kun's death, she was still horrified when she closed her eyes. Jia Kun's rigid body and frighteningly stiff face often appeared in front of her eyes. The big-character posters of Beiqing Middle School have been changed for several generations.She never thought that Lu Xiaolong would jump out to rebel like this, which suddenly made the distance between them farther.Lu Xiaolong was not only a man of the hour in Beiqing Middle School, but also in Beiqing University, and soon became a counter-revolutionary who was denounced.After graduating from high school this year, she was originally prepared to go to higher education like all her classmates, but now it is impossible.Back home, Beiqing University was a place of great revolution, with big-character posters everywhere, deafening loudspeakers everywhere, and shouts that made her heart skip a beat from time to time.On the campus, at any time, a large group of menacing people would shout slogans and hold back the bad guys who were caught.Criticism everywhere, downfall everywhere.Criticize each other and beat each other down.Only one slogan is consistent: follow Chairman Mao to make revolution! Li Daiyu didn't know what to do.She was like a little rabbit being chased by an eagle, trembling under the shadows passing by at high altitude, not knowing where to hide.She felt like a leaf floating in the vortex of the flood, which might be sucked into the abyss at any moment.She hoped that she could hang on to something, a reef out of the water, even if it was a dead tree that hadn't been uprooted, at least she could stop and take a breath.Beiqing University has already caught a group of people, and her family may be destroyed at any time. If this continues, she will soon have no place to live. In the helpless wave of revolution, Ma Shengli appeared boldly.His power, which he didn't know where, made her accept it irresistibly, like a leaf in the whirlpool hanging on a stone out of the water. In her ignorance, she had an extremely humiliating and shameful idea: keep Ma Shengli's relationship with Ma Shengli. Some kind of close relationship may be able to protect his father and the whole family to some extent. She also participated in the ten-thousand-thousand meeting held by Beiqing University to criticize Lu Xiaolong.She didn't dare to squeeze close, but leaned against a white birch tree and stood at the outermost edge of the big playground.He could hear the deafening criticism from the loudspeaker, but he couldn't see the faces of those people on the stage clearly, but he clearly knew that the one standing in front of the stage was Lu Xiaolong.That outline, that line, that raised forehead angle, is all about him.Now, the distance between her and Lu Xiaolong is even further.She supported the birch tree and leaned her head on this hand, recalling the first time she brought Lu Xiaolong three books from home that he wanted to read, which were the works of French utopian socialists Fourier, Saint-Simon and Owen.Lu Xiaolong's sincere thanks made her full of happiness.Lu Xiaolong gently stroked the shiny hardcover book cover with his hand, and asked, "Your father agrees?" Li Daiyu nodded.Lu Xiaolong said: "You must thank him for me." Later, Li Daiyu lent him the philosophy books at home many times. She still remembers the scene when Lu Xiaolong went to her house and his father talked about philosophy with him.She is proud of her father when he speaks eloquently and shows his profound knowledge of the history of philosophy.When Lu Xiaolong also seriously talked about his understanding of philosophy and got his father's approval, she had another kind of pride.In that kind of pride, it seems that Lu Xiaolong is someone to her.This indescribable subtle feeling really made her happy and excited for many days.On that day, she made tea and water for her father and Lu Xiaolong, took care of them inside and out, and experienced the complete happiness of a girl for the first time. Now, Lu Xiaolong is being criticized, and it may be worse in the future.In the haze, she also had a thin imagination: Lu Xiaolong got her help in a miserable situation, and they were very happy afterwards.But the thought passed in a flash, fear destroyed all her imagination, her family, her own fate made her terrified, and in this hot critical meeting, she often felt short of breath. At this time, Ma Shengli spotted her from a distance, and he came over and asked, "Why are you standing so far away?" Li Daiyu lowered her eyes and said nothing.Ma Shengli said: "For some things, you should be cautious and keep a distance; but for some things, you should narrow the distance, be brave, distinguish right from wrong, and raise your awareness." Li Daiyu brushed her messy hair and put it mechanically nod.For a moment, she had that faint thought again: getting close to Ma Shengli might help protect her father and the whole family.This vague thought humiliated her again. Only then did Li Daiyu vaguely realize that a new kind of inferiority complex had already replaced the inferiority complex she had for her frail body when she was a child, and this inferiority complex enveloped her powerfully.Behind Ma Shengli's dark face in the big playground where the revolutionary tide was turbulent, there appeared in a trance the face of a regimental cadre like Zhu Lihong who was admonishing her seriously.Zhu Lihong's big goldfish eyes have been scaring her for several years, but now, Ma Shengli's sharp eyes with big whites and small black eyes are piercing her, making her even more scared.