May 1, 2023.

Today is my birthday. I was in my little attic and sang for a while. The singing echoed in the empty attic, and I listened to my own singing and felt good. I bought myself a cake, but by the time I remembered to buy it, the cake shop was closed. I really appreciate the owner of the cake shop who was willing to make a cake for me even though it was closing time.

I don't know why, but today I suddenly had the urge to write a story. I want to put into words what I have experienced in the past, as if I am leaving a map of memories in my life. I was afraid that as I got older, I would gradually forget the things I had experienced, the moments that shaped me, changed me, and made me grow. I am afraid that one day when I really have power in my hands, I will become arrogant and forget the path I have traveled. At that point, the story will be my navigation, guiding me to find myself.

I don't know how well I write, and I don't know how many people will see this story. But if I'm lucky, maybe one day, when I'm old, many people will read my story.

In order to protect the privacy of the other people involved, I decided to use code names instead of their real names in this story. I will try to be as succinct as possible about the specific events that happened to me, and I have no clear memory of the exact time. So, the timeline of this story may seem a little confusing, but I will slowly add and adjust it in the future.

I always thought I had a special memory ability to remember what happened before I was three years old. So, I decided to start with the earliest events I remember and record the trajectory of my life.

When I was one to three years old, I went to live in Weihai with my aunt. I still don't know why I agreed to go with them, but I know that it was voluntary. During my time in Weihai, I would prepare slippers in advance every day, looking forward to my aunt and grandfather coming home. They always say I did it for the ice cream, but I can't remember exactly why. All I know is that I always want to do my best to behave better in their house, as if that's the only way I won't be kicked out. The days there were not long, but they left a deep impression.

When I was three years old, I remember that our family opened a KTV. Our shop seems to have three floors, the first floor is our bedroom in addition to the bar, and there is a small yard in the back where we cook. There is a private room on the second floor where I often play discs and watch TV. What I like is "The Haier Brothers", and that TV series makes me enjoy it. I remember my dad always telling me that we should be like the "Haier brothers" and that the brothers should be together.

I remember being very stubborn at the time. One morning, my mom was bathing my brother and me, and the two of us were sitting in a large aluminum alloy basin. After washing, we will be transferred to a smaller red basin. It was around 2005, and on that day, I saw other children in the kindergarten playing with remote control cars, and I asked my mom for that (I don't know why, I can't stop crying when I write this). At that time, my mother didn't know what a remote control car was, and a few days later, she brought home two small cars, one the size of an adult's palm, one red and one gray. I got the red one, and my brother got the gray one. I thought the car was good, but because it wasn't remote-controlled, I wasn't satisfied. My mom promised me that once she found a way to buy a remote control car, she would definitely buy me one. Sure enough, a few days later, she actually bought me a red remote control car, and the remote control and the car were packed in a round bucket.

In retrospect, it may seem like a trivial incident, but it actually had a profound impact on me. I knew that the family's financial conditions were not good at that time, and my mother was busy with housework and business, so she had little time to rest. Still, she tried her best to meet my need for toys. At that time, why was I so willful? Knowing the difficulties at home, why would they ask for it like that? It's ridiculous.

I remember when I was about four or five years old, I was sent to live with my aunt. The family was too busy to take care of my brother and me, so we stayed at my aunt's house for the time being. I only learned the facts behind this experience more than a decade later. At that time, my mother gave my aunt more than 20 yuan a month as a salary (the salary of civil servants that year was only 5 yuan a month). Mom also paid for all our expenses at my aunt's house, including utilities and our groceries. She visits us every week and always brings a box of yogurt (a dairy product).

Back then, we were woken up every morning by chicks in bed. These chicks were bought in our hometown. I didn't really care about this way of waking up early, but my brother later told me that it was the thing he hated the most. Mom would also give us some change, and we were afraid that someone would take it, so we hid it under the pillow. But because I didn't have a concept of quantity at that time, I felt that there was less money every day. My brother and I liked to do the most at that time was to buy matches, and a box of matches cost only 5 cents. As a result, we bought too much, and the match boss was reluctant to sell it to us anymore. Once, we bought a snack with a lottery and won the first prize. The prize was a large disc with a total of 15 pens on it, but the owner told us that two were dropped. I still think that those two pens were secretly taken by the boss, which is really interesting.

At that time, my brother and I enjoyed our favorite activity by riding tricycles around the village. I felt like if I was fast enough, I could leave all my worries behind.

One night, I was sitting on a stone pier outside the courtyard when I was suddenly pushed and I fell backwards with blood flowing from my head, and I couldn't even stop the bleeding. At that time, my aunt took me to the village health center, but it was already late and the clinic was closed. She said to me, let's come back tomorrow. From the look in her eyes, I felt indifference. At that moment, I felt like I might lose my life. In that case, my brother was the one I missed the most.

In rural areas, it is common for people to pile up cardboard boxes and garbage in the yard. One day, my brother and I were playing in these garbage heaps, and I found a box of yogurt. I didn't know it was yogurt at the time because I had never seen anything like it. Intrigued, I picked it up and tasted it, feeling that it might have expired. I had never seen anything like this at my aunt's house, so I led my brother to find a lot of things at my aunt's house that I hadn't seen before. That's when I realized that my brother and I were outsiders here. I used to be naïve enough to think we were family. I didn't tell my mom about it because I knew that if I told her about it, she would have a breakdown.

Life at my aunt's house, the main thing is to go to kindergarten there. But my memory of kindergarten is not very clear, I only remember that on Children's Day, I used to perform a show and play a little frog. My mother said that I cried a lot that day, and I made movements while crying, and I was photographed. I only saw that photo once, and then I didn't know where it went.

That's all I can remember in this memory, maybe my brother remembers other things.