A woman runs away from home

This is a very ordinary morning. After she finished washing herself and applying lipstick in front of the mirror, she suddenly didn't want to go to work. She looked at the gloomy sky outside the window and took a deep breath. The breath went up to her chest and seemed to be blocked by a big mountain, making her whole back feel tight.

She made her decision in less than five minutes. First, I asked for leave from my employer, and then called my mother to tell her that I had to go on a business trip temporarily and would not be going back in the next few days. She checked the high-speed train to Qingdao. It departed at ten o'clock and the journey was less than seven hours. Can you see the sea before dark? She organized her belongings quickly.

Sitting in the waiting room, she remembered that she had not told her husband where she was going. She hesitated as she picked up her phone, not sure how to compose the message. A week ago, the couple had a quarrel. To be precise, it was the husband who quarreled with her. She is a gentle woman, and her husband has a bad temper. If the couple is at odds, she usually will not argue with him. Before the two of them had time to reconcile, the husband went out to study. Perhaps he was still worried, and they had no phone calls or WeChat messages.

As the train set off, she sat by the window, and the world outside the window gradually left behind her. "I'm going to Qingdao to participate in an academic exchange for three days." She sent this WeChat message and turned off her phone.

The train left the city and ran through the sunny fields. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the window glass, the autumn sun shining warmly on her face. She began to ask herself, what is this for? Does that count as running away from home?

I remember "running away from home" for the first time when I was very young. The neighbors always like to tease her, saying, do you know, you are not your parents' biological child, they don't like you, they only like your brother. She felt aggrieved, but she only dared to cry secretly. One summer evening, her brother snatched her picture book, and she decided to "run away from home." But I only walked three streets. When the adults moved the bamboo bed to the roadside and the children played on the bamboo bed, she began to walk back angrily. Only when she grew up did she realize that what child hadn't heard the joke about "not her parents' biological child"?

The thought of running away from home came to mind many times. From childhood to adolescence, she witnessed every quarrel between her parents, every now and then, like a raging fire cooking oil. The whole street knows about the bad relationship between parents. It wasn't until she married her husband that she jumped out of the hot pot. She even felt that getting married was the most tragic time for her to run away from home.

She felt tightness in her chest. Covered by her shawl, she reached into her top and gently massaged the sternum between her breasts. The pain made her frown together. Why did you suddenly leave today and go to Qingdao? Is it related to the movie you watched last night? She was attracted by the romantic title of "Manchester by the Sea," but after watching it, she discovered that the movie was not only unromantic, but sadistic. She slept in a daze at night, as if she was lying on a boat floating on the sea. The turmoil kept her from sleeping deeply all night.

She didn’t remember how many stops the train stopped, and the passengers sitting next to her changed twice. At first, he was a young man who put on headphones to listen to music when he got in the car, with a baseball cap covering less than half of his face. She likes to meet people who don't like to strike up conversations when traveling, so they don't interfere with each other. After the man got out of the car, a woman sat next to her with a child in her arms. Across the aisle were an old man and another naughty child. The child in her arms was making a fuss, the naughty child was running around, and the mother of two was a little confused. This reminded her of her son. Although every day seems very long, twenty years are very short. In the blink of an eye, his son has grown into a young man.

We are almost arriving in Qingdao. She turned on her phone, but there were no incoming call reminders except a few WeChat messages. Her husband’s WeChat message was very short, with only one word, “Hmm”, and he responded to her WeChat message an hour and a half later. Her mother sent her a voice message, telling her to take care of her health outside, eat well, and avoid stomachaches.

She recalled her father inexplicably. When she was thirty, her father died of a heart attack. Sitting in the cold hall of the funeral home, my mother cried and said, "It's good to go, it's good to go, he will be liberated, and so will I." She held her mother's arm, not knowing how to comfort her. Looking at her father in the ice coffin, she felt strange. Her eyes were wandering and she did not dare to look at him for a long time. She was never able to get very close to her father when he was alive. This was related to his violent temper.

One time my father slapped my mother's face, and my mother's face was swollen for more than half a month. Many years later, she still remembered that her mother's left eye was covered in bruises, and she shed tears as she kept talking. My father was lying in the ice coffin, quiet, pale, and thin. This made her feel very unreal. She didn't know if everything in the past really happened. At this moment, she was like floating dust in the air, overlooking her dead father, and she didn't know how to settle down.

Recalling the old events, she felt palpitations in her heart. Although it only lasted for a few tenths of a second, it took a lot of effort for her to recover. During this time, heart palpitations became more and more frequent. Passengers in the carriage began to commotion, and the train had arrived in Qingdao.

She found the hotel and settled down smoothly. Before it was completely dark, she stood in a huge seaside square.

She leaned on the railing and faced the sea. As the sky darkened, the water also lost its blue color. The wind blew from far away from the sea. She heard the sound of waves hitting the rocks and smelled the faint salty smell of the sea. The lights in the square lit up one after another behind her, colorful, and she did not look back until a burst of guitar playing sounded.

Not far away, a young man was holding a guitar, playing and singing to himself. The sound of the piano and singing came from the speakers, and the sea breeze carried them floating in the open square. The melody was very familiar. She remembered it was a song by Li Jian, but she forgot the title. She hummed softly in her mind.

After a long time, she found a man leaning on the railing, less than one meter away from her. She suddenly became wary, but looking at the bright lights and tourists in twos and threes around her, she felt there was no need to worry too much. When she was hesitating whether to go further, the man suddenly said, "Can we have a conversation? Don't worry, I'm not a bad person."

She was stunned. The man put a cigarette in his mouth, took out a lighter, held it up with his palm, and carefully lit the cigarette. In the momentary firelight, she saw his profile, which looked like a person's. She searched quickly; when the man exhaled his first long puff of smoke, she searched out the results; he looked like the actor Duan Yihong. Maybe because of this, she didn't speak or walk away.

The man lowered his head and smoked, and she looked at the black sea. The man was silent, and she didn't think about anything. She saw the emptiness between the sky and the sea. She felt that the emptiness was like her own heart, a void with nothing in it. After a cigarette was put out, the man suddenly cried, covering his face with his hands, leaning on the railing, whimpering like a child.

She stood motionless. Amid the man's cries, she searched for the voice of a young singer not far behind her. He was singing an English song, which she still found a little familiar and sad. She didn't know what happened to the man, but she wasn't curious about it. She just hoped that the singing could bring a little solace to the man's sadness. The song was soothing her.

How long did the man cry? It seemed like there was time for two songs.

The man's crying slowly turned into choking. She hesitated for a while, and finally took out a pack of tissues from her bag and handed it over. The man waved his hands to indicate no need, and rubbed his face vigorously with both palms.

The man seemed to calm down after smoking his second cigarette. He wrapped his jacket tightly and took a deep breath while facing the sea, as if telling her or to himself: "I have always wanted to cry like this. It's so difficult to cry."

She still didn't know how to respond to him. After all, things like this have only been seen in movies, and the logic in life is much more complicated than movie plots. What's more, she has already carried a huge mountain on her back, so what ability does she have to move boulders for others?

The singing stopped, and she turned around to see that the singer was packing up her things. It seemed that tonight's singing was over. From the corner of her eye, she saw the man preparing to leave.

"My daughter also likes to sing. But, she died... Thank you, I hope that good people have a safe life."

She seemed to wake up suddenly, and when she turned around, the man was already in her arms. meters away and quickly walked out of the square.

She looked at his back. She felt a shiver deep in her heart. She clutched her chest, an empty shot from "Manchester by the Sea" flashing in front of her eyes.

Is this Qingdao, or that town called "Manchester by the Sea"? She looked at the man's back, and she began to believe that no matter in movies or in life, there are many people who cannot escape the fate of being irredeemable.

She sat on the beach for a long time, and then left Qingdao the next day. The first thing she did when she got home was to visit her mother and have dinner with her. She has decided that as long as she lives, she will not let her mother know about her illness, which is the same as her father's.

Standing downstairs in my home, I looked up and saw the light. My husband had already returned. She reached into her satchel to get the key, and her fingers touched the hard folded paper, which was her medical record. She stood in the night for a while, thinking about how to make her husband accept everything.

She did not tell anyone that she ran away from home briefly this time just to listen to the sound of the sea - she liked the sound of the sea, which was the sound coming from the depths of her heart and the sound of the beating of life. The sound of breathing. She really hopes to have a strong heart like the sea.