Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Nanzhi hated it when people treated her like a patient.

She went to work on time, turned in her drafts on time, and watered the mint on the balcony on time. She worked as a product planner at a cultural creative company, and what she was best at was taking ordinary little things and making them soft enough to tug at your heart.

Once, she designed a set called Four Seasons Wind Chimes.

Hidden in the spring wind chime was the sound of a cat meowing. Summer was the pop of a soda bottle being opened. Autumn was the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot. Winter was snow landing on the surface of an umbrella. She said that if a person couldn’t find a reason to keep living for the moment, they could first find a sound they were willing to keep listening to.

When I was pursuing her, she slapped her diagnosis report down in front of me.

“Liang Yanzhou, I’m not the kind of person who gets better just because she’s in a relationship,” she said. “I might cry in the middle of the night. I might suddenly disappear. I might take one ordinary sentence and hear it as the whole world not wanting me anymore.”

I said, “Then I’ll learn.”

She looked at me. “Learn what?”

“How to love you.”

I was thirty then. My startup had just failed, and I was drowning in debt, yet when I made promises, I sounded as if I owned the world.

Nanzhi laughed for a long time, until her eyes were red by the end.

She said, “Don’t say things too absolutely. When something is too full, it spills over and dirties the floor.”

I didn’t take it in.

For the first two years of our relationship, I really did learn well. When she went for follow-up visits, I went with her. When she took her medication, I kept track. When her mood plunged, I took her for walks by the river. When she said she didn’t want to see anyone, I dimmed the living room lights and cooked her plain congee.

She asked if I would ever find her troublesome.

I said no.

She asked, if one day she fell into that black hole again, would I pull her out?

I said I would.

Every answer was true.

I just didn’t know that true things could grow old too, if no one maintained them.

Later, Nanzhi once took me to a peer support group.

It was on the second floor of the community library. By the door sat a pothos plant that was nearly withered to death. Not many people came: students, middle-aged people, and aunties who looked even older than my mother. Everyone sat in a circle. They didn’t preach grand truths. They only talked about whether they had eaten on time that day, whether they had slept at least four hours, and whether they had called someone when they felt the urge to hurt themselves.

When it was Nanzhi’s turn, she took out a card.

On the front of the card were three names: mine, her therapist’s, and my mother-in-law’s. On the back was written: “If I say the wind is too strong, please don’t only tell me to close the window.”

She handed me the card to look at.

“This is my Crisis Card,” she said. “I might not be able to explain clearly what’s wrong with me when I’m at my worst, so I wrote it down ahead of time.”

Back then, I put the card into my wallet with the solemnity of accepting a ring.

For the first few months, I really did look at it.

When she said the wind was strong, I would ask whether she felt unwell physically or emotionally. When she said she wanted to hide, I would help her list three small things she could do: wash her face, drink water, pull the curtains open just a crack.

Later, I changed wallets, and at some point that card was tucked away into an old drawer.

I didn’t lose it.

I simply stopped opening it.