Love & Desire & Decay

We start from the days of youth, passing through the torrent of time, heading toward decay.

At 16, I was in a second-rate high school, where I first met An An. At that time, I entered the school as the top student in a low-ranking class, and immediately, the teacher casually appointed me as the class monitor.

An An was the most mischievous student in class, frequently asked to stand in front of the national flag for self-reflection. For some reason, the teacher arranged for me to be his desk partner, seated at the back row, in the name of "helping a struggling student learn."

To the teachers, An An was a troubled student, but to me, he was a boy full of sunshine and vitality. I was captivated by this quality of his, and we went from desk mates to a couple.

We were each other's first love in the truest sense. A series of curious events triggered by the hormones of adolescence marked this period, which I call youthful desire.

In empty classrooms during physical education or in the quiet alleys on my way home, I awkwardly tried to touch An An. It wasn’t quite eroticism; my clumsy attempts could only be considered "touching."

Young people are always full of energy, rushing to the playground to play basketball as soon as class ends. The sweat made An An smell less than pleasant, but compared to the tension, shyness, and curiosity of exploring the opposite sex for the first time, that smell didn’t seem to matter much. Perhaps, as someone who hadn’t been around the opposite sex before, I thought that’s just how men smelled.

When An An was in his senior year, he worked hard to get into the same university as me, but unfortunately, he had wasted too much time, and I wasn't selfless enough to lower my admission standards just to be with him.

So, we began a long-distance relationship in college. We met once every half month, with the high-speed train ticket costing 500 yuan. Both of us carefully kept the ticket stubs.

At first, I was a traditional person who believed in no sex before marriage. It wasn’t until halfway through my sophomore year that we started to engage in physical intimacy, and even then, it was just kissing. An An once mentioned going all the way, but after I rejected him, he never brought it up again.

It wasn’t until my roommate started dating and often stayed out all night that I realized that many people my age had already begun experiencing their first sexual encounters.

I reflected on why I held onto this principle, and I realized it was unnecessary. These ideas had been instilled in me by my parents, and all I really wanted was to have a pure relationship.

After I had let go of these thoughts, when I met An An again, we took the next step in our relationship. Our first time was awkward and disappointing—nothing really happened, we just went through the motions.

The second time we met, An An seemed to have learned from his previous experiences. He was like a student who had been through a crash course and suddenly seemed so much more mature. I gradually began to enjoy sex.

Being with An An gave me an inexplicable sense of belonging, as if his arms were my final home.

We accompanied each other, growing together, becoming experienced in the ways of intimacy. After we became physically intimate, An An seemed to blossom, like a fish jumping into water, enthusiastically absorbing knowledge, and even discovering my submissive side.

He no longer hid his desire, frequently touching me or watching certain videos, declaring, "We’ll go there and do this someday!"

In all these years, we never fought, though An An could be a bit straightforward. Whenever I got angry, he would quickly admit, "Baby, you’re right, I was wrong."

He used to be the perfect lover in my eyes, until I noticed that our frequency of sex had gradually decreased, and we no longer lay together chatting.

From sitting behind him on his bicycle to sitting beside him in the passenger seat, the gaps in our small world became more apparent. We often worked late into the night, and I, once the pampered girl, would silently cry, then gather myself and head home.

By the time I got back, it was late, and I would crawl into bed with the cold air. He would wake up briefly to hold me. I knew he had done his best, and that hug was warm.

He was exhausted too, and I couldn’t bring myself to scold him for letting his senior dump the work on me. The next day, when he asked how my overtime had been, I had already moved past the moment where I wanted to share.

There was no point; that feeling of helplessness was hard to shake. Sometimes I would get upset when I sought affection but was turned down. I wondered over and over in my mind, "Does he not love me anymore? Am I no longer attractive?"

Later, I discovered the more brutal truth. I had resigned myself to a sexless relationship, and I had lost all desire for An An.

Every day I lay next to him, yet I felt no physical desire, and that made me feel sad.

Our happiness seemed inversely related to the expanding belly of An An. He was troubled by it, but losing weight had become difficult for him.

An An could only complain while silently enduring the anxiety. He hadn't played basketball in a long time.

I still loved An An, even his round belly. But I also worried—did our loss of passion at this age mean that the end of our lives had already arrived ahead of schedule? What would we live for in the future? A child?

I considered whether to break up, to find someone else to rekindle desire. But I also worried that finding someone else would just restart a ten-year cycle.

Moreover, An An was not someone I could easily let go of. Losing him might require even more time to heal the pain.

I haven’t found a solution yet, but at least life is so full that I don’t have much time to overthink.

But perhaps I have realized one thing: there is no perfect lover, because love itself is never perfect.