For love, join the army and go

  Memories are really a terrible thing, you can feel the shell that has solidified on the outside of your soul cracking bit by bit, it hurts in your heart, because this weakness hasn't seen sunlight for a long time, hiding in one's own dark drawer, not daring to show others.

  I started writing poetry at the age of 9 and began to write more frequently at 11, also publishing some small pieces in the corner of newspapers. In my growing experience, I was a sentimental little boy, even considered delicate and refined in elementary school, belonging to the type that little girls liked, a kind of "jade boy". Plus writing poetry made me introverted by nature.

  When I was young, my physical condition wasn't very good. However, my father was the basketball coach in our small city, so he threw me into his own basketball team when I was still in elementary school to train with those 17- and 18-year-old big boys. I should say that I was quite resilient - at first, I couldn't even run 5 kilometers, but after half a year, I could run 5 kilometers already. My basketball skills were always average because I wasn't interested.

  I attended a key high school in our city. My liberal arts skills were excellent, including history, politics, English and so on, basically I could get more than 95 points without listening to the lectures, but my science skills were very poor, basically never passed, especially math was extremely bad, always around 30-40 points. My compositions were often used as model essays for the whole school, and I even participated in several national composition competitions and won many awards. Based on my situation, my teachers were very headache, if I didn't do well they would just ignore me, but the key was that they always thought I was a talented student who could be cultivated.

  My head teacher was a language teacher, who valued me very much. He even wrote to his own university teacher at the time, now a famous normal university vice president, strongly recommending that I be exempt from examination for admission. My father also contacted the provincial sports academy and several universities' physical education departments, wanting to use his connections to send me to study sports management or something, just to manage the gym after graduation.

  But my dream is to be a writer, or an artist.

  In my third year of high school, I took the professional exam for the directing department at the Central Academy of Drama and passed with a pretty good score. This meant that I didn't have to take the math exam, as long as I wasn't zero, I was guaranteed admission to university.

  I took part in the national college entrance examination and entered university. But I was not satisfied with my life at university - I wanted to become famous, I wanted to write, but I had no life - so I applied for withdrawal.

  My university class teacher, I remember him for a lifetime.

  At that time, student entrepreneurship was popular. Although I couldn't start a business, he still managed to get me a spot. That is to say, I could temporarily drop out of school and experience the life I wanted to experience. This was very rare at the time, because I had just been a freshman for half a month.

  I returned to my hometown and did some small business with pirated discs, but I lost a lot of money. I also had several girlfriends, but nothing else. I felt empty and bored, seeking a kind of perverted pleasure in constantly changing girlfriends. I have to admit that I was precocious, because I was only 17 years old at the time. This is a terrible thing, my father was very worried about me.

  Before I knew it, the end of the year had arrived and several months had passed. The winter conscription began. I never thought I'd become a soldier, it was far removed from my life, I had never considered becoming a military man. Although I also liked watching American war movies, movies were just movies, only fools enlisted.

  When the soldier was a impulse, because my first girlfriend, who was also my middle school deskmate Xiaoying, joined the army. She called me to say goodbye, I went to see her, she wore a big winter training uniform, her small face was still lovely. Her hair was cut short.

  She was my first girlfriend, but I never touched her because she was the embodiment of a pure angel in my heart. We only held hands at most during class, and we didn't even kiss. I started school early, she's two years older than me, always took care of me, in my heart, she's the idealized figure of both sister and lover. Later I got into college but she didn't, just stayed home doing nothing. Joining the army was to come back and work at a bank, her parents were all bankers, they had that ability. I never realized her importance, after coming back only saw her a few times at classmate gatherings.

  I asked her where she was going, and she mentioned a military zone. I looked at her, held her hand, and impulsively said "wherever you go, I'll go". I really couldn't imagine living without Xiaoying by my side. At that time, I had read too many poems, so it was easy to associate things with war and disaster. Moreover, there were indeed some tense situations at the time, such as rumors of liberation in a few years...

  I couldn't let her go alone. It was only then that I realized how important Xiaoying was to me, my first love, the embodiment of my angel.

  So I signed up for the army. The people in the armed forces department were shocked when they saw my resume, but my school was also supportive of this. My head teacher was very happy that I would experience some hardships, he said it would be good for me. The reform of the conscription system made two years acceptable, so the armed forces department approved it. My father was actually very happy because he was a demobilized soldier from the army.

  I received winter training clothes, rubber shoes, quilts, backpack straps and many other things, and then followed a group of new recruits who had shaved their heads onto the train.

  Xiao Ying is in the third carriage, I am in the tenth carriage. —— We are from the same military region.

  Knowing she was on the bus, I felt at ease.

  The train took me and my pure angel away to a distant place.

  I was a boy who liked writing poetry at that time.

  I believe in love, so I joined the army.

  For love, join the army and go.