I am scattered everywhere

When leaving a place, I always fear leaving something behind. Leaving a hotel, I turn the quilt and pillow upside down; getting out of a taxi, I feel the seat with my hand.

If I lose something, I regret it terribly. In elementary school, I lost a pen on the sloping roof of the old paradise, and I was sad simply because the pen carried a small memory of grievance. I don't know where I got this pen; it was an ordinary black-and-white ballpoint pen. One day it disappeared, and then I found it in a classmate's pencil case. We each insisted it was ours, and finally the homeroom teacher asked us to describe the pen separately. I won with a more detailed description and got the pen back.

Perhaps at first, fighting for the pen was a defense of property rights—"it should belong to me"—but later it became a record of memories. Like knotting ropes to record events, others may not know or care what story an object carries, but the one who records it knows. Should I study history? There are few things I care about, and one notable thing is collecting objects. Do people deny decisions they once made? Is it because they have stronger reasons?

Recently, I constantly feel like I've lost something, perhaps because I keep moving. The iPad pen was said to be at Li Hui's place, but after half a year of searching, I still can't find it. The fridge magnet I promised to give Zhang Ran was taken apart by Li Hui, and the pufferfish Polaroid is nowhere to be found. Rushing to pack clothes for Chengdu, I found that those T-shirts from before are all missing. I have to admit that objects and memories both decay. In Shanghai, I found that the glasses Lucy gave me were irreparably broken. I clearly remember the unease when I received the gift and the scene of Zhang Ran helping me get the glasses fitted. The photo frame covered with Polaroids will never be hung again, and the photos inside keep falling out. When will the necklace in the rubber band box be forgotten? What can I use to hold onto the past?

I've moved from Dongguan to Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Beijing, Chengdu. How many things I remember or don't remember have gone missing? The things left behind that can never be found again, the blurred copies in my memory constantly deform, reminding me of the fact that I can never go back.