Summary

Li writes about other authors who have requested that their diaries be destroyed. Li understands that the fact "that one's words would be misinterpreted [seemed] as inevitable as death itself" (107). During her period of depression, Li travelled a lot. Each trip was "meant to renew a belief that [she] had long forgotten. Nothing matters" (109). Li remembers avoiding a reunion with her former army officer, believing that there is "no reason to reencounter the past" (109). Li is alarmed by the idea of being remembered because she fears that "people's memories will erase something essential" (110). A friend tells Li that she is an impatient person. Li defines impatience as "an impulse to alter or impose" and makes the connection that "suicide is a kind of impatience people rarely understand" (112). Again, Li writes that she craves the freedom of "an existence closest to nonexistence" and is...