She was the overachiever—the class monitor in primary school, consistently at the top of her class in middle and high school, admitted to a prestigious 985 university. She turned down a guaranteed graduate school spot to pursue studies in Europe. After returning to China, she joined a central state-owned enterprise, earning a respectable salary with a full suite of benefits and subsidies. This was the life of the overachiever at age 28.

When did she first think about quitting? The industry was on the decline, and her year-end bonus was pitifully small. Some of her fellow university recruits quit outright after their first winter on the job, starting to look elsewhere. That's when she began to feel lost. So this was a road one could walk away from?

Day by day, she would drag herself out of her apartment—just a ten-minute walk from the office—like a sleepwalker. She walked along a tree-lined path in her housing complex, stopping at the traffic light at the intersection. Her company building stood diagonally across. Whether she crossed the east-west light or the north-south one didn't matter. Whichever turned green first, she'd cross—never wasting even a second of pointless waiting.

Reaching the corner by her company, she pulled out her phone and clocked in with DingTalk. She always timed it just right—clocking in at the doorstep was her little perk to herself. Her company offered a few breakfast options. Swiping her employee card meant breakfast was free. The resentment she felt about coming to work each morning would soften a little at that moment. Big companies were still good, she thought—at least they gave you perks.

She stood with other lifeless colleagues waiting for the elevator. The elevator was painfully slow. Sometimes, when it opened, it was already packed with expressionless faces. Those outside peeked in to see if they could squeeze in. Some didn't even bother to look—just waited for their floor, then squeezed out through the shoulders of others, took a deep breath in the elevator hall, and walked toward their desks.

She pulled out her chair and slid into her desk, fitting perfectly into place. She and her keyboard fused into one, as though these machines were her cybernetic limbs. For eight or nine hours each day, she had to be connected to them to survive. Yes, survive—not in the sense of needing a respirator like hospital patients, but another kind of survival: one with a salary, an identity, a place in society.

In winter, she used a health pot she bought from the company store to brew nourishing tea that kept warm on her desk. Wisps of steam and the sweet scent of fruit tea rose beside her computer. Even if she barely had time to sip it all day, it made her feel she was taking care of herself—in this "comfortable" job. In summer, it was iced milk. Sometimes by 11 a.m., it had already warmed to room temperature, still mostly full.

Most of the time, noon arrived quickly. Lunch was at 11:50. She would head downstairs to meet her friends in the cafeteria, where they ate one of the dreaded "A, B, C" set meals. People jostled in line—for food they didn't like, for rice, for soup, for side dishes. In the crowded dining area, she'd swiftly snag a seat, eyes on her phone, hurriedly scooping lunch into her mouth.

After lunch came a rare reprieve. Here, the state-owned enterprise showed its advantage: the lunch break lasted until 2 p.m. During this time, the lights in the office were turned off. Colleagues expertly unfolded portable beds, put on sleep masks and headphones, pulled up blankets, and settled in for a solid midday rest. She didn't nap. To leave work a little earlier, she often kept working through lunch.

She lived like this for nearly 700 days—each day nearly identical to the last.

She tried talking to her parents. Every time she brought up the idea of quitting, they were opposed. Her father had worked in the same industry, but due to the poor economy, he was now unemployed and at home. Her mother had reached retirement age and had formally retired. In a three-person household, it felt impossible for all three to be without jobs.

She explored side gigs, applied to PhD programs overseas, teamed up with friends for competitions—constantly trying to see if there was another way outside of her day job. But none of them led to a real exit.

Reading, writing, and cinema—those things that had once lit up her soul—became unspeakable. New friends were hard to find. Old friends had been left behind the moment she decisively moved to a new city.

A declining industry gives no clear place to begin one's efforts. Charging blindly in the wrong direction felt unwise—but where was the right direction? She didn't know.

"Life is a vast wilderness"—the words themselves felt like a wind blowing in from somewhere far away, fierce and dry, thick with dust and the scent of old grasses. Bright sunlight. Freedom so vast it became disorienting.

If only life were a set of tracks. No more choices to make. Like high school: math, Chinese, English, physics, chemistry, biology—just master these seven subjects, and you were promised a bright future.

She had an ideal vision of life: Wake up in the morning and freely absorb the major global events from the day before. Reflect, think, and then dive into exploring her own field. Create in the afternoon. Have dinner with friends in the evening. Take a walk through the streets at sunset, passing by lit-up shopfronts and the drifting scents from different cuisines.

But that youthful ambition to change the world bit by bit—where had it gone? Maybe it was scared off by housing prices. Or by the savings and résumés of her peers. Or by work that was endlessly complex and repetitive. Animals are shaped by their environments, she realized.

"Your depression isn't too severe, but you're definitely quite anxious."

"Why didn't the questionnaire detect my anxiety, but the brain scan did?"

"Maybe you don't consciously feel anxious—but your brain already is."

Anxiety wasn't just a sad little emoji—it was a medical condition. She had it. On her first test, her scores hit the ceiling. The symptoms were all there: picking at her fingers, biting her lips, stomach pain, migraines, throat tightness, itchy skin—somatization.

Turns out, she had never truly lived for herself.

For over two decades, everything in her life had revolved around study. Everyone seemed to be scrambling to leave one system only to squeeze into another. Each system had its own ecosystem, where everyone had a place, a job, a promise. In such systems, no one needed to ask who they were or what they loved—just keep your head down and work hard, and life would be good.

But then came the pandemic. The collapse of order. The economic downturn. The promised futures for a generation of young people all fell through. Who were the overachievers now, standing among the ruins?

It wasn't that she hadn't worked hard. Or endured. But the thought of quitting whispered to her like a devil at night—softly, sweetly, like a lover.

Who would she be, if she left? What could she do? The world outside looked brilliant, but she knew nothing, fit nowhere.

It was as if her parents would rather believe she had gone insane—only then could they accept her desire to quit. They couldn't believe that the daughter they had raised with such care, who had grown into a strong, flourishing tree, could suddenly rot and break.

What frightened her the most was realizing that maybe her parents didn't love her as deeply as she had imagined—not the way she loved her cats. Their love was thin, conditional. A cat is lovable just by breathing.

She began listening to her own voice. Eat when hungry. Drink when thirsty. Laugh when happy. Cry when sad. Like when she was a kid, eating just the cream from sandwich cookies and stuffing the rest back in the bag—she wanted to only do the things she liked.

Maybe she had never loved herself at all. Only the standards that made her excellent. Because deep down, she would rather be anyone else than simply be herself.

At 28, after resigning for the first time, the overachiever felt eight years old again. Learning to write. Learning, slowly, to become herself.