The Junior High Overpass, a Refuge You Can't Go Back To

I used to write only about the bad parts. But thinking back, junior high had its beautiful memories too.

Standing on the overpass at night watching traffic — not the kind I wrote about last time, where I’d space out alone or bring my first love. This was the pure, with-friends kind of night. After school, not going home, a bunch of us sprawled on the bridge peering down at the road below. Headlights forming lines, red and white alternating, flowing off into some invisible distance. Someone said that taxi’s lights looked brighter than the rest. Someone else said next time they went that direction they’d take that bus route. Half-hearted chatting about this and that, talking about everything, finishing nothing. Then someone would say “let’s go” and everyone would scatter.

Getting dragged out. I’m the type who doesn’t really initiate going out — social anxiety plus laziness means I’d usually go straight home after school. But in junior high, friends would come pull you out. “Come on, let’s go walk around.” “Where?” “I don’t know, we’ll figure it out.” And then we’d actually go. No destination, no plan, wherever the road took us. Walk around the convenience store, sit in the grass behind the apartment complex for a while, check if there were any dogs outside the next school’s perimeter wall, walk the riverside boardwalk until the streetlights ran out then turn back — these are things you only do in junior high. Because in high school, you didn’t have this kind of freedom anymore.

Going on adventures. “Adventures” meant finding unexplored corners nearby. The apartment building basement, the unfinished construction site, the hill behind the school with a hole in its fence, the abandoned warehouse that was supposedly haunted but actually just contained an old sofa. A junior high kid’s “adventure” radius didn’t exceed two kilometers, but every newly discovered corner was a new continent. Do you remember that feeling of your heart racing — not knowing what was around the corner, but desperately wanting to find out? That feeling never came back.

High school was a fully closed, semi-Hengshui-model institution. What’s semi-Hengshui model? Up at 6 AM, lights out at 10:30 PM, and every minute in between is class or self-study, except for meals and bathroom breaks. Weekends gave you exactly three hours of outdoor time on Sunday afternoon. Phones confiscated. Leaving campus required a permission slip.

Freedom flatlined to zero.

I used to be able to go stand on the overpass after school, buy things at the convenience store, sit in the next neighborhood’s garden — all of that vanished in high school. The only outdoor activity per week was those three Sunday afternoon hours. During those three hours, everyone would rush the school gate snack shop like released prisoners, stocking up on instant noodles, sausages, yogurt drinks, then pace laps around the sports field — because three hours wasn’t enough time to go anywhere far.

So most of the good things were concentrated in junior high. It’s not that high school was bad — I had a few good friends, a couple of fun memories — but that feeling of “not having to think about anything, just hanging out outside,” that freedom was zero.

University gave freedom. But youth was already gone.

You think that sounds melodramatic, right? I think it’s a bit melodramatic too. But it’s just the truth. University is obviously freer than high school. You can wake up whenever, eat whatever, go wherever. But the problem is — at the same time, you’re worrying about credits, grades, internships, grad school. You have freedom of movement, but not freedom of mind. You walk across campus and your head is full of “did I register for next semester’s courses,” “did I submit my internship resume,” “that company’s coding test is coming up” — you’re not walking, you’re rushing.

And now it’s job-hunting anxiety every day. Graduation approaching — sending resumes, revising resumes, interviews, rejections, sending again. Every time I open a job board, it feels like opening midterm results back in the day. No one’s waiting for me on the bridge anymore — everyone’s busy with their own stuff.

Looking back, the only period with a genuine sense of “the present” was that time standing on the overpass in junior high. Not thinking about anything, not worrying about anything. Just standing there, feeling the sound of traffic and the evening breeze, feeling “now.” Not the now of anxiety, not the now of rushing — just now.

Can’t go back. It stays in memory.