Listening to ASMR every night has become a spiritual support and almost a religious ritual for me.
Flowing in the crowd in the subway to get arrived. Flowing in the crowd to school to get taught. Flowing in the crowd to the canteen to get fed. Being a teenager in China is all about doing what you are told to do and living a life that is against your free will while you still have to conform to numerous authorities.
70% of my time awake is occupied by what the authorities told me to do. The rest, 30% of the time, is indirectly influenced by them. Ironically, by their words, if a student devotes this 30% of their time into keeping doing work, the student will 'live a happy life in the future.'
Under such tremendous pressure, my only relief is a 20-mins record of ASMR, which occupies a 'significant' 1.4% of my time. Listening to page-turning sounds became my daily necessity because it reminds me of the time when I was a child, living with my grandma in the countryside.
After a day's playing in the mud and having a terrific meal of just-harvested vegetables, my grandma always read me stories before bed. The sound of page turning is the most soothing and relieving sound for me since then.
In the precious 20 minutes of listening to pages being turned, I could put aside my anxiety and depression for a little while. It is a Utopian in the harsh world and an imaginary dream in which my grandma is still alive and there with me.