The Infinite Reveries of a Forty-Year-Old Married Woman

My name is Yang Xiaomin. I am 42 years old and currently live in Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco, California. After graduating from university in Hong Kong, I married my current husband and went to the United States to study with him the following year. Then we settled down and gave birth to two children. My daughter is currently studying in college in New York, and my son is studying in high school in California and living at home. My husband's surname is Zhang, and he is three years older than me. His family ran factories and did business in Hong Kong's early "economic boom" years. With the training and assistance from the government, he contributed to the early industrial development of Hong Kong and laid the foundation for the company's growth. The business grew bigger and bigger, and the money became more and more profitable. After my husband completed his studies in the United States, he returned to Taiwan to learn to be a leader in my husband's ever-expanding family business. Because they diversified and internationalized their investments very early, they speculated in land and engaged in real estate development in Hong Kong; they also established companies overseas to engage in import and export trade, and gradually formed a very successful and profitable enterprise kingdom. I knew nothing about business matters and had no interest in them. I only know that in the past few years, since my husband returned to Hong Kong after studying, my marriage life has been spent less with him and more apart from him. Most of the time, I was alone, taking care of the children and watching them grow up. Living this kind of life is almost the same as being single. But because she is a wife and has to raise her children alone and fulfill her duties as a mother, she does not enjoy the joy of single life at all. Therefore, deep down in my heart, I have always been dissatisfied with my fate; I feel that my husband has ignored me and my spiritual and emotional needs for too long for the sake of career!