Ivy Among the Thorns

A child from a dysfunctional family. A wolf mother's control is a wall with not a crack in it, while a cat father's indulgence is a gentle, deadly candy.

I have an illness that lets me see emotions.

My mother's anxiety is a thorn that pierces me; my father's cowardice is a creeping vine. Together, they have grown into a thorny tattoo across my heart, bleeding day and night.

I wrote this endless pain into a book, believing it was my only way out, until a man named Jiang Yu'an said to me:

"Your thorns are beautiful, but they don't belong to you."