At Fifty, I Got Divorced

On my fifty-fifth birthday, I cooked a whole tableful of dishes.

Braised pork, sweet-and-sour ribs, steamed sea bass: everything they liked. My husband complained the meat was tough, my daughter-in-law said the ribs weren’t sweet enough, and my son just stared at his phone. No one remembered it was my birthday.

After dinner, my daughter-in-law said, “Mom, move back in and help with the baby.” My husband said, “You’re getting on in years. Don’t put yourself through the trouble.” My son said, “Mom, the baby misses you.”

I put down my chopsticks. “I’m not coming back. Wang Jianguo, let’s get divorced.”

They laughed and called me crazy. At fifty-five, getting divorced? Who would want me after that?

I said, “If no one else wants me, I’ll want myself.”

This novel tells the story of that “crazy woman.” She moves into a rental, gets yelled at by her son at the door, is harassed by her ex-husband, and becomes the subject of gossip among relatives. When she gets sick and lies alone in bed with a fever, she thinks, “I could die and no one would even know.”

But then she meets a friend who truly cares for her, a future mother-in-law who treats her like her own daughter, and a man in a white shirt who steps in front of her when she’s cornered in the stairwell and says, “Her back is bad. Don’t scare her.”

Thirty-six twists and turns, and thirty-six times she picks herself back up. She goes from being invisible, the woman whose birthday no one remembers, to someone who dares to call the police on her ex-husband, post a long message in the family chat, and tell the whole world, “I give because I choose to, not because I have to.”

This isn’t a feel-good revenge fantasy. It’s the story of an ordinary woman learning to love herself in the second half of her life.

For everyone who has reached fifty-five and finally decided to live for themselves.